Who was it who said that the earth is spherical and not flat?

Question

Who was it who said that the earth is spherical and not flat?

Answer 1

In the 7-6 centuries BCE Brahman litterature and sanskrit talked about the Earth being spherical. It made sense to them because the sphere is considered a sacred shape in Hindu. Thats about 300 years before the Greeks.

Answer 2

The ancient Greeks usually get credit for it, but many other civilizations had figured it out independently, the Mayans being one.  You can see it yourself when you watch a lunar eclipse - no matter where on the world you watch it from, the Earth casts a circular shadow in the sky that the Moon passes through.

Answer 3

IDK...Chris Columbus

Answer 4

It was the ancient Greeks that first began to discuss the Earth as a sphere instead of flat.  Pythagoras in the 6th century BC stated the Earth was a sphere (but more for esthetic reasons).  Around 330 BC, Aristotle provided observational evidence for the spherical Earth.

But sailors even before then probably provided the first observational evidence that the Earth was not flat (though it isn't recorded anywhere).

Answer 5

History records Pythagoras as being the first to claim that the Earth was round (see The Encyclopaedia Britannica, search for "Astronomical Theories of the Ancient Greeks").  However, it is difficult to determine whether he actually did or not.  

Belief in a flat Earth is found in mankind's oldest writings. In early Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean, and this forms the premise for early Greek maps such as those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus.

By classical times the idea that Earth was spherical began to take hold in Ancient Greece. Pythagoras in the 6th century BC, apparently on aesthetic grounds, held that all the celestial bodies were spherical. However, most Presocratic Pythagoreans considered the world to be flat.

According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460-370 BC) believed in a flat earth.

Plato, a contemporary of Aristotle and disciple of Socrates, quoted Socrates as saying: “my conviction is that the earth is a round body in the center of the heavens” (Phaedo, 380 BC).

Around 330 BC, Aristotle provided observational evidence for the spherical Earth, noting that travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon. He argued that this was only possible if their horizon was at an angle to northerners' horizon and thus the Earth's surface could not be flat.  He also noted that the border of the shadow of Earth on the Moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always circular, no matter how high the Moon is over the horizon. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in all directions apart from directly above and directly below.

Second, Aristotle knew that people who journeyed north saw the North Star ascend higher in the sky, while those heading south saw the North Star sink. On a flat Earth, the positions of the stars wouldn’t vary with a person’s location.

Despite these arguments, which won over most of the world’s educated citizens, belief in a flat Earth persisted among many others. Not until explorers first circumnavigated the globe in the 16th century did those beliefs begin to die out.

Answer 6

Cleopatra did!

Answer 7

It might be useful at this point to mention that the Flat Earth Theory is not yet quite dead.

"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished." -- Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia, 1993 Fatwa.

And there is this debate from Iraqi TV: Is The Earth Flat?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppjYDj9J...

Answer 8

Pythagoras= earth round=100% correct

Corpernicus= earth flat=0% correct

Answer 9

It was theorized by many and the very first is hard to identify, but Eratosthenes was the first to actually demonstrate it and even came up with a fairly good estimate of its size.

Eratosthenes: 276-194 BCE.