Why did people think the world was once flat ?

Question

Why did people think the world was once flat ?

Answer 1

Actually many of them didn't. The Ancient Greeks, for example, knew that the world was a sphere. The flat earth syndrome was something that was mainly belived in medieval Europe, encouraged by the Catholic Church.

Answer 2

And cause it looks flat.  

Answer 3

It looks flat. If you don't have an education, satellite photography, or science textbooks, it makes sense to think the world is flat. There were ancient people and even medieval people who knew the world was round. The Bible even talks about God sitting upon the circle of the earth (Isaiah 40:22).

Answer 4

Among scholars, familiar with the works of the ancient Greeks, there was not a belief in a flat earth. The myth, no matter its origin, was helped along by Washington Irving in his book The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. It gave more drama to the book to have a young Columbus "defend" his round earth theory against scholars. Unfortunately, it was fiction, and the result was that many historians believed it.

Reality, and historical record, tells us that it wasn't the shape of the earth (round vs. flat) so much as the actual size of it that concerned scholars in the late 1400's.

If you look up the history of the flat earth theory, you'll find that it is all misconceptions, some less that truthful statements by people who wanted to discredit the church, and truthfully, some nitpicking by historians who set out to prove a point and used sperious sources to do so.

Here's what Copernicus had to say about one who espoused the flat earth theory..."Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault with my undertaking and censure it. I disregard them even to the extent of despising their criticism as unfounded. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, otherwise an illustrious writer but hardly an astronomer, speaks quite childishly about the earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the earth has the form of a globe. Hence scholars need not be surprised if any such persons will likewise ridicule me. Astronomy is written for astronomers." He's talking about an early Christian writer, Lactantius, who was the exception rather than the rule.

If, and this is a big IF, there were people who actually believed it, it was the uneducted , believing in myth, folklore and the reports of others.

Answer 5

Not only flat. Some believed it was a seven floors ziggurat (pyramid shaped temple) or even a cosmic mountain. But flat was the most logical because when you look at the horizon it seems flat. And with the naked eyes things on the horizon are too small for people to notice that they see the top first and not the whole object. So flat seemed a given.

What is funny is that the first people to think that the world was round (the ancient Greeks) did so not because they had proof but because they thought a sphere was the most harmonious geometric shape of all. In short, it looked prettier than the rest. It took 200 more years for one of them to get some scientific proof of it (Aristotle, Eratosthenes)

Answer 6

Look out the window.  Flat is not a bad first guess.

Answer 7

Their perspective. Before their eyes they saw only a flat horizon, so they assumed that the Earth was flat. They didn't have our ability to travel into outer space, or launch space probes to photograph the Earth from space or anything like that...they were kinda limited to what they could see lol

Answer 8

Well they didn't have technology like satellites to see from above.

;)

ugh i hate this spell checker!

Answer 9

I am not even convinced that the common man in medieval times actualy believed the world was flat.  Few ever travelled more than seven miles from where they were born and probably never gave it a moment's thought.

Ptolemy and Atristotle, Greek philosophers, both published spherical earth theories.  They were accepted by the early Christian church and Ptolemy's maps were used by Columbus when he sought funding for his little adventure.  

Only among the philosophers of the period was much though given to the subject.  The flat earth came into european thought from Egyptian cosmology.  It is also a feature of some tribal systems of belief.  I doubt that common men thought about it at all.  

People living in coastal regions, of course, were familiar with seeing ships disappear over the horizon and return.  Seafaring peoples were aware of latitudes as the height of the pole star and that was a clear indication of a curved earth.  

I suspect that the modern myth that medieval men held the belief that the earth was flat is more a product of revisionist history.  It is easy to think of them as ignorant peasants.  Part of the reason for the myth is to strengthen the legend of Columbus.  It is more satisfying to think that he had to overcome resistance based on a belief that ships would "fall off the edge."  In fact, he had no trouble explaining to people that the earth was round; the people he spoke to were aware of Aristotle's round earth.  He just couldn't get financing because he was an unknown who could not be trusted with ships and because the calculated distances made the adventure too risky (he intentionaly underestimated the distance for his presentations by more than half).  

What evidence do we have that medieval men believed the world was flat?  Just that that's what we were told in grade school.  We have documentation that it was the offical position of the church, but that didn't carry a lot of weight with some people and was probably not discussed outside of philosophical circles.

I'm not suggesting that peasants believed the world was round, just that they didn't think about it at all.  Those who did think about it were probably aware of the competing theories.  Monk-scholars would hold with Rome, but secular thinkers would read Aristotle.

Answer 10

Well why do people think there is a an end to our universe? Why do they believe in an afterlife? Theres still things we don't know yet ourselves.

Answer 11

Because they didn't know about gravity - so they thought that the world had to be flat because if it was a sphere then they would fall off. Sounds funny now, but back then was probably kind of scary!

Answer 12

I don't know.  The ancient Egyptians thought the world was flat, but the Greeks knew it wasn't.  In the 3rd century BC a mathematician called Eratosthenes calculated the world's circumference as 24,700 miles (he was only 200 miles out, the actual figure is 24,902 miles).

Contrary to popular belief, educated people were perfectly well aware that the world was round in the medieval period.  The idea that they thought the world was flat was popularised in the 19th century by an American author called Washington Irving, who wrote a fictionalised biography of christopher Columbus, which makes this claim.  In his book, he had churchmen oppose columbus's voyage because they thought he would fall off the edge of the world.  In actual fact, the men who opposed Columbus's voyage did so not because they thought the world was flat (they were perfectly well aware that it was round) but because they thought Columbus had miscaluclated the size of the earth, and that it was bigger than he had thought.  and they were quite right.  And that is how the West Indies got their name, because when columbus discovered them he thought he was in India.

Whether the common people knew that the world was round or not I could not say, but certainly sailors and people like that would have known, I mean it is easy to see when a ship disappears over the horizon that it is going over a curve, not a flat edge.  Perhaps agricultural workers (which is what most people were prior to the Industrial Revolution) would not have thought much about it.