Before Columbus, scholars generally believed that the world was flat.
The statement is false, as most educated people of those times were already aware of the facts that the Earth was spherical. Anyway, some Catholics still believed it was flat. That's why Columbus faced with some difficulties, trying to find all the necessary and support for his journey.
Aristotle's works, for example, were widely studied and revered in Medieval Europe. The sphericity of the Earth is also accounted for in the work of Ptolemy.
In Columbus's time, the techniques of celestial navigation, which use the position of the sun and the stars in the sky, together with the understanding that the Earth is a sphere, had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to be implemented by mariners.
More Info:
en.wikipedia.org
What are your thoughts on this subject?
92 Comments
Roy Johnson
Your research is incorrect. All books from the timss prior to Columbus state the world was flat and only reached as far as you could see. Read and research better. Those who answered true are correct so make the proper corrections to scores.
George Oliver Prince
I believe the question said "scholars". Generally, they knew the word was spherical. It's just a lot of average people who believed it was flat
Albeck1994
Not all books.if that was the case explain how people travelled across the world, through Europe and Asia, by land and sea, if as you say they thought the world finished a few miles away. The Egyptians Phoenicians Greeks and Romans knew it was spherical as did many other cultures.
Bill Coe
What the hell do Catholics have to do with anything? I believe the question referrred to scholars.
Andy Wright
Roy Johnson, If you are correct, and ALL BOOKS before Columbus state the earth was flat, then how come Aristarchus of Samos (310-230BC) managed to not only prove the earth was round, but also made an extraordinarily accurate calculation of its size, and then for an encore, worked out the relative sizes and distances of the sun and planets?
Bill Coe
I think some of the trolls commenting probably still believe the earth is flat. They knew since antiquity that the earth was spherical. Do some research, folks, maybe then your ignorance won't show.
Rob Canary
Who knows what the Catholics were thinking. I'll bet anything there are more people "today" who believe in a flat earth than there were then.
Brin Lewis
William Laughlin ...and the idea that Columbus "discovered America" as the first European to have discovered North America is a myth. We should have Lief Erickson Day.
William Laughlin
Then you were taught wrong. The idea of the belief in a flat earth in Columbus' time is a modern day myth.
scottlarock
Dicky Gannon, if you are as old as me, or older, we were taught a lot of crap in school...what the book said was law...so much more information came to light in the last 30 years and we are not done yet...how many kids told a teacher that South America and Africa fit together like a puzzle.i got swats for saying that in the early 70s...i wish I could find that teacher now....plate tectonics is a fact of life now....
georgebq
Woke anti-Catholic explanation...disgusting..
Owen Tucker
Good ol’Chris headed west in an effort to reach the far east.
Kiki
Char, let's not bash the Catholics now... I happen to be one. :•)
andesean
The Portuguese Academy turned down Columbus’s proposal to reach the Far East by sailing west because they knew from Basque whalers who hunted off the coast of Newfoundland that there was a vast “Terra Incognita” blocking the westward passage to the Far East. However such geographic facts were considered state secrets that the Academy chose not to share with Columbus who was a foreigner. Ferdinand and Isabelle did not know this geographic fact.
mainjim
Many people were taught incorrectly...
Char
I didn't know that the Catholics held the works up but it figures
earlepg
Paul Sterling, I saw on facebook just a couple of days ago, where someone was arguing for the flat earth against all comments from a few others. After reading that line for five minutes, I could tell that he wasn't relenting so I just moved on.
Joe Mangan
Brin Lewis, better still, a Clovis or pre-Clovis peoples Day to celebrate the first settlers who came via the Bering Land Bridge.
Joe Mangan
Lena Luna, Copernicus formulated a model of the universe that placed the sun rather than the earth at its centre. Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism (Earth rotating daily and revolving around the Sun) was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers.
Their problems with the Church had nothing to do with belief or not in a flat Earth.
Joe Mangan
ninakamwene, which church?
Player
Some people still think it is flat. They are not scholars.
Elsy O. Stromberg
That's not what they taught me!