12/18/2023 0 Comments Flat earth disk mapThat story may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known source in the Middle ages. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a missionary in the middle Ages claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met". It was made in 16th century style but cannot be traced to an earlier time than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163). The widely circulated woodcut is of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to see the machines working the spheres. Flammarion wrote, " A missionary in the Middle Ages tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet." This proved finally, in a practical way that the Earth is a globe.ĭuring the 19th century, the Romantic ideas about a European " Dark Age" made the Flat Earth model look much more important than it ever had been in history. Portuguese people explored Africa and Asia, Columbus sailed to the Americas (1492) and Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigated (sailed all round) the earth (1519-21). The following authors argued for a spherical or ball shaped earth: King Alfred of the Anglo-Saxons, Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Snorri Sturluson, Marco Polo, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus Therefore in the Ancient world only sailors, astronomers, philosophers, and theologians would have cared about the Earth's large-scale shape. The large-scale shape of the Earth only matters when considering large distances. Then, Aristotle proved the Earth was round in around 330 BC. People first started having the thought that the Earth is round in around 6th century BC. From then on, few educated people ever believed in its being flat. Eratosthenes (276 BC–194 BC) calculated the circumference of the Earth quite well. This was a common belief until the Classical Greeks began to discuss the Earth's shape about the 4th century BC. Early Mesopotamian maps showed the world as a flat disk floating in the ocean. Belief in a flat Earth is found in the oldest writings. The idea of a flat Earth is that the surface of the Earth is flat (a plane). This kind of medieval mappa mundi illustrates only the reachable side of a round Earth. 15th century adaptation of a T and O map.
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