Flat Earth#South Asia

{{further|Ancient near eastern cosmology|Egyptian mythology|Biblical cosmology}}

File:Baylonianmaps.JPG Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia.]]

In early Egyptian{{cite book |last1=Frankfort |first1=H. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WoQIAQAAIAAJ |title=Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man; an Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East |last2=Wilson |first2=J. A. |last3=Jacobsen |first3=T. |publisher=Penguin Books |year=1951 |isbn=978-0-14-020198-7 |series=An Oriental Institute essay |page=54 |issue=v. 1}} and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."{{Cite book|title=The Dream of Reason|last=Gottlieb|first=Anthony|date=2000|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-393-04951-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/dreamofreasonhis00anth/page/6 6]|url=https://archive.org/details/dreamofreasonhis00anth/page/6}}

The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography; Nun (the Ocean) encircled nbwt ("dry lands" or "Islands").Pyramid Texts, Utterance 366, 629a–29c: "Behold, thou art great and round like the Great Round; Behold, thou are bent around, and art round like the Circle which encircles the nbwt; Behold, thou art round and great like the Great Circle which sets." (Faulkner 1969, 120)Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Pritchard, 1969, p. 374.Coffin Texts, Spell 714.{{full citation needed|date=October 2017}}

The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an arched firmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens.{{cite book |last1=Berlin |first1=Adele |title=The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199730049 |editor1-last=Berlin |editor1-first=Adele |chapter=Cosmology and Creation |editor2-last=Grossman |editor2-first=Maxine |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hKAaJXvUaUoC&pg=PA189}} The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it.{{cite journal |journal= Westminster Theological Journal |volume= 53 |year= 1991 |pages= 227–40 |title= The Firmament and the Water Above |author= Seely, Paul H. |url= http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely-Firmament-WTJ.pdf |access-date= 2010-02-02 |archive-date= 2009-03-05 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090305132849/http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely-Firmament-WTJ.pdf |url-status= dead }}

Both HomerIliad, 28. 606. and HesiodThe Shield of Heracles, pp. 314–6, transl. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914. described a disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles.The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, p. 148.Professor of Classics (Emeritus) Mark W. Edwards in his The Iliad. A Commentary (1991, p. 231) has noted of Homer's usage of the flat Earth disc in the Iliad: "Okeanos...surrounds the pictures on the shield and he surrounds the disc of the Earth on which men and women work out their lives." Quoted in The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, p. 148. This poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling (gaiaokhos) sea (Oceanus) and a disc also appears in Stasinus of Cyprus,Stasinus of Cyprus wrote in his Cypria (lost, only preserved in fragment) that Oceanus surrounded the entire Earth: deep eddying Oceanus and that the Earth was flat with furthest bounds, these quotes are found preserved in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, VIII. 334B. Mimnermus,Mimnermus of Colophon (630BC) details a flat-Earth model, with the sun (Helios) bathing at the edges of Oceanus that surround the Earth (Mimnermus, frg. 11). Aeschylus,Seven against Thebes, verse 305; Prometheus Bound, 1, 136; 530; 665 (which also describe the 'edges' of the Earth). and Apollonius Rhodius.Apollonius Rhodius, in his Argonautica (3rd century BC) included numerous flat-Earth references (IV. 590 ff): "Now that river, rising from the ends of the Earth, where are the portals and mansions of Nyx (Night), on one side bursts forth upon the beach of Okeanos."

Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later in Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War.Posthomerica (V. 14). "Here [on the shield of Achilles] Tethys' all-embracing arms were wrought, and Okeanos fathomless flow. The outrushing flood of Rivers crying to the echoing hills all round, to right, to left, rolled o'er the land." Translation by Way, A.S. 1913.

Image:Anaximander world map (mul).svg

Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources,{{Cite book |title=The Physical World of the Greeks |last=Sambursky |first=Samuel |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9780691024110 |date=August 1987|pages=12}} and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) according to Aristotle.{{Cite journal |last= Burch |first= George Bosworth |title= The Counter-Earth |journal= Osiris |volume= 11 |publisher= Saint Catherines Press |issue= 1 |date= 1954 |pages= 267–94 |doi= 10.1086/368583 |s2cid= 144330867 }}{{Cite journal |first= Didier |last= De Fontaine |title= Flat worlds: Today and in antiquity |journal= Memorie della Società Astronomica Italiana |volume= 1 |issue= 3 |pages= 257–62 |date= 2002 |url= http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/faculty/deFontaine/flatworlds.html |access-date= August 3, 2007 |bibcode= 2002MmSAI..73S.257D |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070825010821/http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/faculty/deFontaine/flatworlds.html |archive-date= August 25, 2007 |url-status= dead }}Aristotle, De Caelo, 294b13–21

Thales thought that the Earth floated in water like a log.Aristotle, De Caelo, II. 13. 3; 294a 28: "Many others say the Earth rests upon water. This... is the oldest theory that has been preserved, and is attributed to Thales of Miletus." It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a spherical Earth.{{cite book |title=Thales of Miletus: the beginnings of Western science and philosophy |last=O'Grady |first=Patricia F. |author-link=Patricia O'Grady|date=2002 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |isbn=9780754605331 |location=Aldershot |pages=87–107}}{{cite book |author=Pseudo-Plutarch |title=Placita Philosophorum |at=V. 3, Ch. 10 |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0404%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D10 |publisher=Perseus Digital Library |access-date=December 24, 2014 }} Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed that the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things.Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 6.{{Cite journal| author = Anaximander | editor-last = Fairbanks | editor-first = Arthur | translator-last = Fairbanks | translator-first = Arthur | title = Fragments and Commentary | journal = The Hanover Historical Texts Project | url = http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/anaximan.html }} (Plut., Strom. 2; Dox. 579). Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the Earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the Sun and the Moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness".Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 7; Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 294b13–21. Xenophanes (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit.Xenophanes DK 21B28, quoted in Achilles, Introduction to Aratus 4.

Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat,Diogenes Laërtius, ii. 8. and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 9.

Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Earth was flat and surrounded by water.FGrH F 18a. Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world,Herodotus knew of the conventional view, according to which the river Ocean runs around a circular flat Earth (4.8), and of the division of the world into three – Jacoby, RE Suppl. 2.352 ff, yet rejected this personal belief (Histories, 2. 21; 4. 8; 4. 36). yet most classicists agree that he still believed Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth.The history of Herodotus, George Rawlinson, Appleton and company, 1889, p. 409.

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat-Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi, a world tree (Yggdrasil), or pillar (Irminsul) in the centre.{{cite book | last=Philpot | first=J.H. | title=The Sacred Tree: Or, The Tree in Religion and Myth | publisher=Macmillan and Company, limited | year=1897 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U2oAAAAAMAAJ | page=113}}{{cite book | last=Lindow | first=J. | title=Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs | publisher=Oxford University Press, USA | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-19-515382-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y4gRDAAAQBAJ | page=253 |quote=The world was a flat disk, with the Earth in the center and the sea all around. Thus the serpent is about as far away from the center, where men and gods lived}} In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr.One of the earliest literary references to the world encircling water snake comes from Bragi Boddason who lived in the 9th century, in his Ragnarsdrápa (XIV). The Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning (VIII) states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it:{{cite web |title=Gylfaginning |url=https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm |access-date=February 9, 2013 |publisher=Sacred-texts.com}}

{{blockquote|

And Jafnhárr said: "Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the Earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round. about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it."

}}

The late Norse Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, explains Earth's shape as a sphere:{{cite web |title=The King's Mirror |url=https://www.mediumaevum.com/75years/mirror/sec1.html |access-date=November 6, 2013 |publisher=mediumaevum.com}}

{{blockquote|If you take a lighted candle and set it in a room, you may expect it to light up the entire interior, unless something should hinder, though the room be quite large. But if you take an apple and hang it close to the flame, so near that it is heated, the apple will darken nearly half the room or even more. However, if you hang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot; the candle will light up the whole house; and the shadow on the wall where the apple hangs will be scarcely half as large as the apple itself. From this you may infer that the Earth-circle is round like a ball and not equally near the sun at every point. But where the curved surface lies nearest the sun's path, there will the greatest heat be; and some of the lands that lie continuously under the unbroken rays cannot be inhabited.}}

{{Further|Chinese astronomy}}

In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round,{{cite book | last=Needham | first=J. | title=Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1959 | isbn=978-0-521-05801-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jfQ9E0u4pLAC | page=498}} an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century.{{cite journal |last=Martzloff |first=Jean-Claude |date=1993–1994 |title=Space and Time in Chinese Texts of Astronomy and of Mathematical Astronomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries |url=https://www.eastm.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/526/457 |url-status=usurped |journal=Chinese Science |issue=11 |pages=66–92 [p. 69] |jstor=43290474 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190907183516/http://www.eastm.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/526/457 |archive-date=2019-09-07 |access-date=2018-01-23}}{{cite journal |last=Cullen |first=Christopher |date=1980 |title=Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy |journal=Past & Present |issue=87 |pages=39–53 [pp. 42, 49] |doi=10.1093/past/87.1.39 |jstor=650565}}{{cite journal |last=Cullen |first=Christopher |date=1976 |title=A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子 |journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=106–27 [pp. 107–09] |doi=10.1017/S0041977X00052137|s2cid=171017315 }} The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:{{cite journal |first=Christopher |last=Cullen |title=A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子 |journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |date=1976 |pages=106–27 [p. 107] |doi=10.1017/S0041977X00052137 |s2cid=171017315 }}

{{blockquote|Chinese thought on the form of the Earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heavens were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the Earth (the Kai Tian theory), or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tian theory), or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float freely (the Hsüan yeh theory), the Earth was at all times flat, although perhaps bulging up slightly.}}

File:Illustration of the Earthdisc floating out of the Water.jpg]]

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers such as Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) to describe the heavens as spherical:{{cite book |title=Science and Civilisation in China |last=Needham |first=Joseph |date=1959 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-05801-8 |volume=3 |page=219 |author-link=Joseph Needham}}

{{blockquote|The heavens are like a hen's egg and as round as a crossbow bullet; the Earth is like the yolk of the egg, and lies in the centre.}}

This analogy with a curved egg led some modern historians, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chinese astronomers were, after all, aware of the Earth's sphericity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clarify the relative position of the flat Earth to the heavens:

{{blockquote|In a passage of Zhang Heng's cosmogony not translated by Needham, Zhang himself says: "Heaven takes its body from the Yang, so it is round and in motion. Earth takes its body from the Yin, so it is flat and quiescent". The point of the egg analogy is simply to stress that the Earth is completely enclosed by Heaven, rather than merely covered from above as the Kai Tian describes. Chinese astronomers, many of them brilliant men by any standards, continued to think in flat-Earth terms until the seventeenth century; this surprising fact might be the starting-point for a re-examination of the apparent facility with which the idea of a spherical Earth found acceptance in fifth-century BC Greece.}}

Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demonstrate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth being square, not to it being flat. Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth, did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular. However, Needham disagrees, affirming that Li Ye believed the Earth to be spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but much smaller.Needham, Joseph; Wang, Ling. (1995) [1959]. Science and Civilization in China: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, vol. 3, reprint edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-05801-5}}, p. 498. This was preconceived by the 4th-century scholar Yu Xi, who argued for the infinity of outer space surrounding the Earth and that the latter could be either square or round, in accordance to the shape of the heavens.Needham, Joseph; Wang, Ling. (1995) [1959]. Science and Civilization in China: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, vol. 3, reprint edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-05801-5}}, pp. 220, 498. When Chinese geographers of the 17th century, influenced by European cartography and astronomy, showed the Earth as a sphere that could be circumnavigated by sailing around the globe, they did so with formulaic terminology previously used by Zhang Heng to describe the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon (i.e. that they were as round as a crossbow bullet).Needham, Joseph; Wang, Ling. (1995) [1959]. Science and Civilization in China: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, vol. 3, reprint edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-05801-5}}, pp. 227, 499.

As noted in the book Huainanzi,Joseph Needham, p. 225. in the 2nd century BC, Chinese astronomers effectively inverted Eratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the Sun above the Earth. By assuming the Earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of {{val|100,000|u=li}} (approximately {{val|200,000|u=km}}). The Zhoubi Suanjing also discusses how to determine the distance of the Sun by measuring the length of noontime shadows at different latitudes, a method similar to Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the Earth, but the Zhoubi Suanjing assumes that the Earth is flat.{{cite book |title=Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into ancient Greek and Chinese science |last=Lloyd |first=G. E. R. |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-521-55695-8 |place=Cambridge |pages=59–60 |author-link=G. E. R. Lloyd}}

{{Further|Spherical Earth|History of geodesy}}

File:Partial Lunar Eclipse 2019-07-16.jpg during a partial lunar eclipse]]

Pythagoras in the 6th century BC and Parmenides in the 5th century BC stated that the Earth is spherical,{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft |title=A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler |last=Dreyer |first=John Louis Emil |date=1953 |publisher=Dover Publications |isbn=978-0-486-60079-6 |location=New York, NY |pages=[https://archive.org/stream/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft#page/20/mode/1up 20], [https://archive.org/stream/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft#page/37/mode/1up 37–38] |ref=Reference-Dreyer-1953 |author-link=J. L. E. Dreyer |orig-year=1905}} and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 330 BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported an estimate of its circumference.On the Heavens, Book ii Chapter 14. {{Cite book |last=Lloyd |first=G. E. R. |author-link=G. E. R. Lloyd |url=https://www.archive.org/details/aristotlegrowths0000lloy/page/162 |title=Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought |date=1968 |publisher=Cambridge Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-521-07049-2 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/aristotlegrowths0000lloy/page/162 162–64]}} The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes.{{Cite book |first= Albert |last= Van Helden |title= Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley |publisher= University of Chicago Press |date= 1985 |pages= 4–5 |isbn= 978-0-226-84882-2}} By the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy had derived his maps from a globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His Almagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.

Lucretius (1st century BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy bodies would tend. Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking around topsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd.{{Cite book |title=Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom |last=Sedley |first=David N. |date=2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-54214-2 |place=Cambridge |pages=78–82 }}Lucretius, De rerum natura, 1.1052–82. By the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to say that everyone agreed on the spherical shape of Earth,Natural History, 2.64. though disputes continued regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape.

Image:Offshore windpark Thorntonbank.jpg (near the Belgian coast) with the lower parts of the more distant towers increasingly hidden by the horizon, demonstrating the curvature of the Earth]]

The Vedic texts depict the cosmos in many ways.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=auqGWz2l9pYC&pg=PA47 |title=The Vedic Origins of Karma: Cosmos as Man in Ancient Indian Myth and Ritual |last=Tull |first=Herman Wayne |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-7914-0094-4 |pages=47–49 |quote=The Vedic texts contain several depictions of the shape of the cosmos. The Rigveda alone contains two basic images of the cosmos: a bipartite cosmos, consisting of the two spheres of heavens and Earth, and a tripartite cosmos consisting of the three spheres of heavens and Earth (...)}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GzjpCAAAQBAJ |title=Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures |last=Sarma |first=K. V. |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |year=2013 |isbn=978-94-017-1416-7 |editor=Selin |editor-first=Helaine |pages=114–15}} One of the earliest Indian cosmological texts pictures the Earth as one of a stack of flat disks.{{sfn|Plofker|2009|p=52}}

In the Vedic texts, Dyaus (heaven) and Prithvi (Earth) are compared to wheels on an axle, yielding a flat model. They are also described as bowls or leather bags, yielding a concave model.{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/ancientcosmologi0000unse/page/110 |title=Ancient Cosmologies |last=Gombrich |first=R. F. |publisher=George Allen & Unwin |year=1975 |isbn=9780041000382 |editor1=Blacker |editor-first=Carmen |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ancientcosmologi0000unse/page/110 110–39] |editor2=Loewe |editor-first2=Michael }} According to Macdonell: "the conception of the Earth being a disc surrounded by an ocean does not appear in the Samhitas. But it was naturally regarded as circular, being compared with a wheel (10.89) and expressly called circular (parimandala) in the Shatapatha Brahmana."{{cite book |author=A. A. Macdonell |title=Vedic Mythology |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b7Meabtj8mcC&pg=PA9 |year=1986 |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass |isbn=978-81-208-1113-3 |page=9}}

By about the 5th century AD, the siddhanta astronomy texts of South Asia, particularly of Aryabhata, assume a spherical Earth as they develop mathematical methods for quantitative astronomy for calendar and time keeping.Plofker (2009, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=DHvThPNp9yMC&pg=PA50 50–53]).

The medieval Indian texts called the Puranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents.D. Pingree: "History of Mathematical Astronomy in India", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 533–633 (554ff.), Quote: "In the Purānas, the Earth is a flat-bottomed, circular disk, in the center of which is a lofty mountain, Meru. Surrounding Meru is the circular continent Jambūdvīpa, which is in turn surrounded by a ring of water known as the Salt Ocean. There follow alternating rings of land and sea until there are seven continents and seven oceans. In the southern quarter of Jambūdvīpa lies India–Bhāratavarsa." This general scheme is present not only in the Hindu cosmologies, but also in Buddhist and Jain cosmologies of South Asia. However, some Puranas include other models. The fifth canto of the Bhagavata Purana, for example, includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eEPfrzAwO0sC&pg=PA58 |title=The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition |last=Edelmann |first=Jonathan |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-231-53147-4 |editor=Gupta |editor-first=Ravi M. |pages=58–59 |editor-last2=Valpey |editor-first2=Kenneth R.}}{{cite book | last1 = Dimmitt | first1 = Cornelia | first2 = J. A. B. |last2 = van Buitenen | title = Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=re7CR2jKn3QC| publisher = Temple University Press (1st Edition: 1977) | year = 2012 | isbn =978-1-4399-0464-0 |pages=4–5, 17–25, 46–47}}

During the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view continued to be widely held, with some notable exceptions.{{cite book |title=Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion |last=Cormack |first=Lesley|author-link= Lesley Cormack |date=2009 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=9780674057418 |editor=Ronald Numbers |pages=30–31 |chapter=Myth 3: That Medieval Christians Taught that he Earth was Flat}}

Until the mid-fourth century AD, virtually all Christian authors held that the Earth was round. Athenagoras, an eastern Christian writing around the year 175 AD, said that the Earth was spherical.{{cite book |last1=Bercot |first1=David |title=A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs |date=1998 |publisher=Hendrickson Publishers |location=Massachusetts |isbn=978-1565633575 |page=222 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jF_tPQAACAAJ |quote=The world, being made spherical, is confined within the circles of heaven.}} Methodius (c. 290 AD), an eastern Christian writing against "the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians" said: "Let us first lay bare ... the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. They say that the circumference of the universe is likened to the turnings of a well-rounded globe, the Earth being a central point. They say that since its outline is spherical, ... the Earth should be the center of the universe, around which the heaven is whirling." Arnobius, another eastern Christian writing sometime around 305 AD, described the round Earth: "In the first place, indeed, the world itself is neither right nor left. It has neither upper nor lower regions, nor front nor back. For whatever is round and bounded on every side by the circumference of a solid sphere, has no beginning or end ..." Other advocates of a round Earth included Eusebius, Hilary of Poitiers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrose, Jerome, Prudentius, Favonius Eulogius, and others.{{Sfn|Gleede|2021|p=33–37, 199–207}}

The only exceptions to this consensus up until the mid-fourth century were Theophilus of Antioch and Lactantius, both of whom held anti-Hellenistic views and associated the round-Earth view with pagan cosmology.{{Sfn|Gleede|2021|p=29–32, 36–37}} Lactantius, a western Christian writer and advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, writing sometime between 304 and 313 AD, ridiculed the notion of antipodes and the philosophers who fancied that "the universe is round like a ball. They also thought that heaven revolves in accordance with the motion of the heavenly bodies. ... For that reason, they constructed brass globes, as though after the figure of the universe."Lactantius, [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf07.iii.ii.iii.xxiv.html The Divine Institutes, Book III, Chapter XXIV], The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol VII, ed. Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (1979), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, pp. 94–95.

The influential theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Western Church, similarly objected to the "fable" of antipodes:[http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XVI.9.html De Civitate Dei, Book XVI, Chapter 9 – Whether We are to Believe in the Antipodes], translated by Rev. Marcus Dods; from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College.

{{blockquote|

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the Earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the Earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the Earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.

}}

Some historians do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model, endorsing instead the view that Augustine shared the common view of his contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with his endorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram.{{cite journal |last=Nothaft |first=C. P. E. |year=2011 |title=Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari |journal=Augustinian Studies |volume=42 |issue=1 |pages=33–48 |doi=10.5840/augstudies20114213}}{{cite book |title=God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science |last=Lindberg |first=David C. |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-05692-3 |editor-last=Lindberg |editor-first=David C. |location=Berkeley and Los Angeles |date=1986 |chapter=Science and the Early Church|author-link=David C. Lindberg |editor2-last=Numbers |editor2-first=Ronald L. |editor2-link=Ronald L. Numbers}} C. P. E. Nothaft, responding to writers like Leo Ferrari who described Augustine as endorsing a flat Earth, says that "...other recent writers on the subject treat Augustine's acceptance of the Earth's spherical shape as a well-established fact".{{Citation | last = Nothaft | first = C. P. E. | year = 2011 | title = Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari | journal = Augustinian Studies | volume = 42 | issue = 1 | page = 35 | doi = 10.5840/augstudies20114213}}Leo Ferrari, "Rethinking Augustine's Confessions, Thirty Years of Discoveries", Religious Studies and Theology (2000).

Image:Cosmas Indicopleustes - Topographia Christiana 1.jpg]]

While it always remained a minority view, from the mid-fourth to the seventh centuries AD, the flat-Earth view experienced a revival, around the time when Diodorus of Tarsus founded the exegetical school known as the School of Antioch, which sought to counter what he saw as the pagan cosmology of the Greeks with a return to the traditional cosmology. The writings of Diodorus did not survive, but are reconstructed from later criticism.{{Sfn|Gleede|2021|p=51–56}} This revival primarily took place in the East Syriac world (with little influence on the Latin West) where it gained proponents such as Ephrem the Syrian and in the popular hexaemeral homilies of Jacob of Serugh.{{Sfn|Gleede|2021|p=51–56}}{{Citation |last=Gleede |first=Benjamin |title=The Christian Rejection of Ptolemean Cosmography in (Late) Antiquity: Motives, Modalities, and Backgrounds |date=2022-07-04 |work=Platonism and Christianity in Late Ancient Cosmology |pages=184–204 |url=https://brill.com/display/book/9789004518469/BP000008.xml |access-date=2025-04-08 |publisher=Brill |language=en |doi=10.1163/9789004518469_009 |isbn=978-90-04-51846-9}} Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church and Archbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath the firmament.St. John Chrysostom, Homilies Concerning the Statues, Homily IX, paras. 7–8, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series I, Vol IX, ed. Philip Schaff, American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (1978), Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, [https://archive.org/stream/aselectlibrary09unknuoft#page/403/mode/1up p. 403]:

"When therefore thou beholdest not a small pebble, but the whole earth borne upon the waters, and not submerged, admire the power of Him who wrought these marvellous things in a supernatural manner! And whence does this appear, that the earth is borne upon the waters? The prophet declares this when he says, 'He hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods.' And again: 'To him who hath founded the earth upon the waters.' What sayest thou? The water is not able to support a small pebble on its surface, and yet bears up the earth, great as it is; and mountains, and hills, and cities, and plants, and men, and brutes; and it is not submerged!"

Christian Topography (547) by the Alexandrian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who had traveled as far as Sri Lanka and the source of the Blue Nile, is now widely considered the most valuable geographical document of the early medieval age, although it received relatively little attention from contemporaries. In it, the author repeatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, the Earth below the firmament and heaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments from scripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, 400 days' journey long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament. The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dismissed as "pagan".{{Cite web |url=https://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/cosmas_00_0_eintro.htm |title=Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography. Preface to the online edition |website=www.ccel.org}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cosmas_00_2_intro.htm |title=Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography (1897) Introduction |website=www.tertullian.org}}{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/505/505-h/505-h.htm#link2H_4_0014 |title=History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom |last=White |first=Andrew Dickson |date=1896 |chapter=Ch. 2, part 1 |access-date=25 August 2015}}

Severian, Bishop of Gabala ({{abbr|d.|died}} 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the Sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall".J. L. E. Dreyer (1906), [https://books.google.com/books?id=BTI9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA211 A History of Planetary Systems], (1906), [http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=3921 pp. 211–212]. Basil of Caesarea (329–379) argued that the matter was theologically irrelevant.{{cite web |url=http://www.reu.org/public/basil/bas011.txt |title=Saint Basil the Great, Hexaemeron 9 – Homily IX – "The creation of terrestrial animals" Holy Innocents Orthodox Church |access-date=9 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121030154740/http://www.reu.org/public/basil/bas011.txt |archive-date=30 October 2012 |url-status=dead}}

Early medieval Christian writers felt little urge to assume flatness of the Earth, though they had fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy and Aristotle, relying more on Pliny.

File:Macrobian Planetary Diagram.jpg

With the end of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire did not fall, and it preserved the learning.Lindberg, David. (1992) The Beginnings of Western Science. University of Chicago Press. Page 363. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth in the western part of Europe.B. Eastwood and G. Graßhoff, Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, ca. 800–1500, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 94, 3 (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 49–50.

File:Diagrammatic T-O world map - 12th century.jpg representing the inhabited world as described by Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae (chapter 14, {{lang|la|de terra et partibus}})]]

Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:

Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, the Etymologies, diverse views such as that the Earth "resembles a wheel"{{Cite book |title=The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville |author=Isidore of Seville |translator1=Stephen A. Barney |translator2=W. J. Lewis |translator3=J. A. Beach |translator4=Oliver Berghof |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=2010 |chapter=XIV ii 1 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3ep502syZv8C |isbn=978-0-521-83749-1}} resembling Anaximander in language and the map that he provided. This was widely interpreted as referring to a disc-shaped Earth.{{cite book |title=Geography, Cartography and Nautical Science in the Renaissance |author=W. G. Randles |date=2000 |publisher=UK, Ashgate Variorum |page=15 |isbn=978-0-86078-836-2 |quote=In other passages of the Etymologies, he writes of an orbis}}. Also in: {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I1LEmKPgJ8MC |title=The Classical tradition and the Americas, vol. 1 |page=15 |editor1=Wolfgang Haase |editor2=Meyer Reinhold |access-date=November 28, 2010 |isbn=978-3-11-011572-7 |date=1994|publisher=Walter de Gruyter }}

{{Cite book |title=The House of Wisdom |last=Lyons |first=Jonathan |publisher=Bloomsbury |date=2009 |pages=34–35 |isbn=978-1-58574-036-9}} An illustration from Isidore's De Natura Rerum shows the five zones of the Earth as adjacent circles. Some have concluded that he thought the Arctic and Antarctic zones were adjacent to each other.{{cite book |author=Ernest Brehaut |title=An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages |date=1912 |publisher=Columbia University |url=http://bestiary.ca/etexts/brehaut1912/brehaut1912.htm |access-date=December 3, 2010 |archive-date=December 13, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101213143040/http://bestiary.ca//etexts/brehaut1912/brehaut1912.htm |url-status=dead }} He did not admit the possibility of antipodes, which he took to mean people dwelling on the opposite side of the Earth, considering them legendaryIsidore, Etymologiae, [http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/14.shtml XIV.v.17]. and noting that there was no evidence for their existence.Isidore, Etymologiae, [http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/isidore/9.shtml IX.ii.133]. Isidore's T and O map, which was seen as representing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued to be used by authors through the Middle Ages, e.g. the 9th-century bishop Rabanus Maurus, who compared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel. At the same time, Isidore's works also gave the views of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 of De Natura Rerum, Isidore claims that the Sun orbits the Earth and illuminates the other side when it is night on this side. See French translation of De Natura Rerum.{{cite book |last=Fontaine |first=Jacques |title=Isidore de Seville: Traité de la Nature |date=1960 |publisher=Bordeaux |language=fr}} In his other work Etymologies, there are also affirmations that the sphere of the sky has Earth in its center and the sky being equally distant on all sides.Isidore, Etymologiae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=igxC93_A-fIC III. XXXII].Isidore, Etymologiae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=6jjsJ9NP6hYC XIV. I]. Other researchers have argued these points as well.{{cite book |last=Russell |first=Jefrey Burton |title=Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians |url=https://archive.org/details/inventingflatear00russ |url-access=registration |date=1991 |publisher=Praeger |isbn=978-0-275-95904-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/inventingflatear00russ/page/86 86–87]}}Wesley M. Stevens, "The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's De natura rerum", Isis, 71 (1980): 268–77. {{Cite journal |doi= 10.1086/352464 |last= Stevens |first= Wesley M. |title= The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's "De natura rerum" |journal= Isis |volume= 71 |issue= 2 |pages= 268–77 |date= 1980 |jstor= 230175 |s2cid= 133430429}}, page 274{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Edward |title=A Sourcebook in Medieval Science (Source Books in the History of the Sciences) |date=1974 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-82360-0}} "The work remained unsurpassed until the thirteenth century and was regarded as the summit of all knowledge. It became an essential part of European medieval culture. Soon after the invention of typography it appeared many times in print."{{cite book |author1=Thomas Glick |author2=Stephen John Livesley |author3=Faith Wallis |title=Medieval Science Technology and Medicine, an Encyclopedia |date=2005 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |location= NY}} However, "The Scholastics – later medieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists – were helped by the Arabic translators and commentaries, but they hardly needed to struggle against a flat-Earth legacy from the early middle ages (500–1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with one exception), little urge to assume flatness."

File:Isidore-wheels.jpg

St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700–784), in the middle of the 8th century, discussed or taught some geographical or cosmographical ideas that St Boniface found sufficiently objectionable that he complained about them to Pope Zachary. The only surviving record of the incident is contained in Zachary's reply, dated 748, where he wrote:English translation by {{Cite book |title=Thought and Letters in Western Europe: A.D. 500 to 900 |last= Laistner |first=M. L. W. |edition=2nd |date=1966 |orig-year=1931 |pages= [https://books.google.com/books?id=sI0OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA184 184–185] |publisher=Cornell University Press |location=Ithaca, NY |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sI0OAAAAQAAJ }} The original Latin reads: {{lang|la|De perversa autem et iniqua doctrina, quae contra Deum et animam suam locutus est, si clarificatum fuerit ita eum confiteri, quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra seu sol et luna, hunc habito concilio ab ęcclesia pelle sacerdotii honore privatum.}} (MGH, [http://www.dmgh.de/de/fs1/object/goToPage/bsb00000525.html?pageNo=178&sortIndex=040%3A040%3A0001%3A010%3A00%3A00 1, 80, pp. 178–79]).

{{blockquote|

As for the perverse and sinful doctrine which he (Virgil) against God and his own soul has uttered – if it shall be clearly established that he professes belief in another world and other men existing beneath the Earth, or in (another) sun and moon there, thou art to hold a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the Church.

}}

Some authorities have suggested that the sphericity of the Earth was among the aspects of Vergilius's teachings that Boniface and Zachary considered objectionable.Laistner, (1966, [https://books.google.com/books?id=sI0OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA184 p. 184]).Simek (1996, [https://books.google.com/books?id=gXBSKZAlAdMC&pg=PA53 p. 53]). Others have considered this unlikely, and take the wording of Zachary's response to indicate at most an objection to belief in the existence of humans living in the antipodes.{{Cite journal |doi= 10.2307/2852184 |last= Carey |first= John |author-link= John Carey (Celticist) |title= Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg |journal= Speculum |volume= 64 |issue= 1 |pages= 1–10 |date= 1989 |jstor= 2852184 |s2cid= 162378383 }}{{Cite book |title=Creational Theology and the History of Physical Science: the Creationist Tradition from Basil to Bohr |first= Christopher B. |last= Kaiser |date=1997 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=BBgXuy_D8WEC&pg=PA48 48] |publisher=Koninklijke Brill |location=Leiden |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BBgXuy_D8WEC |isbn= 978-90-04-10669-7 }}{{Cite book |title=The Classical Tradition and the Americas |editor1-first=Wolfgang |editor1-last=Hasse |editor2-first=Meyer |editor2-last=Reinhold |location=Berlin |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |date=1993 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I1LEmKPgJ8MC |isbn=978-3-11-011572-7 }}{{Cite book |title= The Other World and the 'Antipodes'. The Myth of Unknown Countries between Antiquity and the Renaissance |last= Moretti |first= Gabriella |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=I1LEmKPgJ8MC&pg=265 265] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I1LEmKPgJ8MC&pg=241 |date=1993 |publisher= Walter de Gruyter |isbn= 978-3-11-011572-7 }} In Hasse & Reinhold (1993, pp. 241–284).{{Cite book |title=The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature |first= Charles Darwin |last= Wright |date=1993 |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=0ROrL2luVQYC&pg=PA41 41] |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, UK |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0ROrL2luVQYC |ref=wright-1993 |isbn= 978-0-521-41909-3}} In any case, there is no record of any further action having been taken against Vergilius. He was later appointed bishop of Salzburg and was canonised in the 13th century.{{cite web |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15353d.htm |title=Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Vergilius of Salzburg |publisher=Newadvent.org |date=October 1, 1912 |access-date=February 9, 2013}}

Image:Hildegard von Bingen- 'Werk Gottes', 12. Jh..jpg)]]

A possible non-literary but graphic indication that people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth (or perhaps the world) was a sphere is the use of the orb (globus cruciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the Holy Roman Empire. It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperor Theodosius II (423) throughout the Middle Ages; the Reichsapfel was used in 1191 at the coronation of emperor Henry VI. However the word {{lang|la|orbis}} means "circle", and there is no record of a globe as a representation of the Earth since ancient times in the west until that of Martin Behaim in 1492. Additionally it could well be a representation of the entire "world" or cosmos.

{{citation

| title=Manoscritto Voynich e Castel del Monte: Nuova chiave interpretativa del documento per inediti percorsi di ricerca

| language=it

| trans-title=The Voynich Manuscript and Castel del Monte: A new interpretive key to the document through unpublished courses of research

| first1=Giuseppe

| last1=Fallacara

| first2=Ubaldo

| last2=Occhinegro

| publisher=Gangemi Editore

| page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=MiNOAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT128 127]

| year= 2013

| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=MiNOAgAAQBAJ

| isbn= 9788849277494

}}

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth".{{cite thesis |first=Klaus Anselm |last=Vogel |title=Sphaera terrae – das mittelalterliche Bild der Erde und die kosmographische Revolution |language=de |publisher=PhD dissertation Georg-August-Universität Göttingen |date=1995 |page=19 |doi=10.53846/goediss-4247 |s2cid=247015048 |url=http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/diss/2000/vogel/index.htm#inhalt |type=doctoralThesis |doi-access=free }} However, the work of these intellectuals may not have had significant influence on public opinion, and it is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth if they considered the question at all.

{{Further|Spherical Earth#Medieval Europe}}

Image:Sacrobosco-1550-B3r-detail01.jpg, the most influential astronomy textbook of 13th-century Europe]]

Hermann of Reichenau (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes' method. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth and took for granted that his readers also knew the Earth is round.{{Cite web |url=https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2054.htm |title=SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The distinction of habits (Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 54) |website=www.newadvent.org}} Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 1994 | title = Planets. Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | pages = 626–30 | isbn = 978-0-521-56509-7}}

Image:Gossuin de Metz - L'image du monde - BNF Fr. 574 fo42 - miniature.jpg in a 14th-century copy of L'Image du monde (c. 1246)]]

Jill Tattersall shows that in many vernacular works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". She writes, "[I]n virtually all the examples quoted ... from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere", though she notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.{{Cite journal |title=The Earth, Sphere or Disc? |author=Jill Tattersall |date=1981 |journal=Modern Language Review |pages=31–46 |volume=76 |issue=1 |doi=10.2307/3727009 |jstor=3727009}}

Portuguese navigation down and around the coast of Africa in the latter half of the 1400s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity. In these explorations, the Sun's position moved more northward the further south the explorers travelled. Its position directly overhead at noon gave evidence for crossing the equator. These apparent solar motions in detail were more consistent with north–south curvature and a distant Sun, than with any flat-Earth explanation. The ultimate demonstration came when Ferdinand Magellan's expedition completed the first global circumnavigation in 1521. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few survivors of the voyage, recorded the loss of a day in the course of the voyage, giving evidence for east–west curvature.

{{Further|Spherical Earth#Medieval Islamic scholars}}

Prior to the introduction of Greek cosmology into the Islamic world, Muslims tended to view the Earth as flat, and Muslim traditionalists who rejected Greek philosophy continued to hold to this view later on while various theologians held opposing opinions.Damien Janos, "Qur'ānic cosmography in its historical perspective: some notes on the formation of a religious worldview", Religion 2012, pp217-8 Beginning in the 10th century onwards, some Muslim traditionalists began to adopt the notion of a spherical Earth with the influence of Greek and Ptolemaic cosmology.{{Cite book |last=Hannam |first=James |title=The Globe: How the Earth Became Round |publisher=Reaktion Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1789147582 |pages=178–193}}

In Quranic cosmology, the Earth (al-arḍ) was "spread out."For example, see verses Q15:19 {{Citequran|15|19|s=y|b=yl}}, Q20:53 {{Citequran|20|53|s=y|b=yl}}, Q50:7 {{Citequran|50|7|s=y|b=yl}}, and Q51:48 {{Citequran|51|48|s=y|b=yl}}. Whether or not this implies a flat Earth was debated by Muslims.{{Cite journal |last=Anchassi |first=Omar |date=2022-12-14 |title=Against Ptolemy? : Cosmography in Early Kalām omar anchassi |url=https://lockwoodonlinejournals.com/ |journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society |language=en |volume=142 |issue=4 |pages=861, n. 72 |doi=10.7817/jaos.142.4.2022.ar033 |issn=2169-2289}} Some modern historians believe the Quran saw the world as flat.{{Cite journal |last1=Tabatabaʾi |first1=Mohammad Ali |last2=Mirsadri |first2=Saida |date=2016-05-26 |title=The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/arab/63/3-4/article-p201_1.xml |journal=Arabica |language=en |volume=63 |issue=3–4 |pages=211 |doi=10.1163/15700585-12341398 |issn=1570-0585}}{{Cite book |last1=Reynolds |first1=Gabriel Said |title=The Qur'an and the Bible: text and commentary |last2=Qarāʿī |first2=ʿAlī Qūlī |date=2018 |publisher=Yale university press |isbn=978-0-300-18132-6 |location=New Haven (Conn.) |pages=405, 464}} On the other hand, the 12th-century commentary, the Tafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi) by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi argues that though this verse does describe a flat surface, it is limited in its application to local regions of the Earth which are roughly flat as opposed to the Earth as a whole. Others who would support a ball-shaped Earth included Ibn Hazm.

A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Yuan-era Khanbaliq (i.e. Beijing) in 1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth.Joseph Needham et al.: "Heavenly clockwork: the great astronomical clocks of medieval China", Antiquarian Horological Society, 2nd. ed., Vol. 1, 1986, {{ISBN|0-521-32276-6}}, p. 138. As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Ming-dynasty Chinese say: "The Earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes."

In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court.Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. p. 499. Matteo Ricci, in collaboration with Chinese cartographers and translator Li Zhizao, published the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu in 1602, the first Chinese world map based on European discoveries.{{cite news |url=http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/12/16/tulip-map/ |title=Historic map coming to Minnesota |last=Baran |first=Madeleine |date=December 16, 2009 |publisher=Minnesota Public Radio |access-date=19 February 2018 |location=St. Paul, Minn. }} The astronomical and geographical treatise Gezhicao ({{lang|zh|格致草}}) written in 1648 by Xiong Mingyu ({{lang|zh|熊明遇}}) explained that the Earth was spherical, not flat or square, and could be circumnavigated.

{{Main|Myth of the flat Earth}}

In the 19th century, a historical myth arose which held that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. An early proponent of this myth was the American writer Washington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis{{Citation | last = Russell | first = Jeffrey Burton | author-link = Jeffrey Burton Russell | year = 1991 | title = Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians | publisher = Praeger | location = New York | pages = [https://archive.org/details/inventingflatear00russ/page/37 37–45] | isbn = 978-0275939564 | url = https://archive.org/details/inventingflatear00russ/page/37 }} that there was a long-lasting and essential conflict between science and religion.{{Citation | editor-last = Lindberg | editor-first = David C. | editor-link = David C. Lindberg | editor2-last = Numbers | editor2-first = Ronald L. | editor2-link = Ronald L. Numbers | year = 1986 | title = God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science | chapter = Introduction | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley and Los Angeles | pages = 1–3 | isbn = 978-0-520-05692-3}} Some studies of the historical connections between science and religion have demonstrated that theories of their mutual antagonism ignore examples of their mutual support.{{Citation | last = Lindberg | first = David C. | author-link = David C. Lindberg | editor-last = Shank | editor-first = Michael H. | date = 2000 | title = The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Readings from Isis | chapter = Science and the Early Christian Church | publisher = University of Chicago Press | location = Chicago and London | pages = 125–146 | isbn = 978-0-226-74951-8 }}{{Citation | editor-last = Ferngren | editor-first = Gary | year = 2002 | title = Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction | chapter = Introduction | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | place = Baltimore | page = ix | isbn = 978-0-8018-7038-5}}

Subsequent studies of medieval science have shown that most scholars in the Middle Ages, including those read by Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth was spherical.{{Citation | last = Grant | first = Edward | author-link = Edward Grant | date = 1994 | title = Planets. Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | pages = 620–622, 626–630 | isbn = 978-0-521-56509-7}}

{{Main|Modern flat Earth beliefs}}

File:Flat Earth Society Logo.png]]

In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham with the 1849 pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy. Lady Elizabeth Blount established the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893, which published journals. In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society, better known as the "Flat Earth Society" in Dover, England, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society.

In the Internet era, the availability of communications technology and social media like YouTube, Facebook{{cite web|last1=Abbott|first1=Erica|title=Mark Zuckerberg Banning All Flat Earth Groups from Facebook Is A Hoax|url=http://www.business2community.com/facebook/mark-zuckerberg-banning-flat-earth-groups-facebook-hoax-01890594|website=Business2community.com|publisher=Business2community|access-date=19 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170819231354/http://www.business2community.com/facebook/mark-zuckerberg-banning-flat-earth-groups-facebook-hoax-01890594|archive-date=19 August 2017|url-status=dead}} and Twitter have made it easy for individuals, famous{{cite web|url=http://people.com/celebrity/flat-earth-celebrities-world-not-round/|last1=Heigl|first1=Alex|title=The Short List of Famous People Who Think the Earth Is Flat (Yes, Really)|work=People|access-date=19 August 2017}} or not, to spread disinformation and attract others to erroneous ideas, including that of the flat Earth.{{cite web |last1=Ambrose |first1=Graham |date=July 7, 2017 |title=These Coloradans say Earth is flat. And gravity's a hoax. Now, they're being persecuted. |url=https://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/07/colorado-earth-flat-gravity-hoax/ |access-date=19 August 2017 |work=The Denver Post}}{{cite news|last1=Dure|first1=Beau|title=Flat-Earthers are back: 'It's almost like the beginning of a new religion'|url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/20/flat-earth-believers-youtube-videos-conspiracy-theorists|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=19 August 2017|date=20 January 2016}}{{cite web|last1=Herreria|first1=Carla|title=Neil deGrasse Tyson Cites Celebrity Flat-Earthers To Make A Point About Politics|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-flat-earth-pop-stars-flawed_us_58faa373e4b06b9cb91719ad|work=HuffPost|access-date=19 August 2017|date=22 April 2017}}

Modern believers in a flat Earth face overwhelming publicly accessible evidence of Earth's sphericity. They also need to explain why governments, media outlets, schools, scientists, surveyors, airlines and other organizations accept that the world is spherical. To satisfy these tensions and maintain their beliefs, they generally embrace some form of conspiracy theory. In addition, believers tend to not trust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust, disagree with or accuse each other of being in league with conspiracies.{{cite web |last=Humphries |first=Courtney |date=28 October 2017 |title=What does it take to believe the world is flat? |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/10/28/what-does-take-believe-world-flat/0gdgl2JMPhBpgJK5mGXPkI/story.html |access-date=April 4, 2022 |website=The Boston Globe}}

Before learning from their social environment, a child's perception of their physical environment often leads to a false concept about the shape of Earth and what happens beyond the horizon. Many young children think that Earth ends there and that one can fall off the edge. Education helps them gradually change their belief into a realist one of a spherical Earth.Stella Vosniadu, William F. Brewer: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002859290018W Mental models of the earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood].

{{div col}}

• Alderson disk
• Denialism
• Earth's rotation
• Geocentric model
• Geographical distance
• Hollow Earth
• Pseudoscience
• Scientific myth
• Scientific skepticism
• World Turtle
• Geocentric creationism

{{div col end}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{citation

| last = Garwood

| first = Christine

| title = Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea

| date = 2007

| publisher = Pan Books

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Gvm5Ou9B0FwC

| isbn = 978-1-4050-4702-9

}}

• {{Cite book |last=Gleede |first=Benjamin |title=Antiochenische Kosmographie? Zur Begründung und Verbreitung nichtsphärischer Weltkonzeptionen in der antiken Christenheit |date=2021 |publisher=De Gruyter}}
• {{citation | url= https://archive.org/details/johnjasperunmatc00hatciala

|title= John Jasper| first= William E. | last = Hatcher| publisher= Fleming Revell| location = New York, NY | date= 1908}}

• {{cite book |first= Rudolf| last=Simek |title=Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages: The Physical World Before Columbus |publisher=The Boydell Press |date=1996 | orig-year=1992|others=Angela Hall (trans.) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXBSKZAlAdMC&pg=PR7 |access-date=February 9, 2013 | isbn=9780851156088 }}
• {{cite book

| last = Plofker

| first = Kim

| title = Mathematics in India

| date = 2009

| publisher = Princeton University Press

| title-link = Mathematics in India (book)

| isbn = 978-0691120676

}}

• {{citation

| last = Randolph

| first = Edwin Archer

| author-link = Edwin Archer Randolph

| title = The Life of Rev. John Jasper, Pastor of Sixth Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Richmond, Va., from His Birth to the Present Time, with His Theory on the Rotation of the Sun

| date = 1884

| publisher = R.T. Hill & Co.

| location = Richmond, VA

| url = https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jasper/jasper.html

}}

• Fraser, Raymond (2007). When The Earth Was Flat: Remembering Leonard Cohen, Alden Nowlan, the Flat Earth Society, the King James monarchy hoax, the Montreal Story Tellers and other curious matters. Black Moss Press, {{ISBN|978-0-88753-439-3}}

{{Commons category|Flat Earth}}

• {{cite web|url=https://podcast.sjrdesign.net/shownotes_033.php|last=Robbins|first=Stuart|title=Episode 33: Flat Earth|publisher=Exposing PseudoAstronomy Podcast|date=2012-05-01}}
• {{cite web|url=https://podcast.sjrdesign.net/shownotes_145.php|last=Robbins|first=Stuart|title=Episode 145: Modern Flat Earth Theory, Part 1|publisher=Exposing PseudoAstronomy Podcast|date=2016-09-05}}
• {{cite web|url=https://podcast.sjrdesign.net/shownotes_149.php|last=Robbins|first=Stuart|title=Episode 149: Modern Flat Earth Thought, Part 2|publisher=Exposing PseudoAstronomy Podcast|date=2016-10-04}}
• {{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2RDpPrKwl8&t=0| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/D2RDpPrKwl8| archive-date=2021-12-11 | last1=Power|first1=Myles|last2=James|first2=James|title=Episode 146: The Lies of the Sun|publisher=League of Nerds (YouTube)|date=2016-10-31}}{{cbignore}} – Review of a pro-Flat Earth documentary.
• [https://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/russell/FlatEarth.html The Myth of the Flat Earth]
• [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227084.500-flat-universe-may-be-the-new-flat-earth.html The Myth of the Flat Universe]
• [https://www.straightdope.com/21341591/you-say-the-earth-is-round-prove-it You say the earth is round? Prove it] (from The Straight Dope)
• [https://archives.math.utk.edu//hypermail/historia/feb00/0164.html Flat Earth Fallacy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010429093952/https://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/historia/feb00/0164.html |date=2001-04-29 }}
• [https://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/index.htm Zetetic Astronomy, or Earth Not a Globe by Parallax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816–1884))] at sacred-texts.com
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThPgMu2-ToM&t=0 Flat Earth idea of the Suns trajectory]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtHuTVXZGFw&t=0 Flat Earth Theory of the Moon & Sun's paths around the world]

{{Conspiracy theories}}

{{pseudoscience}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Early scientific cosmologies

Category:Ancient Near Eastern cosmology