The Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning (VIII) states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it: In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr. 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. Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree that he still believed Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth. Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Earth was flat and surrounded by water. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat, 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. īelief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit. 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". 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. It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a round Earth. Thales thought that the Earth floated in water like a log. 550 BC) according to several sources, and Leucippus (c. Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. Possible rendering of Anaximander's world map 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. This poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling ( gaiaokhos) sea (Oceanus) and a disc also appears in Stasinus of Cyprus, Mimnermus, Aeschylus, and Apollonius Rhodius. Greece Poetsīoth Homer and Hesiod described a disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles. The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it. 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. The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography Nun (the Ocean) encircled nbwt ("dry lands" or "Islands"). 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." In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia ĭespite the scientific fact of Earth's sphericity, pseudoscientific flat Earth conspiracy theories are espoused by modern flat Earth societies and, increasingly, by unaffiliated individuals using social media. Knowledge of the Earth's global shape then gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world. In the early 4th century BC Plato wrote about a spherical Earth, and by about 330 BC his former student, Aristotle, had provided strong empirical evidence for this.
The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Ancient Greece until the classical period (323 BC), the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period (31 BC), and China until the 17th century. The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. The map contains several references to biblical passages as well as various jabs at the "Globe Theory". Flat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893.
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