Did Medieval People Think The Earth Was Flat?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2023
- You probably learned in school that everyone thought that the Earth was flat until a plucky Italian explorer named Christopher Columbus tried to prove that he could sail to Asia by travelling west across the Atlantic ocean. But did people really think that the Earth was flat before then? Or is this another case of medieval misconceptions? Let's find out!
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Recommendations for further reading:
-McCready, William. "Isidore, the Antipodeans, and the Shape of the Earth." In Isis 87 (1996): 108-27.
-Stevens, Wesley. "The figure of the earth in Isidore's De natura rerum." In Isis 71 (1980): 269-77.
[Both of these articles are recommended to get a grip on Isidore's understanding of the earth. McCready's article also talks a little about Bede]
Otherwise, I would also recommend reading any of the primary sources I've mentioned in the video, especially Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis' translation of Bede's On the Nature of Things and On Times (2010), which has some great info in its introduction for anyone interested in medieval views on nature.
All images used in this video are either my own, in the public domain, or under creative commons (whence they shall be credited appropriately)
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Outro music: Laid Back Guitars by Kevin MacLeod, CC BY-SA 4.0
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#earth #history #medievalhistory #medieval #middleages #educational #historyofscience #science #bede #plinytheelder #christophercolumbus #naturalhistory #misconceptions
There's a very good lesson on this exact topic by italian historian Alessandro Barbero and it cites many of the same sources you do, but I remember it also mentioning a famous writer in the middle ages, who today would be known as a "science communicator", explaining the shape of the Earth to the average paesant.
In trying to be as precise as possible it said something like: "The Earth is round, _not round and flat as a shield_ but simply round like a ball!"
Anyone who sailed on the Mediterranean, from Greece to Egypt, and back, or from Rome to Carthage, and back, would know that the Earth was not flat. The ships did seem to fall over the horizon, but they came back and the sailors said that it looked to them that the port and the mountains were the ones that looked like they fell over the horizon. As they arrived at their destination, the mountains and the buildings would seem to rise over the horizon. Aristotle used that argument, along with the changing position of the stars, as you mentioned, and the circular shadow that from the Earth that was seen on the Moon during lunar eclipses to leave no doubt that the Earth was round.
Thank you!! As a former professor in an Honors History of Science program, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to encounter PhDs whose understanding of history is apparently derived from Bugs Bunny. Blame Washington Irving, A. D. White, and sadly former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin.
Also blame current history books and teachers who taught us all this myth. I wonder if things are still taught this way. I am 48 years old and I was taught this throughout my schooling.
Your childish hyperbole makes it difficult to take you seriously.
I'm a Medieval history professor. Both while studying History for my degree and while giving class myself I have seen a worrisome amount of non-Medieval historians (then my professors, now my colleagues) spout crap about the Middle Ages that were debunked in the late 19th Century (not even in the 20th).
It's honestly incredible how ignorant they were about the Middle Ages and how confident they were about it.
@@joshualawson1579 its because theyre atheists who for some reason think lying about the middle ages furthers the cause of atheism
As a former professional bowler, I know exactly what you mean
I once heard a historian about pirates tell me that they made up tales about the world being flat. That pirates would sail across the Atlantic to North America and bury their treasures. They told others about the edge of the earth to keep them from sailing across the ocean and finding their treasures.
I forget the name but i came across a monk from the 1100s(?) who was complaining that all the other monks made fun of him because he believed the world was flat.
I would love to read that!
@@studiumhistoriae been a few years and either I remembered it incorrectly or the source I saw was not careful with the details. Best I can find now is a 6th century monk named Cosmas Indicopleustes, that is said to be "the only medieval European known to have defended a flat earth cosmology".
the way you worded this makes it sound like you're a time traveler 😂
Never fail i learn something new with every video. What blows my mind, is the people today who believe it's flat.
I am amazed that the comment section hasn't been flooded with flat earthers 😅😂
because it is
@@shaunsteele6926 prove it
@@ulrichenevoldsen8371 prove it's a spinning ball
@@shaunsteele6926 sure it's easy to do. But even if I did you would not listen or believe it. Flerfers on the other hand have no evidence what so ever
I don't think it's fair to say that Columbus was dismissive of Eratosthenes's calculation. We know for a fact that Columbus read Cleomedes's writings about Eratosthenes and was aware of the calculation but disagreed on the length of the stadion Cleomedes used. Even today, we are not certain how large that stadion was. Columbus instead turned to Alfragan for an estimate of the size of the earth in terms of miles, since he was familiar with miles. However, he assumed Alfragan was using Italian miles, when in fact he used Arabic miles, and that resulted in a substantial miscalculation of the size of the earth (though one reasonably close to an earlier estimate by Ptolemy). That said, his much bigger error came from miscalculating the size of Asia, not the earth. He corresponded with mapmaker Toscanelli who took Marco Polo's accounts on face value (unlike most cartographers of the time, who considered them dubious). That resulted in exaggerating the size of Asia by thousands of miles.
You also made a significant error when describing Eratosthenes's method. His method is in fact unknown, and the source you use actually says that this was not his method. Cleomedes gives the well in Syene as a simplified example of how such a calculation could be carried out, not as a description of the actual calculation Eratosthenes performed. Rather, he says Eratosthenes carried out many calculations.
If you had been my teacher, I would have loved to learn. You do an incredible job and I love your voice. You are a pleasure to listen to.
I feel like they taught us in elementary school this story and it has bothered me for years. I feel like it is some propaganda to tell our story in a certain way of like, “see how much smarter we are now compared to then?” You know I’m just not convinced we are the pinnacle of existence. Anyways, who started this story and why did so many of us learn it in school like it was for real?
Washington Irving created the story at first, but I also wonder why it caught on and was eventually taught as fact
Great Vider, was interesting :)
My son had a history book in 1990 that was of the false historic story based. I asked the Teacher :" Did you ever hear of Ptolermeus?His almagest was a standard work of geography." The man looked confused. He did not know. There is a translation in early medieval German. Dante in his Comedia Divina in the Inferno described the sensation of ascending after crossing the center of the Earth,where he locates Satans belly. After escaping into Purgatory the great poet describes the Southern Cross,only visible on the Southern Hemisphere.
When did we realize people from Columbus' time knew the world was round because during my grade school days in the '70s we were always taught people thought the world was flat.
I was taught the same thing in the early 2000s, and I'm pretty sure kids are still being taught it in school to this very day. Historians have known it for a long time, but the idea that Columbus discovered the earth being round became a popular myth emerging in probably the 1700s because it 1. promoted the, at the time very prominent, idea of "individual genius," 2. played into existing biases of progress in which the middle ages was a time of backwardness and ignorance, and 3. made America (both the continent and the country) an important part of some grand narrative of great men of genius and scientific progress (tying it back to the first 2). Despite the fact that many historians have known this myth to be false for a long time, it gained A LOT of popularity, and eventually made it into the standard history curricula as well as movies and TV. Once a myth is that entrenched, it's hard to undo.
very interesting!
I'm surprised non of Columbus' backers insisted on re-determinig Earth's circumference before handing over any money.
Columbus' error is probably derived from mistranslation. The Arab translation of classical texts indicated that the circumference of the earth was around 20000 Arab miles. It got mistranslated into around 20000 Roman miles which are shorter then Arab miles.
Then add Ptolemy's Geography which had Asia stretch out to the 180 meridian at least (the prime meridian was the Canary islands). Renaissance Geographers used Ptolemy and placed the actual east coast of Asia at meridian 210-240 and Japan at meridian 260-270, thus leaving only 90 degrees with the shorter Roman miles as basis. It would have been only around 7500 km to Japan with that approach.
Other estimates had the distance doubled
Thanks!
Thank you!
Even the vikings back in the early 1000s knew this. They wrote about this and concluded that it must be round based on their experiences navigating the open seas observing the stars and the sun.
1887 Of 0 Drift
Begins Anti FE
1889 LC Origin
Alters, Physics
EM Light Traits
How many citations does Bugs Bunny have?
To be honest I don’t even buy that peasants would’ve thought the Earth was flat. If you look over the horizon as a ship is leaving the harbor, it’ll seem to disappear. I think most would’ve probably figured it out, even if they hadn’t read Aristotle or Eratosthenes.
To be fair, if you ask a random person in the streets of New York what the shape and size of the Earth are, You're gonna get a lot of weird answers. Flat Earth may be at something of a high point, if not in percentage of the population, then in pure numbers.
The whole middle ages thing is more of a matter of proportionality
Wich proportion of the populace was educated among the ancient roman citizens as compared to the middle ages, thats where the whole thing comes from, as the regular peasant would get their cosmology from the bible in latin, and only hear whatever snippets were translated to common language
I disagree on one thing that peasants would probably know as well, as it would probably be general knowledge. Like they may not know why just like a person today doesn't know how a computer works but they know what a computer is. Do keep in mind a flat earth doesn't make sense from just looking alone especially somewhere coastal like Sweden, if it was flat you should see the next landmass even if it was just a spec. There is a horizon that can only happen when something isn't flat. If they ever watched a ship go out to sea they'd notice it gets smaller and smaller until rather than just getting smaller it starts to go downwards. Or if they went on a walk and more things kept appearing the further go.
Yes.
No.
thank uuu
Earth is planet
His Fixed YEC
God's Ancient
Inspired Word
Life's, Genesis
People didn't "think ",they KNEW...!
Wait, it's round?
Maybe the most educated people including within the church had the idea of a round earth, but the common folk may have believed in a flat earth because that was what the book put together by the church taught.
CGI!
There were vikings, africans, and a lot of other people before him there, so why telling this wrong story today?
Africans?
@@doppelplusungutmensch1141 The Africans that discovered America are probably the people from Wakanda.
Damn you started off wrong. America is not even named after that dude at 1:20 so can’t believe anything else you say in this video..
Except that's still the most widely accepted theory as to where the name "America" comes from...
@@elfarlaur America is actually named after the country - the United States of America, and that's why the continent is called America.
Checkmate.
@threethrushes The country was so legendary we simply had to name the entire continent America
The Earth is flat with Firmament.
Nope.