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Comment by PurpleRamen | Hacker News Reader

Define ancient. We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth. There is enough proof for this, and Ancient Greece and Romans discovered this to be wrong. But independent of this, there is also the claim that people in medieval Europe believed in a flat earth, again, and this was brought up as a reason why Columbus expedition would fail when he searched for supporters and ships.

And in fact, such stories are not that uncommon at the 18. Century. Thinkers and scientists were fighting against the church, and they made up many fake stories to show how stupid and dangerous the church is. And AFAIK the church believing in a flat earth was one of them.

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> We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth.

There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer), even though I do know of some ambiguous texts that people keep interpreting as that, but are much better explained as they not caring about the shape.

It's quite hard to do astronomy on a larger area than a single city and not discover the planet isn't flat. And it looks like people have been exchanging astronomic findings over some longish distances for longer than they have been writing texts that we can read today.

> There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth.

For those, we don't have any kind of indicator what they believed about earths shape, so why do they matter?

The way you phrased your comment indicated that you kinda believe that now one at any point in early history really believed in a flat earth, and it's all just a story made up later.

Half this comment section is saying that.

> I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer)

Semitic cultures very much believed the Earth was more or less a disc-like shape that consisted of the known world (mostly in their sphere of influence, if you pardon the expression). But they also had some other ideas, like that of chaotic universal waters above and below the Earth, separated by the firmament, and supported by pillars (though you can see this idea changing somewhat by the time the book of Job was written). This is a theme that is repeated in Genesis, Isaiah, Job, and one or more of the Psalms.

Not coincidentally, it's fairly well established in the scholarly literature that this was the view of ancient Near Eastern writers, and it wasn't until Young Earth Creationists decided to apply a degree of scientific concordism to the text where we get a more distorted view of Hebrew words like hûg inferring something other than a disc or circular inscription. It's true that they probably didn't care so much about the shape (unlike us), but their cosmology is definitely inferred rather strongly in the biblical texts (and in some cases from their neighbors). John Walton's "Lost World" series on Genesis are a good pointer in this direction, but I'd also suggest the IVP Bible Background Commentary (Walton is a contributor) which certainly touches on this motif and draws upon other creation accounts such as those in the Ugaritic tablets, Baal Cycle, etc. The late Dr. Michael Heiser has a great lecture series you can find on YT talking about biblical cosmology that might help if you're into that format.

The link with Columbus was indeed perpetrating a myth. You get this as recently as Ray Comfort's "Evidence Bible" which is filled with complete buffoonery in that it attempts to explain Columbus' motives based on his mention of Isaiah; YECs like Comfort link this to Isaiah 40:22 (again, with an incorrect reading of hûg). Columbus was motivated by his eschatology and the only reason he ever cited Isaiah was because of its dual function as prophetic-apocalyptic literature.

Thanks. Those people seem really interesting.

They were right on the way when the idea of popular astronomy (instead of only god-appointed people doing it) reached Europe, and yet they seem oblivious from it.

It's a really good reminder that even on the era of large empires, culture was still very fractally distributed.

> It's a really good reminder that even on the era of large empires, culture was still very fractally distributed.

This is a really good point. The ANE had its own idea of cosmology, Europe its, Asia its, etc. Even then, much of the biblical text contains polemics against Babylonian ideas (recall that cosmology, deity, and "function" are all tied together in their worldview).

I wonder how this squares with the Babylonian concept of a round earth. It seems odd that so much was uh, “inspired” by their texts but the shape of the earth was exempted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#:~:text....

We have some idea of the evolution of the Babylonian view of the Earth and its approximate dimensions/shape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World

This idea probably wasn't unique to the Babylonians, but this approximation of a disc-shaped Earth was fairly commonplace up to and including the Exhilic Period (biblical texts likely being influenced, at least in part, by the Babylonian views though much of the text is certainly constructed of polemic narratives).

If one is being literal:

> Isaiah 11:12: He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Which clearly indicates some kind of quadrilateral, or perhaps a tetrahedron.

LOL! You know, I think I'm going to use this the next time someone disputes biblical cosmology.

Chinese astronomical records were extensive, accurate, and continual for more than 3000 years. They believed the Earth was flat and square until the 17th century.

If you read a story about the edge of the world then you have an example of an "flat earth" believer.

Regardless of shape, I think the most fundamental shift occurred with the idea that the Earth is not a center of the universe.

Earth at the center of the universe was one, the sun turning around earth another. The latter so was known to be most likely true for a long time by everyone who worked on astronomy.

When I was little, I just assumed that the sun revolved around the Earth. I recall not believing it when I was told the converse.

How were you eventually convinced that it is not true?

Adults explaining it to me.

In Old Norse mythology, the Midgard Serpent (Jörmungandr) encircles the earth, so it would seem they believed the earth to be a disc.

> I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer)

天圓地方 (literally: sky round, land square) was a serious core idea in ancient Chinese cosmology that was most popular 2000 years ago around the Han Dynasty period.

As for some serious pointers as you requested, here: https://ctext.org/lunheng/shuo-ri/zh

There's a couple paragraphs arguing that the sky isn't round (dome-like) but "flat" and parallel to the land because people have travelled and have never seen the sky merge with the land. (see the paras starting "實者、天不在地中，日亦不隨天隱，天平正，與地無異。")

You might say the ancient Chinese didn't care enough so they ended up with wrong conclusions (or parroted whatever was told to them by even more ancient sources that just made up its cosmology), but at any rate the Chinese definitely did believe in flat earth 2000 years ago, and we have very reliable records for that one.

People thought Columbus's voyage would fail precisely because they believed the Earth to be a sphere and thus the distance from Europe to India was too far to traverse. Columbus tried to convince everyone it would succeed by claiming the Earth was instead pear shaped.

https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm

For example, many people today believe that we only use 10% of our brain.

But it wouldn’t be fair to say that’s what our “culture” believes to be true.

It is true in the sense that we only use about 10%, at any given time, for some definitions of percent. People just fail to understand that the other 90% is just not useful, rather than unused potential.

That is news to me and interesting. Do you have a citation or link to share?

"people only use about 2% of the volume of their house at any given time"

I thought bullshit too. After all, why would chemical reactions in the brain stop? But after a bit of thinking and Googling, I stumbled upon this

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-our...

Not saying that only X% of our brain is being used, but what it essentially says is that our brain is power-limited, and therefore, it has to be selective in which parts to "turn on". It makes a lot of sense, there are few things in life more important than energy and power management, and human brains already need lots of both.

We have a word for what happens when people "use 100% of their brain".

We call that an epileptic seizure. :)

scientists distinguished function of different regions in our brain, so human doesn't need to use all region is a more obvious idea now.

I can't recommend literature, a probably source is in medical textbook.

Is it even usable at same time? There is some level of plasticity, but in general certain parts activate for certain tasks and you can't really make it use more parts at one time.

Your brain can definitely get bursts of more activity, it's not desirable though. They are called seizures.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/sympt...

Also, when someone says, "they knew the earth was round in the Middle Ages", they mean "educated people knew". Guess what fraction were educated? Not many. So ... averaged over the population, it's not entirely correct.

It would be like saying, "It's a myth that in the 21st century, they were bunch of rubes who were unaware that every single object is exerting a gravitational force on them." Well, um, it's a myth that physics-educated people were unaware of this, sure. But most people have no reason to learn about this or be aware of it; it's not relevant to everyday life.

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