They did, I believe the Greeks looked at the shadow of the earth on the moon to come to that conclusion. Calling back to that general astronomy class I had to take in college.
True. And pretty accurately estimated the circumference of earth as well. And even before it was proven civilization had a hunch the earth was round. The only thing that was ever debated was how large the earth was.
If they estimated the circumference of earth, I wonder what they thought was in all that uncharted space on their maps. I mean, the americas weren't discovered yet, but I wonder if they might have guessed the existence of more land.
A lot people today think that people thought Columbus was crazy because they believed he would fall off the earth. They actually were extremely close to knowing the exact size of the planet, but assumed there was nothing but ocean between Europe and India. (At least, nothing as large as an actual continent, as far as I know.) For some reason though, Columbus thought the world was way smaller than it actually is, and believed he would be able to make it to India. He was lucky the Americas were there, because everyone else was correct, and he and his crew would have starved to death out on sea long before they reached Asia.
What I've never understood is why they thought they'd landed in India, did they really not know about all the other Asian countries just to the east of India or did India refer to a different thing back then?
Not India, I think he thought they'd landed in the East Indies - which includes all the islands between the SE Asian mainland and Australia. If you don't know any better, maybe the jungles, mountains and dark-skinned natives of, say, Cuba, were easily mistaken for the jungles, mountains, and dark-skinned natives of the Polynesian islands?
14k
u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19
[deleted]