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. įurther information: Egyptian mythology and Biblical cosmology Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia

Despite the scientific fact and obvious effects of Earth's sphericity, pseudoscientific flat-Earth conspiracy theories are espoused by modern flat Earth societies and, increasingly, by unaffiliated individuals using social media. This myth was created in the 17th century by Protestants to argue against Catholic teachings.

It is a historical myth that medieval Europeans generally thought the Earth was flat. By the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view was widely held, with some notable exceptions. Knowledge of the Earth's global shape gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world. By about 330 BC, his former student Aristotle had provided strong empirical evidence for a spherical Earth. In the early 4th century BC, Plato wrote about a spherical Earth. However, most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat-Earth model. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC). Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography. The map contains several references to biblical passages as well as various jabs at the 'Globe Theory'.įlat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk. For other uses, see Flat Earth (disambiguation).įlat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893. For the historical misconception that people during the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat, see Myth of the flat Earth. For modern-day beliefs that the Earth is flat, see Modern flat Earth beliefs. This article is about the disproven cosmological model.

Famous flat earthers