Did the Ancients Think the Earth Was Flat? | 60 Seconds History

It's a widespread belief nowadays that nearly everyone thought the earth to be flat until modern explorers such as Christopher Columbus proved otherwise. But is that really true? Did the ancients really believe in a flat earth? Well, the answer is complicated. There are plenty of examples of ancient cultures that followed a flat earth cosmology, yet at the same time we have plenty of evidence showing an awareness of the earth being round from antiquity. Among the ancient Greeks, arguments for a spherical earth appeared Aristotle in the 4th century BC pointed to evidence such as the curved shadow cast by the earth during lunar eclipses and the changing stars visible at different latitudes. These observations suggested a globe rather than a flat plane. Later, Eratosthenes went even further. By comparing the angle of the sun at different locations he estimated the earth's circumference with remarkable accuracy. His work shows that some ancient thinkers were not merely guessing that earth was round, they were actively observing and measuring it. Other ancient cultures such as those of Mesopotamia however often depicted the world as a flat disk surrounded by cosmic waters beneath a solid heaven. Similar ideas appear in other early Near Eastern cosmologies. Another example are ancient Egyptian conceptions of a broad flat earth beneath the arching sky goddess Nut, as well as early Chinese and Norse cosmological traditions that envisioned the human world as a flat or level realm under the heavens. So while many ancient scholars believed in a spherical earth, this belief was not universal across the globe. Now as always, thank you for watching and if you enjoyed the video please like, comment, subscribe and become a channel member to support our work.