Strangely enough, the "flat-earthers" have managed to spread their ideas well today, in the 21st century. It is interesting that, apparently, by their own efforts, the myth about the domination of this hypothesis for thousands of years is widespread.
Many will say that back in the Middle Ages, as a rule, because of the influence of the church, most people thought the Earth was flat. As proof, for example, they will cite the myth that it was because of this that Columbus, having gone to Asia, came to America. In reality, the hypothesis of a flat Earth did not have as many supporters as it does today.
In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church had no doubts about the spherical shape of the Earth. The question of whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice versa was debatable.
In fact, even the most ancient philosophers actually excluded the hypothesis of a flat Earth from the discussion. It was the ancient Greek Democritus who truly defended it. Before him, by the way, Anaximander put forward the hypothesis of a cylindrical Earth, that is, its possible "plane" was in principle very rarely discussed.
Nevertheless, as early as the 4th century B.C. Aristotle, using elementary logic, provided arguments in favor of the spherical shape of the Earth. He explained that the shape of the shadow cast by the planet on the moon is only possible when the Earth is spherical.
With the development of navigation, everything became even more obvious, because a ship appears on the horizon from the mast. Also, the polar star on star charts from various parts of the world was depicted as it should be exactly with a spherical planet.
In fact, it was Aristotle who suggested that the earth was static and that the sun and stars revolved around it, which was adopted by the Catholic Church.
How were things in the Middle Ages?
At first, Nicolaus Copernicus, in the 16th century, developed the heliocentric model of the world, but he did not tell much about it, knowing what awaits him for such hypotheses. Giordano Bruno was the first to speak about it publicly. He was burned at the stake, but it should be noted that the main charges of the inquisitors concerned Giordano's preaching activities, not his scientific ones.
Galileo was the third to state the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, which removed the planet from the "center of the universe." He was not burned, but forced to publicly retract his words on heliocentrism. Interestingly, he was not forbidden to continue his work, only not allowed to publish. He did work.
If we return to Columbus, the myth of his involvement in the "flat-earthers" lives to this day, he claimed in his notes that the Earth might have the shape of a pear, and he came to America instead of Asia because of huge errors in calculating the route, as a consequence of outdated navigational data. And Columbus did not realize these errors until his death, believing that he had landed in Asia. Only in 1503, Amerigo Vespucci, an ordinary member of the expedition, thought that it landed on another continent.
Then where did this myth that back in the Middle Ages everyone thought the Earth was flat, if no one thought of it?
Propaganda and the desire to profit by leaving a mark on history are the main reasons for its appearance.
First, in the 19th century, it was simply "fashionable" to consider the Middle Ages as the time of round idiots. This was expressed in literally everything.
Washington Irving, in 1828, wrote a novel about the voyages of Columbus, where he wrote that the main goal of that expedition was to prove the sphericity of the planet. At the same time, Samuel Birley Rowbotham, who can be called the founder and "father" of modern "flat-earthers," also appeared.
He wrote and published in 1849 a 16-page paper entitled Zetetic astronomy, in which he described a single experiment supposedly proving that the Earth is flat (the most "enlightened" of "flat-earthers" still refer to it to this day).
Samuel noticed that under certain conditions, some objects, moving away from the observer, are in no hurry to hide behind the horizon line. By finding a flat stretch of water surface and sending a boat with a five-meter mast along it, he was able to observe a flag on it at a distance of about 10 km, with the telescope only 50.8 cm above the water, which did not particularly fit into the "accepted" calculations.
He knew perfectly well about atmospheric refraction, because he earned his living by giving various scientific lectures about the Earth, but not in vain had a bad reputation among his contemporaries as a cynic and a liar. Apparently, Sam decided to leave his mark on history. Especially, at that time, few people could boast of extensive scientific knowledge, which could easily be used for manipulation.
He did not forget about the "ancient thinkers", not bothering to name names, because, as said above, only Democritus put forward this hypothesis, which did not get any wider distribution, because it was easily refuted by his own contemporaries.
By 1881, "Zetetic Astronomy" had grown to as many as 430 pages and was renamed "Earth Not a Globe". It should be noted that in spite of the volume, the only confirmation of the flat shape of the Earth in this work remained that "experiment" in various interpretations. No scientific approach was out of the question, and most of his contemporaries were convinced that Samuel himself did not believe in his theory and only used it to manipulate people.
And it worked. There were quite a few zetetic communities on different continents. This idea was perceived as an alternative to "traditional" thinking. Well after Rowbotham's death in 1884, the idea gets a strong religious background. Lady Elizabeth Blount founded the Ecumenical Zetetic Society, whose purpose was proclaimed to "disseminate knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony in confirmation of the Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation. We see echoes of it today.
This is why it is surprising that today there are probably more proponents of this nonsense than in the entire history of mankind (at least, in asking such questions). They defend their vision in all seriousness, ignoring thousands of years of scientific development, during which an infinite number of facts have been gathered to refute it. And that's with access to the Internet, at the very least. Well, as the main "trump card" in any discussion, the "flat-earthers" still cite the "experiment" as if all their knowledge was obtained in the Middle Ages. That's how we live.
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