Flat Earth

For much of human history, many people believed the Earth was a flat plane or a disk.

This idea is known as a flat-Earth cosmography. It is a way of describing how the world is shaped. Many ancient societies used this model to understand their place in the universe.

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, people imagined the world as a disk floating in a vast ocean.

The Israelites also pictured the Earth as a disc on water with a solid dome above it. This dome held the sun, moon, and stars.

Different cultures had their own ways of describing this flat world.

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples thought an ocean surrounded the Earth. They believed a giant snake named Jormungandr lived in that encircling water. In ancient China, scholars often described the Earth as both flat and square. They believed the heavens were round, sometimes comparing them to the shape of an egg.

This view remained common in China until they met Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century.

Greek thinkers provided many different ideas about the Earth's shape.

Some early philosophers, like Thales around 550 BC, thought the Earth floated on water like a log. Anaximander believed the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat top. Other thinkers, like Anaximenes, thought the Earth was flat and rode on air. However, the idea of a round Earth began to grow in Greece. Pythagoras suggested a spherical Earth in the 6th century BC. Later, in the early 4th century BC, Plato wrote about a spherical Earth. By 330 BC, Aristotle provided strong evidence that the Earth was actually a sphere.

It is a common myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat.

This idea was actually created in the 17th century by Protestants. They used it to argue against Catholic teachings. In reality, the spherical view was widely held by the early Christian Church. Knowledge of the Earth's round shape spread slowly beyond the Greek world. Even in the early Islamic period, many Muslim scholars believed in a spherical Earth after the 9th century. The idea that everyone thought the world was flat is not historically true.

Even though science has proven the Earth is a sphere, some people still discuss flat-Earth ideas.

These ideas have seen a resurgence as conspiracy theories in the 21st century. People use social media to share these views, and membership in flat-Earth societies has grown since the 2010s. However, most people still know the truth. A 2018 study showed that most young adults in America believe the world is round. In fact, a firm belief in a flat Earth is very rare. It is accepted by less than 2% of people in all age groups.