posted on Mar, 26 2013 @ 09:08 PM
Originally posted by PLAYERONE01
As Eratosthenes discovered (or rediscovered) the Earth was in fact spherical in or around 240 BC. It appears, especially from the appearance of 1538
Mercator map's design as it also appears to be drawn to give the viewer an idea the world is indeed spherical in nature.
Now unless this priceless information was lost or with held this would explain how we all ended up with a ridiculous story told to us at school how
our ancestors believed they would sail off the edge of the world.
That ridiculous story was invented by none other than Washington Irving in his "book" (mostly a fabrication) about Columbus.
If you learned in school that Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, disproving a common belief in those
days that the Earth was flat, then the lesson was wrong.
Historians say there is no doubt that the educated in Columbus’s day knew quite well that the Earth was not flat but round. In fact, this was known
many centuries earlier.
As early as the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras — and later Aristotle and Euclid — wrote about the Earth as a sphere. Ptolemy wrote “Geography”
at the height of the Roman Empire, 1,300 years before Columbus sailed, and considered the idea of a round planet as fact.
“Geography” became a standard reference, and Columbus himself owned a copy. For him, the big question was not the shape of the Earth but the size
of the ocean he wanted to cross.
During the early Middle Ages, it is true that many Europeans succumbed to rumor and started believing that they lived on a flat Earth.
But Islamic countries knew better and preserved the Greek learning. By the late Middle Ages, Europe had caught up and in some cases surpassed the
knowledge of ancient Greece and medieval Islam.
Several books published in Europe between 1200 and 1500 discussed the Earth’s shape, including “The Sphere,” written in the early 1200s, which
was required reading in European universities in the 1300s and beyond. It was still in use 500 years after it was penned.
So, it's true that "everything you know is wrong," if you know that "everyone" thought the Earth was flat.
Piri Reis' map shows not a single whit of Antarctica. The land mass along the bottom is absolutely the southern part of South America.
Why did Reis' map depict it this way? Maybe because of the shape of the skin at the lower left, where he ran out of room. Or, maybe because of the
Treaty of Tordesillas:
On May 4, 1493 Pope Alexander VI took action to clear up any confusion that may have arisen over territorial claims. He issued a decree which
established an imaginary line running north and south through the mid-Atlantic, 100 leagues (480 km) from the Cape Verde islands. Spain would have
possession of any unclaimed territories to the west of the line and Portugal would have possession of any unclaimed territory to the east of the
The curve in the southern part of South America shown on that map places much, MUCH more of it on the Portugese side of that line.
Reis' map plainly states that he drew on maps from Portugese sailors. In fact, it also states that the Arabs were the first to discover the New
World. I wonder why no one ever seizes on that
tidbit to create another fringe topic here at ATS?
Regarding other maps showing Antarctica, the term Antarctica was coined before the land mass was even known. IOW, the real continent of Antarctica was
named after a postulated continent of Antarctica. Why did so many believe that such a huge land mass must exist (and thus drew it on maps?) If we
are to believe what these people themselves stated, it was because they knew there had to be such a land mass, or else the Earth would be top heavy
and would have already tipped over!
IOW, there's no mystery here.