To me, it’s: That ancient people thought the Earth was flat.

We have records from around 430BC where Greek philosophers spoke of the Earth being a sphere. In 240BC the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth and was only about 2% out.

  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    You’re forgetting one crucial detail about Eratosthenes’ experiment: the measurements were taken at the same time, noon on the summer solstice, the time of minimum shadow length in both locations.