Our Great Blue Sphere
How the Ancients Knew the Earth was Round — And How Some of Us Have Forgotten
In school, many of us were presented with a heroic image of Christopher Columbus. We were told of his persistence in obtaining funding for his expedition. We were told of his bravery in “discovering” the New World. And we were told of his wisdom in realizing that the Earth was round at a time when nearly all believed it to be flat. As we grew older, many of us came to understand that this narrative of a persistent, brave, and wise Columbus was crafted by colonialism and woven by white supremacy. Most of us now know that Columbus did not discover the Americas, which had been inhabited for well over tens of thousands of years by the time he landed in the Caribbean in 1492. Columbus wasn’t even the first European to reach the Americas, as the Vikings had sailed to North America about five hundred years earlier (Klein, 2013). It may come as no surprise, then, to hear that the story of Columbus as a lone believer in a spherical Earth is equally false. In reality, academics have known for thousands of years that our world is round.
Ancient Knowledge of a Spherical Earth
The earliest known reference to a spherical Earth can be found in ancient Greek philosophy texts from the fifth century BCE, about 2000 years…
