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.
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The idea that historically people were somehow less, or more intelligent than people today.
Saying things like “ancient people knew over 300 plants and what they do” as if this is somehow amazing. Kids can name 300 Pokemon, and their movesets and how they relate to eachother. Your sportsfan cowoker can name their top 100 players and all their stats. This is not amazing, we just focus on other things nowadays.
Nor were ancient people stupid. Obviously they noticed things like certain events happening at fixed times of the year. They just didn’t have encyclopedias, but they did have centuries of passed-down knowledge.
To me, it’s: That ancient people thought the Earth was flat.
Ancient peoples DID think the Earth was flat.
The conception of a spherical earth was only widely accepted in academic traditions derived from late Greek philosophy and even in those cultures, had a mixed reception in popular conceptions of the earth’s shape until the 16th century.
The question is not if they did or did not think, but if what they thinked was backed by historical facts at the time.
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It depends which ancient people. That may be what thought in Greece, but what about elsewhere? Also a lot of Greek and Roman knowledge was lost by the dark ages or ever made it to Europe at all.
Knowledge of a spherical earth was never lost amongst serious academics in post-Roman Europe.
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Where does the distance to the sun enter into this equation?
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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.
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