Who first suspected the earth was a sphere?

What person or people first suspected the earth was a sphere?Edited title AdminNosyThis message has been edited by AdminNosy, 05-10-2005 06:43 PM

You do understand that can't really be answered. We know that the earth was considered a sphere over 2500 years ago, but how much longer before that is unknown.That's a pretty weak starting OP unless you can flesh it out a little more as to just what it is you're looking for.

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You do understand that can't really be answered. We know that the earth was considered a sphere over 2500 years ago, but how much longer before that is unknown.
That's a pretty weak starting OP unless you can flesh it out a little more as to just what it is you're looking for.

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Yes I was not sure how best to phrase it.We can for instance find those who think the Sumerians thought the earth was a disc floating on water and also those who thought they understood the earth was round.Wondering if anyone has any insight.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

The greeks seem to be a popular contender, but you would think that any major seafaring nation would have had an inkling.TTFN,WK

You'd think - but the Vikings thought it was flat.

Okay.We know for certain that the Greeks, from around 600BC on, were aware that the Earth was a sphere and that by 200BC the diameter had been pretty well determined.But that doesn't answer your question. There's a very good chance that others had also determined the same thing but that the information has not been retained or discovered yet. Remember, most of our knowledge in this area comes from limited sources. We just don't have direct access to much information from other than the Greco-European historical line.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Could you fix the typo in the title?

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"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France

I think it was a guy name Eratosthene (or something like that) that calculated the diameter of the earth using the solice day in 200BC.

Very close. Eratosthenes. The idea that it was sphere though had been around for centuries before that. But he played to much with his toy and went blind and so starved himself to death.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar, you should be a teacher or instructor. You know way too much stuff to be sitting there in a zoo.

LOLNah. I learn something new everyday. How can some old monkey with no real education presume to do any more than dribble trivialities.But stuff like his blindness stuck for some reason. It was such a blow that he literally stopped eating and starved himself to death.It always made me wonder if I ever had an idea as brilliant as his, would I have the courage to follow through with it? To have an idea so beautiful, so simple, so aesthetic, and then to go blind, to be the head of a library, and then be shut away from all those ideas.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yes, considering the time and place that he lived in.If he was living in modern time, I have no doubt that he could be a very brilliant scientist, having foresights that exceed most people.Too bad we can't confirm if his calculation was accurate. His calculations and results were in a unit used at the time. Unfortunately, we don't know what the unit is in comparason to ours. It would have been interesting if we could confirm it, though.

It would be nice if it did turn out to be accurate, but the real beauty, the real subtlety is in the idea, the vision, the glow of a complete, original solution and the vision of how to test it.Wow.How wonderful to have had even one such experience.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion