Who has proved that the Earth is round? Who discovered that the Earth is round

The shape of the Earth - our home - worried humanity for a long time. Today, every schoolboy does not doubt that the planet is spherical. But this knowledge went for a long time, went through the church anathemas and the courts of the Inquisition. Today people are interested in who proved that the Earth is round. After all, history and geography did not appeal to everyone. Let's try to find the answer to this entertaining question.

Excursion to the history

Many scientific works confirm us in the thought that before the famous discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, mankind believed that he lived on a flat Earth. However, this hypothesis does not hold water for two reasons.

1. A great navigator opened a new continent, and did not sail to Asia. If he had anchored off the coast of the present India, he could have been called a man who proved the sphericity of the planet. The discovery of the New World is not a confirmation of the round shape of the Earth.
2. Long before the epoch-making journey of Columbus, there were people who doubted that the planet was flat, and gave their arguments as evidence. It is likely that the navigator was familiar with the works of some ancient authors, and the knowledge of the ancient sages was not lost.

Is the Earth round?

Different peoples had their own ideas about the structure of the world and the cosmos. Before answering the question, who has proved that the Earth is round, you should familiarize yourself with other versions. The earliest theories of the world-building argued that the earth is flat (as it was seen by people). The motion of the heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars) they explained by the fact that it was their planet that was the center of the Cosmos and the Universe.

In Ancient Egypt, the Earth was represented by a disk lying on four elephants. They, in turn, stood on a giant tortoise floating in the sea. Not yet born one who discovered that the Earth is round, but the theory of the Pharaoh's sages could explain the causes of earthquakes and floods, sunrise and sunset.

The Greeks also had their own ideas about the world. The earthly disk in their understanding was covered by celestial spheres, to which they were tied with invisible threads of the star. They considered the moon and the sun to be gods - Selene and Helios. Yet in the books of Pannekoek and Dreyer, the works of the ancient Greek sages were collected, which contradicted the generally accepted views. Eratosthenes and Aristotle were the ones who discovered that the Earth is round.

The Arab teachings were also famous for their precise knowledge of astronomy. The tables created by them for the motion of the stars are so precise that they even raised doubts about the authenticity. The Arabs, with their observations, prompted the society to change ideas about the structure of the world and the universe.

Proof of the sphericity of celestial bodies

It is interesting, what were the scientists guided by, denying the observations of the people around them? He who proved that the Earth is round, drew attention to the fact that if it was flat, the luminaries would be visible in the sky for everyone simultaneously. But in practice everyone knew that many of the stars that are visible in the Nile Valley can not be seen above Athens. A sunny day in the Greek capital is longer than, for example, in Alexandria (this is connected with the curvature in the directions north-south and east-west).

The scientist, who proved that the Earth is round, noticed that the object, moving away from the movement, leaves only its upper part visible (for example, on the shore the ship's masts are noticeable, and not its body). This is only logical if the planet has the shape of a ball, not a flat object. And Plato considered a powerful argument in favor of sphericity that the ball is an ideal form.

Modern evidence of globularity

Today we have technical devices that allow not only to observe the heavenly bodies, but also to rise to the sky and see our planet from the side. Here are some more proofs that it is not flat. As you know, during the lunar eclipse the blue planet closes the night light by itself. And the shadow is round. And the different masses that make up the Earth tend to go down, giving it a spherical shape.

Science and Church

The Vatican acknowledged that the Earth is round, rather late. Then, when it was impossible to deny the obvious. Early European authors at first rejected this theory as one that contradicted the Holy Scripture. In the time of the spread of Christianity, persecution succumbed not only to other religions and pagan cults. All scientists who conducted different experiments, made observations, but did not believe in a single God, were considered heretics. At that time, manuscripts and entire libraries were destroyed, temples and statues, art objects were destroyed. The Holy Fathers believed that people do not need science, only Jesus Christ is the source of the greatest wisdom, and the holy books have enough information for life. The geocentric theory of the structure of the world was also regarded by the church as incorrect and dangerous.

Kozma Indicopleust described the Earth as a kind of box, at the bottom of which rested the stronghold, inhabited by people. The sky served as a "lid", but it was still. The moon, the stars and the sun moved angels across the sky and hid behind a high mountain. Above this complex structure rested the Kingdom of Heaven.

A certain unknown geographer from Ravenna described our planet as a flat object surrounded by an ocean, an endless desert and mountains, behind which are hidden sun, moon and stars. Isidore (Bishop of Seville) in 600 AD did not rule out the spherical shape of the Earth in his works. The misfortune of the Honorable was based on the works of Pliny, therefore he declared that the Sun is larger than the Earth, that they are in the form of a sphere, and that the cosmos is not geocentric.

Let's sum up the results

So, going back to Columbus, one can argue that his way was not based solely on intuition. Not wishing to reduce the merits of the great traveler, we can say that his knowledge should have been brought to India. And the society no longer rejected the spherical shape of our house.

The first thought about the Earth-sphere was expressed by the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes, who already in the fourth century BC measured the radius of the planet. The error of his calculations was only one percent! Checked his guesses Fernand Magellan in the sixteenth century, having made his famous round-the-world trip. Who has proved that the Earth is round? Theoretically it was done by Galileo Galilei, who, by the way, was sure that she was turning around the sun, and not vice versa.