There's no " flat earth " mentioned in ancient texts JacquesTrappe: " supuk same " ( the firmament ) of the Mesopotamians never referred to the entire earth being flat It refers to a " local horizontal coordinate system " that has a flat plane as a base, necessary for recording positions of astronomical bodies using arcminutes and arcseconds It's a nominal object in mathematics and doesn't exist as a real world object https://c.tadst.com/gfx/750x500/horizontal-coordinate-system.png?1 Your rebuttal ? (Edited by JacquesTrappe)  duncan124: The Flat Earth argument came about due to anti social behaviour and the need to convince some people that others were too far away from them to matter. Before there was any much social behaviour peoples fears and imagination created far more than a round world. People stuck to what they knew and the Flat Earthers exploited this need for expansion and played on the fear that you just came back to where you were and the same people who were around you before. Angry Beaver: The earth is not flat! If it was, the cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now duncan124: It is difficult to escape the idea that the story of Flat Earthers is not the same as any other of the things talked about on the Internet. Even the Wiki page strongly suggests that it is a common behaviour well seen in the Social Media today. Maybe soon the Wiki evolution sites will have the same sort of warning included. JacquesTrappe: The idea that our ancestors thought the earth is flat is an academic turd they keep kicking down the road It's simply not true and never was It's amusing and also sad that people still perpetuate this myth JacquesTrappe: Hey, nice to see you, thanks for joining in Well, there are really several things at play, imo One is the academic community and the misconceptions they perpetuate. People assume because an academic says it's true, that's it's true, when in reality that person might not have a clue and are merely teaching what they were taught A good example would be someone teaching high school history, who is entirely unfamiliar with the work of someone like Otto Neugebauer or Joran Friberg Two, is that most of what we know about Mesopotamian / Egyptian languages comes from very recent times ( Think 1800's and on ), but certain misconceptions and half-truths have been in play since the Greeks ( Who really butchered a good bit of what they learned from Egyptian priests ) Three, is religious zealots and their tendency to adhere to literal interpretations when it suits them An example would be claiming the Bible says the earth has 4 corners and therefore flat, when in reality that is taken from a rather well known Mesopotamian title - King of the Four Quarters of the World, King of the Heaven's Four Corners or King of the Four Corners of the Universe ( Referring to being king of all one could see ) So in that case, history is thrown out the window so people can claim the Bible says " earth is flat "  tfor2andyou: I've always wondered where that myth originated. Your explanation is the best I've heard. I learned in high school geometry that the ancient Greeks not only knew the earth was round they calculated its diameter shortly after the discovery of Pythagorus's theorem. So the Western World has known it for more than 2,000 years even if it was forgotten during the dark ages. The Mesopotamians probably knew it a lot earlier than that. JacquesTrappe: They did. Have you heard of the Plimpton 322 tablet ? It's a table of Pythagorean triples that vanish to the plane. They used this along with " supuk same " to record the positions of objects in the sky relative to the " flat plane " of earth I have some very interesting things about ancient metrology I'll be publishing in my future videos Eratosthenes was rather late to the game  chronology: To believe that the earth is flat you must believe that every Ocean going Sea Captain, trans continental airlines pilot, every Space Agency from NASA to Russia to Tokyo. All of them are lying about the world we live on. The reason that the Theory of Evolution gets a free pass with most scientists is that the general public have no interest in challenging the idea. If they did it would be thrown out in no time. Karl Marx one time in an unguarded moment commented 'any one can see that what Darwin and his followers are really talking about with his Evolution theories is the prevailing economic system of capitalism. If you remove evolution as a principal, capitalism has no ground to stand on'. Publicly however Marx always pushed evolution as in his mind it disproved the idea of God. JacquesTrappe: Yup, there's that as well, Chron, good point An even bigger problem with the claim the ancients thought the earth was flat is revealed with an examination of their techniques of dimensional analysis as well as their metrological conventions People are under the impression that Mesopotamians and Egyptians didn't have a clue about science, and in reality, nothing could be further from the truth  (Post deleted by JacquesTrappe )  (Post deleted by JacquesTrappe )  martyontario: If u believe in a flat earth, you probably believe in Martians and the moon is made out of Swiss cheese. 😝 (Post deleted by staff ) (Post deleted by staff ) tease02: Flat earth people have less intelligence than a retarded single cell protazoa ive seen more intelligent creatures at the bottom of ponds with 3heads and 5 assholes | Science Chat Room 4 People Chatting Similar Conversations |