this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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POV: You're an explorer in the late 1400s planning your voyage. (media.piefed.world)
submitted 4 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world to c/cartographyanarchy@sh.itjust.works
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[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Nobody at that time thought the world was flat. It wouldn't even make sense to try to reach India by going the other way if it wasn't a globe. The whole "Columbus thought the world is flat" thing is completely bunk.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It is my youtube-based understanding that, at the time, any literate person understood the world was round, and even had a reasonable idea of its size, but Europeans weren't aware that the Americas existed, and sailing out into open ocean months away from land was preposterously dangerous.

[–] SloganLessons@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Iirc Columbus believed that the world was smaller than what his contemporaries believed, so he believed he could make the trip

There was a video that showed him arriving to america but the view of the map was inclined and rotated in such a way that made Cuba look like Japan and Florida like southeast Asia.

That made me realize how easily you could be confused at the time, especially when the maps weren’t as perfectly drawn as they are today

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I kind of wonder how accurate that depiction would be as I don't think Columbus ever actually saw or mapped the American mainland, he ended up in the Caribbean landing on Cuba, Hispaniola and San Salvador, briefly mistaking these lands for the Philippines or, I've seen a depiction of Columbus sailing the length of the South coast of Cuba, stopping just short of the island's tip before declaring it the Indian mainland, though let's also take that with a grain of salt.

It's not like he had a god's eye view of the area around his ships. Mind you, Columbus' voyages predate the invention of the sextant. He had a quadrant and an astrolabe for determining latitude, an hourglass rather than a chronometer, and a plank of wood tied to a knotty rope as a speedometer. He had a magnetic compass for determining heading, and was the first known European to document the phenomenon of magnetic declination. And that's kind of it; he was wacky enough to attempt a transatlantic voyage navigating by dead reckoning with an incomplete chart, and got monumentally lucky there was an archipelago about where he thought he was going.

[–] thedruid@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

And today's are still distorted

[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Calm down, just saying it wasnt 'confirmed' until then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth that was the time we finally managed to circumnavigate the earth for the first time

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I believe they knew it was round long before the voyage because the curve of the shadow of the earth on the moon(during lunar eclipse) proved it.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, and Erastothenes was measuring light angles and stuff way back in 200 BC to get an approximate size of the Earth's circumference. The old folks were pretty dang smart.

[–] hornywarthogfart@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

He was a pretty smart dude. Came up with the sieve technique for finding primes as well. Or is credited with it anyways....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes.

[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I know, but that was the time they first proved it by circumnavigating (and not the other means), that why I wrote 'confirmed'.

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Seeing a curved shadow on the moon was 100% confirmation as it would be impossible with a flat earth.

[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Tell that to your average sailor in the 1400s

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How about your average Hellenian polymath from a few thousand years ago?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

He is best known for being the first person known to calculate the Earth's circumference, which he did by using the extensive survey results he could access in his role at the Library. His calculation was remarkably accurate (his error margin turned out to be less than 1%). He was the first to calculate Earth's axial tilt, which similarly proved to have remarkable accuracy.[4][5] He created the first global projection of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era.

If we only hadn't picked monotheism at any point, the world would be rather different, we'd have actual hoverboards now, and like prolly starships with actual warp engines.

[–] Dagnet@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

He is not who the meme is about but yeah, religion has dragged down humanity's progress in pretty much very single way over the ages

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Eh, I hate to use the blanket term "religion" as if it was the opposite of someone trying to explain the world. Not all of them clearly are.

Dogmatic religion, eg monotheism, is what is bad for society.

But like even the random European sailors in 1400's would've been using Greek wisdom surely. They probably didn't know what it was but still some lessons...

Or not. We've been an ocean going species for like 100k+ years lol.

And the hobbits we found on Flores needed to get there somehow so they had at least like bamboo rafts like 800 000 years ago.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

I'm sure they did. That's why the sailors were okay with trying to sail around the world despite having no "proof".

The people in the 1400s weren't idiots. The average person knew the earth was round for basically the same reasons you do. Ships get lower as they sail away. Earths shadow is round. The moon is round. Someone told them it's round, and it's been common knowledge for 1000 years.

The evidence for the world being flat isn't so compelling that you're going to go to great lengths to argue the point in most cases, and if you're convinced it is then being told that someone went around it isn't going to actually convince you if someone telling you it's round isn't enough.