A globus cruciger is a small sphere with a cross affixed to the top. Christian medieval rulers would hold one as a symbol of dominion over Earth (with the cross

A globus cruciger is a small sphere with a cross affixed to the top. Christian medieval rulers would hold one as a symbol of dominion over Earth (with the cross dominating the Earth's globe). Even before Christ, they used to just hold globes. It's the same image as that "evil megacorporation controlling the world" hand-holding-Earth image we've all seen before. My point is that they seem to have known continuously since ancient times that the Earth was a sphere. They were using globus crucigers the whole time. Even in the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Emperor had coins made with his image holding such a globe, around 700AD. It seems more like they'd know the Earth was round but really have no reason to care or spend any time thinking about it, the same way we don't spend time talking about the microwave background radiation from the big bang or the structure of our local galactic supercluster. These people didn't even have a standard unit to measure bags of grain from one village to the next. Assuming they had any grain to measure at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_cruciger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_cruciger (Incidentally the ritual orb which Elsa must take in Frozen is a politically correct de-Christianized version of this).