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Define ancient. We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth. There is enough proof for this, and Ancient Greece and Romans discovered

Define ancient. We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth. There is enough proof for this, and Ancient Greece and Romans discovered this to be wrong. But independent of this, there is also the claim that people in medieval Europe believed in a flat earth, again, and this was brought up as a reason why Columbus expedition would fail when he searched for supporters and ships. And in fact, such stories are not that uncommon at the 18. Century. Thinkers and scientists were fighting against the church, and they made up many fake stories to show how stupid and dangerous the church is. And AFAIK the church believing in a flat earth was one of them.

whiddershins 3y ago
For example, many people today believe that we only use 10% of our brain. But it wouldn’t be fair to say that’s what our “culture” believes to be true.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  It is true in the sense that we only use about 10%, at any given time, for some definitions of percent. People just fail to understand that the other 90% is just not useful, rather than unused potential.
  - spigottoday 3y ago
    That is news to me and interesting. Do you have a citation or link to share?
    - srinivgp 3y ago
      "people only use about 2% of the volume of their house at any given time"
    - GuB-42 3y ago
      I thought bullshit too. After all, why would chemical reactions in the brain stop? But after a bit of thinking and Googling, I stumbled upon this https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-our-brains-information-processing-capacity https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-our... Not saying that only X% of our brain is being used, but what it essentially says is that our brain is power-limited, and therefore, it has to be selective in which parts to "turn on". It makes a lot of sense, there are few things in life more important than energy and power management, and human brains already need lots of both.
      - duskwuff 3y ago
        We have a word for what happens when people "use 100% of their brain". We call that an epileptic seizure. :)
    - melagonster 3y ago
      scientists distinguished function of different regions in our brain, so human doesn't need to use all region is a more obvious idea now. I can't recommend literature, a probably source is in medical textbook.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Is it even usable at same time? There is some level of plasticity, but in general certain parts activate for certain tasks and you can't really make it use more parts at one time.
    - aeonik 3y ago
      Your brain can definitely get bursts of more activity, it's not desirable though. They are called seizures. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/symptoms-causes/syc-20365711 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/sympt...
marcosdumay 3y ago
> We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth. There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer), even though I do know of some ambiguous texts that people keep interpreting as that, but are much better explained as they not caring about the shape. It's quite hard to do astronomy on a larger area than a single city and not discover the planet isn't flat. And it looks like people have been exchanging astronomic findings over some longish distances for longer than they have been writing texts that we can read today.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  > There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. For those, we don't have any kind of indicator what they believed about earths shape, so why do they matter? The way you phrased your comment indicated that you kinda believe that now one at any point in early history really believed in a flat earth, and it's all just a story made up later.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Half this comment section is saying that.
- Zancarius 3y ago
  > I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer) Semitic cultures very much believed the Earth was more or less a disc-like shape that consisted of the known world (mostly in their sphere of influence, if you pardon the expression). But they also had some other ideas, like that of chaotic universal waters above and below the Earth, separated by the firmament, and supported by pillars (though you can see this idea changing somewhat by the time the book of Job was written). This is a theme that is repeated in Genesis, Isaiah, Job, and one or more of the Psalms. Not coincidentally, it's fairly well established in the scholarly literature that this was the view of ancient Near Eastern writers, and it wasn't until Young Earth Creationists decided to apply a degree of scientific concordism to the text where we get a more distorted view of Hebrew words like hûg inferring something other than a disc or circular inscription. It's true that they probably didn't care so much about the shape (unlike us), but their cosmology is definitely inferred rather strongly in the biblical texts (and in some cases from their neighbors). John Walton's "Lost World" series on Genesis are a good pointer in this direction, but I'd also suggest the IVP Bible Background Commentary (Walton is a contributor) which certainly touches on this motif and draws upon other creation accounts such as those in the Ugaritic tablets, Baal Cycle, etc. The late Dr. Michael Heiser has a great lecture series you can find on YT talking about biblical cosmology that might help if you're into that format. The link with Columbus was indeed perpetrating a myth. You get this as recently as Ray Comfort's "Evidence Bible" which is filled with complete buffoonery in that it attempts to explain Columbus' motives based on his mention of Isaiah; YECs like Comfort link this to Isaiah 40:22 (again, with an incorrect reading of hûg). Columbus was motivated by his eschatology and the only reason he ever cited Isaiah was because of its dual function as prophetic-apocalyptic literature.
russdill 3y ago
People thought Columbus's voyage would fail precisely because they believed the Earth to be a sphere and thus the distance from Europe to India was too far to traverse. Columbus tried to convince everyone it would succeed by claiming the Earth was instead pear shaped. https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm
SilasX 3y ago
Also, when someone says, "they knew the earth was round in the Middle Ages", they mean "educated people knew". Guess what fraction were educated? Not many. So ... averaged over the population, it's not entirely correct. It would be like saying, "It's a myth that in the 21st century, they were bunch of rubes who were unaware that every single object is exerting a gravitational force on them." Well, um, it's a myth that physics-educated people were unaware of this, sure. But most people have no reason to learn about this or be aware of it; it's not relevant to everyday life.

whiddershins 3y ago

For example, many people today believe that we only use 10% of our brain. But it wouldn’t be fair to say that’s what our “culture” believes to be true.

jncfhnb 3y ago
It is true in the sense that we only use about 10%, at any given time, for some definitions of percent. People just fail to understand that the other 90% is just not useful, rather than unused potential.
- spigottoday 3y ago
  That is news to me and interesting. Do you have a citation or link to share?
  - srinivgp 3y ago
    "people only use about 2% of the volume of their house at any given time"
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    I thought bullshit too. After all, why would chemical reactions in the brain stop? But after a bit of thinking and Googling, I stumbled upon this https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-our-brains-information-processing-capacity https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-our... Not saying that only X% of our brain is being used, but what it essentially says is that our brain is power-limited, and therefore, it has to be selective in which parts to "turn on". It makes a lot of sense, there are few things in life more important than energy and power management, and human brains already need lots of both.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      We have a word for what happens when people "use 100% of their brain". We call that an epileptic seizure. :)
  - melagonster 3y ago
    scientists distinguished function of different regions in our brain, so human doesn't need to use all region is a more obvious idea now. I can't recommend literature, a probably source is in medical textbook.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Is it even usable at same time? There is some level of plasticity, but in general certain parts activate for certain tasks and you can't really make it use more parts at one time.
  - aeonik 3y ago
    Your brain can definitely get bursts of more activity, it's not desirable though. They are called seizures. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/symptoms-causes/syc-20365711 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seizure/sympt...

marcosdumay 3y ago

> We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in a flat earth. There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer), even though I do know of some ambiguous texts that people keep interpreting as that, but are much better explained as they not caring about the shape. It's quite hard to do astronomy on a larger area than a single city and not discover the planet isn't flat. And it looks like people have been exchanging astronomic findings over some longish distances for longer than they have been writing texts that we can read today.

PurpleRamen 3y ago
> There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. For those, we don't have any kind of indicator what they believed about earths shape, so why do they matter? The way you phrased your comment indicated that you kinda believe that now one at any point in early history really believed in a flat earth, and it's all just a story made up later.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Half this comment section is saying that.
Zancarius 3y ago
> I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and would really like a pointer) Semitic cultures very much believed the Earth was more or less a disc-like shape that consisted of the known world (mostly in their sphere of influence, if you pardon the expression). But they also had some other ideas, like that of chaotic universal waters above and below the Earth, separated by the firmament, and supported by pillars (though you can see this idea changing somewhat by the time the book of Job was written). This is a theme that is repeated in Genesis, Isaiah, Job, and one or more of the Psalms. Not coincidentally, it's fairly well established in the scholarly literature that this was the view of ancient Near Eastern writers, and it wasn't until Young Earth Creationists decided to apply a degree of scientific concordism to the text where we get a more distorted view of Hebrew words like hûg inferring something other than a disc or circular inscription. It's true that they probably didn't care so much about the shape (unlike us), but their cosmology is definitely inferred rather strongly in the biblical texts (and in some cases from their neighbors). John Walton's "Lost World" series on Genesis are a good pointer in this direction, but I'd also suggest the IVP Bible Background Commentary (Walton is a contributor) which certainly touches on this motif and draws upon other creation accounts such as those in the Ugaritic tablets, Baal Cycle, etc. The late Dr. Michael Heiser has a great lecture series you can find on YT talking about biblical cosmology that might help if you're into that format. The link with Columbus was indeed perpetrating a myth. You get this as recently as Ray Comfort's "Evidence Bible" which is filled with complete buffoonery in that it attempts to explain Columbus' motives based on his mention of Isaiah; YECs like Comfort link this to Isaiah 40:22 (again, with an incorrect reading of hûg). Columbus was motivated by his eschatology and the only reason he ever cited Isaiah was because of its dual function as prophetic-apocalyptic literature.

russdill 3y ago

People thought Columbus's voyage would fail precisely because they believed the Earth to be a sphere and thus the distance from Europe to India was too far to traverse. Columbus tried to convince everyone it would succeed by claiming the Earth was instead pear shaped. https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm

SilasX 3y ago

Also, when someone says, "they knew the earth was round in the Middle Ages", they mean "educated people knew". Guess what fraction were educated? Not many. So ... averaged over the population, it's not entirely correct. It would be like saying, "It's a myth that in the 21st century, they were bunch of rubes who were unaware that every single object is exerting a gravitational force on them." Well, um, it's a myth that physics-educated people were unaware of this, sure. But most people have no reason to learn about this or be aware of it; it's not relevant to everyday life.