by 
Believer
ANSWERS: 4
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Though most people think that Columbus was the the first to discover the earth was round; as far as we can tell nobody ever considered the world to be flat. The very earliest writings always describe the world as a dome or an upturned bowl or as a pile of soil or similar descriptions. So we can assume that people never thought the world was flat. That makes sense since anyone who climbed even a small mountain could see quite clearly that the world curves away on all sides. As a result they assumed it was shaped like a dome, with their location near the top. I guess what you meant to ask is when people first started to think the world was spherical. We don't know the answer to that question. We know that by the time we get to Hellenistic Greece it seems to have been universally accepted that the world was a sphere. Given their advanced astronomy it seems almost certain that the Persians had figured out that the Earth was spherical. After all they saw that the moon was spherical. So the person who first discovered that the world was round was probably some Persian or Babylonian astrologer 3, 000 years ago. from Yahoo
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Any experienced seafarer probably figured it out thousands of years ago. But like all trades they don't tell people who are not in their trade so it was never written down or told to anyone. Anybody who goes out on a ship can see that the earth is a sphere. Sit and look at a flat table, then go out from a high point and look into the horizon...DUH.
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We know that the ancient Greeks figured it out, and possibly others before them. "Scholars like Pythagoras in 500 BC based their belief on observations about the way the altitudes of stars varied at different places on Earth and how ships appeared on the horizon. As a ship returned to port, first its mast tops, then the sails, and finally its hull gradually came into view. Aristotle, who lived 300 years before Christ, observed that the Earth cast a round shadow on the moon." http://www.gma.org/space1/nav_map.html
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@Believer: >>Then don't answer the question if you don't want to.<< I answered b/c you posted it in the SCIENCE section, which created the illusion of legitimacy. ~ >>I just showed you scientific facts in the Bible....<< There are no "scientific facts" in the Bible. 1) the authors are unknown, 2) the assertions are unsupported, 3) much of it is undisguised allegory and fable ("parables"), with no pretense of being literal (factual). ~ I know you desperately want to believe, but you should try to distinguish reality from mythology. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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