(June 8, 2012 at 1:05 am)Stimbo Wrote: First to describe the Earth as flat? Was this intentional or just a typo?
If a typo,it's wrong.
As far as we know,learned people have never considered the earth to be flat. The reality was probably observed by a Babylonian astrologer about 1000 bce. By the time of Hellenistic Greece, it seems to have been universally accepted that world was a sphere.
As for who proved the fact empirically, nobody knows. Some would claim Ferdinand Magellan in 1519. My money is on Zheng He (1371-1433)
