He mistakenly believed that the circumference of Earth was very small and that by traveling west toward what he thought was China, he’d open up new trade routes. However, Columbus ran into resistance when he tried to get funding for his landmark journey for a different reason. Thus, it’s nearly impossible-and completely implausible-that rich Spaniards of the late 15th century thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the map. Using calculations based on the sun’s rise and fall, shadows and other physical properties of the planet, Greek scholars like Pythagoras and Aristotle determined that the planet is actually a sphere.ĭuring Columbus’ time, educated people carefully studied knowledge passed down by the ancient Greeks. That was thanks to scientists, philosophers and mathematicians who, as early as around 600 B.C., made observations that Earth was round. onward believed that the Earth was flat.” According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, “no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C.

There’s just one problem: It’s almost certain that in the 1490s, nobody thought the earth was flat.

Is the earth flat or round debate