Re: Flat Earth

[Chris Horton <ChrisAHorton2@HOTMAIL.COM>]

<<. After all Eratosthenes first
> measure the earth's circumference in about 350 B.C.E. Since
> historians don't spend much time talking with the uneducated, I don't
> know how widespread that idea was with them much before Columbus'
> time. Contrary to the stories about Columbus' sailors, I doubt many
> seamen by that time doubted the sphericity of the earth. >>

Here's the real mystery.  Since the time of Eratosthenes, any navigator
needed the knowledge of the size of the earth to translate a change in the
elevation of the North Star into a distance.  So this knowledge was
widespread.

Columbus, as I understand it, claimed for the Earth a circumference about
half of the actual value, and on this basis equipped a fleet for a 5000-km
or so voyage to Japan.  How could an experienced navigator have been so
wrong?

Chris Horton