Some early Greek philosophers alluded to a spherical Earth, though with some ambiguity. Anaximenes, an early Greek philosopher, believed strongly that the Earth was rectangular in shape. Speculation and theorizing ranged from the flat disc advocated by Homer to the spherical body reportedly postulated by Pythagoras. However, nothing certain about their knowledge of geography and navigation has survived therefore, later researchers have no evidence that they conceived of Earth as spherical. The historian Dmitri Panchenko hypothesizes that it was the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa that inspired the theory of a spherical Earth, the earliest mention of which was made by the philosopher Parmenides in the 5th century BC. To modern historians, these details confirm the truth of the Phoenicians' report. He stated that the phenomenon was observed by Phoenician explorers during their circumnavigation of Africa ( The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the Sun on their right when circumnavigating in a clockwise direction. In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the Sun observed shining from the north.

The first circumnavigation of Africa is described as being undertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II c. 610–595 BC. Īnother possible explanation can be traced back to earlier Phoenician sailors. Neugebauer is that it was 'the experience of travellers that suggested such an explanation for the variation in the observable altitude of the pole and the change in the area of circumpolar stars, a change that was quite drastic between Greek settlements' around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, particularly those between the Nile Delta and Crimea.

A plausible explanation given by the historian Otto E. Though the earliest written mention of a spherical Earth comes from ancient Greek sources, there is no account of how the sphericity of Earth was discovered, or if it was initially simply a guess. Hellenic world Initial development from a diversity of views Two early arguments for a spherical Earth were that lunar eclipses were seen as circular shadows and that Polaris is seen lower in the sky as one travels South. The corresponding scientific discipline, geodesy ( /dʒiːˈɒdɪsi/), began in pre-scientific antiquity and blossomed during the Age of Enlightenment.Įarly ideas about the figure of the Earth held the Earth to be flat (see flat Earth) and the heavens a physical dome spanning over it. The history of geodesy deals with the historical development of measurements and representations of the Earth.

Flat earth ancient map