When I was in elementary school, I can remember my teacher telling a story about the young Christopher Columbus watching a ship leave the harbor. He noticed that as it got further away it disappeared, but with its sails staying in sight longer than the hull. Eureka! Columbus deduced that the explanation for this was the Earth must be round. When he got older, he was determined to prove it. And find a new way to the riches of the Far East. In the 15th Century, ships were sailing to China, India, and Japan by sailing around Africa. It was a long journey. Columbus felt that sailing west would end up shorter. According to my teacher, when he proposed the voyage to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the court officials laughed at him. His belief in a round Earth was sacrilege.
The truth is that Columbus was not ahead of his time in believing the Earth was round. As early as the 6th Century B.C., Greek scientists knew the Earth was round. Lunar eclipses proved the Sun was round and so was the Moon. Therefore, the Earth must be round, too. It was Aristotle that noticed that ships leaving a harbor had their hulls disappear before their sails. Eratosthenes, in Egypt, was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy. Historian Jeffrey Burton stated that “no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the 3rd century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat.”
So, when Columbus came to convince Ferdinand and Isabella to sponsor him, he was not faced with skeptics about round versus flat. The monarchs’ geographers argued the money would be poorly invested because sailing west would take longer than a ship could survive. They were right. Columbus had miscalculated the size of the Earth. He argued that it was about 5,000 kilometers to reach Japan. Actually, it is closer to 20,000. 5,000 kilometers was the range of a sailing ship back then. After that, you would be forced to turn around or end up using up all your food and water. Some historians believe Columbus came up with the 5,000 kilometer figure because God would not have the world so big that Columbus would perish. His faith convinced Isabella and she put her faith in him above her experts.
On Oct. 10, 1492, Columbus’ ships were nearing that 5,000 kilometer mark. The crews weren’t afraid of sailing off the edge of the Earth. They were worried about running out of food and water. They threatened to mutiny, but Columbus talked them into waiting three more days. America was discovered two days later. Columbus had failed. The land he spotted was not off the coast of India, but he refused to believe this and insisted on naming the natives “Indians”. Three more voyages failed to get him to admit he had found a new continent (actually two). He went to his death believing he had reached Asia. His stubbornness resulted in the New World being named after another explorer (Amerigo Vespucci) instead of Columbus.
So, how did this myth get started? In 1828, Washington Irving wrote a biography of Columbus entitled “The life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus”. To make his book more entertaining, he invented the Earth is round story. Textbooks and teachers picked up the story and passed it on to generations of students. In fact, it is still being taught in classrooms today. This must stop. If you are one of those teachers, tell your students you were wrong. They’ll understand, unless their parents are flat-earthers.
https://www.history.com/news/christopher-columbus-never-set-out-to-prove-the-earth-was-round
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/columbus-earth/
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/people-in-columbus-time-did-not-think-the-world-was-flat/
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