Flat Earth: Encyclopedia II - Flat Earth - Modern times

Flat Earth - Modern times

During the 19th century, the Romantic conception of a European "Dark Age" gave much more prominence to the Flat Earth model than it ever possessed historically. The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [2]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.

Russell, a professor of history at Santa Barbara who has written widely on mediaeval religion, heresy and witchcraft, explored the issue in Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell claims that the Flat Earth theory is a myth used to impugn pre-modern civilisation, especially that of the Middle Ages in Europe. Today essentially all professional mediaevalists agree with Russell that the "mediaeval flat earth" is a nineteenth-century fabrication, and that the few verifiable "flat earthers" were the exception.

As of the beginning of the 21st Century, there remain populations within rural cultures which, unexposed to technological civilisation, consider the world to be flat. With no long-distance communication requirements or other technological endeavours, their beliefs appear to suffice.

From a European perspective, Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia in the 15th century removed any serious doubts, and Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation any remaining ones. The myth that Christopher Columbus's sailors feared they would fall off the edge of the world is false: they were understandably uncertain about a voyage into the unknown, and were also worried that food supplies would run out. In fact Columbus did not provide sufficient supplies to reach China or the East Indies, his original destination; and if America had not existed then his expedition might have died of starvation. Columbus believed the Earth to be much smaller than it is now known to be; about the size of Mars, in fact.

Some Christians in England and United States tried to revive Flat Earth thinking in the 19th century. When Joshua Slocum arrived in the Transvaal Republic during his solo circumnavigation of the world, President Kruger berated him, telling him "you don't mean around the world; it is impossible! You mean in the world!"

Modern people who do not accept the spherical Earth and base this opinion on Scripture do not represent a continuing school of Biblical exegesis, although some small groups such as the Flat Earth Society in the USA work hard to keep the concept alive, and [3] have claimed a few thousand followers. Charles K. Johnson ran the Flat Earth Society from his home in California until he died in 2001.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Modern times", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki