Flat Earth

Flat Earth model is a view that the Earth's shape is a flat plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies.

The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in Greek astronomy, beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.

The misconception that educated people at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as "The Myth of the Flat Earth". In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.

Hecataeus of Miletus believed the earth was flat and surrounded by water. Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree he still believed the earth was a flat plain because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the earth.