It is taught as fact in classrooms. It is preached in movies. It’s written into textbooks and cartoons as a sort of universal punchline—“Back when people thought the earth was flat.” But here’s a truth that might shock you: the flat earth theory was never the dominant view among educated people. In fact, the whole narrative—that everyone from ancient history up to Christopher Columbus thought the earth was flat—is a myth. A modern one.
Let that sink in. The idea that our ancestors all believed in a flat earth isn’t ancient ignorance. It’s recent propaganda.
Ancient Observers Weren’t Stupid
We have Greek writings going back over 2,000 years that describe the Earth as round. Pythagoras, Aristotle, Eratosthenes—these men didn’t just theorize that the Earth was a sphere, they calculated its curvature and even estimated its circumference with shocking accuracy (Eratosthenes came within a few percentage points of the real number using shadows and a stick). These weren’t fringe scholars either. They were the mainstream intellectuals of their day.
Even ancient sailors knew it. They saw ships disappear hull-first over the horizon. They saw different constellations as they traveled north and south. They observed lunar eclipses, where Earth’s shadow on the moon was always curved. These weren’t anomalies—they were data points. And data points, when added together, reveal truth. The ancient world, despite lacking modern telescopes and satellites, had already figured it out: the Earth was round.
The Faithful Were Not Fools
Let’s put another nail in the coffin of this myth: Christians never led the charge for a flat Earth. You’ll often hear this tale—how the medieval Church suppressed science, how Columbus bravely defied the ignorant clergy who insisted he would fall off the edge. But the truth is almost the opposite.
The educated clergy of the Middle Ages were some of the most literate men of their time, trained in classical thought. Monasteries preserved the writings of Greek and Roman thinkers. And those same clergy—yes, Christian clergy—were teaching that the Earth was a sphere. The flat Earth idea was never church doctrine. Not once.
Even Thomas Aquinas, arguably the most influential theologian of the Middle Ages, accepted a spherical Earth as obvious. This wasn’t controversial. It was common knowledge.
Columbus Didn’t Prove the Earth Was Round
Let’s talk Columbus. Did he set out to prove the Earth was round? No. Everyone already believed that. What he argued was that the Earth was small—small enough to reach Asia by sailing west. The problem? He was wrong. He dramatically underestimated the Earth’s size. It’s only thanks to a conveniently placed pair of continents that he didn’t die at sea.
And while we’re myth-busting: Columbus also thought the Earth was pear-shaped. Yes, really.
So how did this myth—the flat Earth lie—become so widespread?
A Convenient Rewrite of History
The flat Earth myth didn’t gain traction until the 1800s. That’s right. The modern era. It was fueled by secular writers who wanted to paint religion as the eternal enemy of science. They needed a villain for their story of scientific progress, and the Church was an easy target.
Writers like Washington Irving and later John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White crafted a narrative that Christianity was anti-science, opposed to reason, and stubbornly clung to ignorance until the Enlightenment pulled humanity out of the dark. It made for a good story. It sold books. It just wasn’t true.
Why Do We Still Believe It?
Because nobody questions it. That’s it. People parrot what they’ve heard in media and classrooms. They read it in children’s books and watch it on cartoons. They hear professors repeat it, even in college classrooms, and assume it must be true.
I had to correct my own college professor when he casually repeated the myth—that “Christians believed the Earth was flat until science corrected them.” He blinked like a deer in headlights. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I just couldn’t let a lie go unchallenged.
The Irony? Modern People Are the Ones Believing in Flat Earths
The true irony is that in today’s hyper-educated, Google-powered, “follow the science” world, there are more actual flat earthers than there were in the ancient world. We live in an age of unprecedented information and somehow, we’re the ones falling for pseudoscience.
Ancient people weren’t perfect. But they weren’t stupid.
Maybe instead of mocking them, we should study them. Maybe we should be slower to assume that our version of history is the only true one. Maybe—just maybe—we should start teaching truth in our schools, not politically convenient mythology.
Because believing in a flat Earth is dumb. But believing that all of human history believed in a flat Earth… might just be dumber.
Maybe the real question isn’t if ancient people were smarter than we thought—but why modern people are so desperate to believe they weren’t. And why, in all this time, no one has corrected the lie.
Personal thoughts
What’s truly humbling—maybe even embarrassing—is realizing how much raw brilliance existed in the ancient world. We like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of intellect, the peak of progress, the wisest humanity has ever been. But the more you read history, the more that illusion crumbles.
The ancient world wasn’t crawling with idiots. It was filled with philosophers who debated logic, ethics, and metaphysics at levels most modern graduates couldn’t keep up with. Mathematicians who laid the groundwork for geometry, algebra, and trigonometry long before computers ever buzzed. Engineers who built aqueducts, temples, and cathedrals so enduring that our own infrastructure looks disposable by comparison.
The Library of Alexandria housed more accumulated knowledge than most nations had access to for centuries afterward. The Antikythera mechanism—essentially an ancient Greek analog computer—predicted eclipses. The Mayans charted celestial movements with stunning precision. The Chinese recorded supernovas and perfected printing centuries before Gutenberg. These were not primitives fumbling in the dark. These were giants.
We are not the torchbearers of all wisdom. We are midgets standing on the shoulders of those giants. The only reason we can see farther is because we were handed their work. Our “progress” is less the result of elevated intellect and more the benefit of inherited data and machines that think faster than we do. And tragically, those machines are now replacing our thinking altogether.
That’s not progress. That’s dependency.
And if you really want to weep for the modern mind, consider this: the average ancient philosopher could school a modern graduate on logic, ethics, and theology before lunch—in Latin. Yet we mock them for supposedly believing the Earth was flat, when in truth, it’s modern society that perpetuates that delusion. It’s modern classrooms that fail to teach the truth. It’s modern minds that echo lies without thinking.
The reality? The ancients weren’t the fools. We are.
Because while they sought wisdom, we settle for soundbites.
While they questioned the cosmos, we Google for convenience.
And while they looked to the heavens and marveled, we look at our phones and scroll.
History isn’t bunk. It’s warning. It’s mirror. It’s echo. And yes, it repeats itself. Civilizations rise and fall not because they lacked knowledge—but because they forgot how to respect it.
So maybe, just maybe, instead of rewriting the past to feel superior, we should start learning from it.
Before the next myth gets written—and we become the punchline.
Responses:
- “They didn’t live as long or have modern medicine!”
Rebuttal:
True. They didn’t live as long—but that’s a reflection of sanitation, antibiotics, and trauma care, not intellect. Longevity is not a measure of wisdom. A toddler today has access to penicillin; that doesn’t make them smarter than Hippocrates. - “They believed in magic and gods. We have science now.”
Rebuttal:
We have science now because they started asking questions. Nearly every early scientist—Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Pascal—believed in God and the supernatural. The Enlightenment didn’t replace belief; it grew out of it. They believed there was order because they believed in an Orderer. Dismissing that as “magic thinking” is like calling an engine a rock because you don’t like the fuel. - “But we have the internet!”
Rebuttal:
Yes. And most people use it for cat videos, conspiracy theories, and arguing with strangers about pineapple on pizza. Access to information is not the same as wisdom. Ancient scholars memorized entire texts—some rabbis memorized the entire Torah and commentary by the time they were teenagers. Modern students forget their passwords weekly. Who’s the genius again? - “We went to the moon. They barely left their villages.”
Rebuttal:
You didn’t go to the moon. NASA did. Most modern people couldn’t explain how a toilet works, let alone a rocket. Ancient people navigated the open ocean using only the stars and the angle of a shadow. They built megaliths aligned to celestial bodies. They constructed cities without bulldozers or GPS. That’s not ignorance—that’s innovation under pressure. - “They were violent and superstitious.”
Rebuttal:
And modern man isn’t? Genocides, world wars, nuclear stockpiles, eugenics, and ideological purges are a modern invention. Don’t confuse technological polish with moral advancement. If anything, modern man has more efficient ways to destroy himself. - “We’re evolving. They were less evolved.”
Rebuttal:
That’s not how evolution works. Intelligence is not a guaranteed upward curve. In fact, the Flynn Effect (which showed rising IQs over the 20th century) has started reversing. People are getting dumber in measurable ways. And intelligence isn’t just data-processing—it’s logic, memory, moral reasoning, and creativity. By that measure, Socrates would eat most of us for breakfast. - “We’re more enlightened now.”
Rebuttal:
Really? We mutilate language, cancel people for disagreement, and call boys girls because feelings matter more than facts. Ancient people had flaws, but they knew what a man was, what a woman was, and how to form a coherent argument. Enlightenment isn’t light when it blinds you to reality.
ok keep going. include Galilao, looking down on people for believing in deamons. Then finish calling out those who’s gut reaction is to laugh at ancient theists, forgetting Newton, and all the other great Christians and theists who set the foundation for science. - 8. “Galileo proves religion was anti-science.”
Rebuttal:
Galileo proves no such thing. Yes, he was tried—by people who held to the scientific consensus of the day: geocentrism, inherited from Aristotle and Ptolemy. The Church didn’t oppose science—it opposed being mocked and politically embarrassed. Many clergy supported Galileo’s math. He remained a Christian to his dying breath. And let’s not forget—he wasn’t tortured or executed. He lived under house arrest in a villa and kept writing.
If anything, Galileo proves that challenging mainstream thought—especially when it’s wrapped in institutional power—will get you in trouble. That happens in both religious and secular regimes. Ask the scientists today who get canceled for not toeing the cultural line.
9. “They believed in demons. We’re past that.”
Rebuttal:
You’re not “past” anything—you just renamed the symptoms. Ancient people weren’t stupid; they knew the difference between a broken leg and a man babbling in another voice, speaking languages he never learned, or clawing at his own flesh without pain. Modern psychology calls these “episodes,” “disorders,” or “trauma responses.” That’s just semantics stapled to mystery.
Isaac Newton believed in demons. So did Blaise Pascal. And again—Newton invented calculus in his spare time. So maybe we should be a little slower to sneer at men who accomplished more with candlelight than we’ve done with Google.
And hey—for all our “progress,” we still haven’t explained consciousness, free will, or even why placebo works. So maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be so sure the ancients were wrong about everything spiritual.