QI | What Shape Did People Used To Believe The World Was?

[@wowyaywowyaywow]

Well, it does seem to be going pear-shaped these days.

[@Jotari]

In what way?

[@joshuanorman2]

No Americans are getting pear shaped.

[@KellyVergara]

Joshua Norman "getting"?

[@METALFREAK03]

Awesome, I love pears!

[@youngdolo8]

Even more so today

[@bravely_first6057]

Bill and Alan's jokes about planes circling around to fool you and asking Stephen "how do you know? were you there?" would be so much funnier if not for the growing number of people who say those things 100% seriously.

[@brettjohnson536]

I've met some genuine flat earthers and they're really annoying, so I actually think it's hilarious that what they believe, and will talk about with complete confidence thinking they sound like a genius, is literally a comedian's improvised nonsense rant which he did a joke 😂

[@metalswifty23]

@@freneticness2136 The flat earth myth (and thus people who believe it) has been around for about a couple centuries, so it wouldn't have had anything to do with the internet. People on the internet just gave it a stronger voice in recent decades.

[@imcallingjapan2178]

Donald Trump actually said that to a historian who corrected him on the site of an American Civil War battle.

[@pouncebaratheon4178]

Surprised Fry didn't mention Eratosthenes, who around ~200 BC calculated the circumference of the earth to within a few percent of the actual value using trigonometry.

[@kaseimir]

Correct! I was about to post this same thing but scrolled back and saw yours. So all mentioned in this clip are post Eratosthenes. They didn't think it was round, they would have KNOWN it was round, because of him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

[@pierzing.glint1sh76]

Pounce Baratheon I’m extremely surprised that he mentioned “photo evidence” instead of citing aristosthenese’s experiment. Photo evidence can be faked, so there’s always people who won’t believe it

[@superfluidity]

Although I suppose those people would take issue with Eratosthenes's assumptions that the curvature of every part of the earth is like the curvature of the surface of Egypt, and that sunlight rays are perfectly parallel.

[@peterfireflylund]

Because Stephen Fry isn't actually that well-read. He just plays someone on TV who is.

[@mandowarrior123]

Uhh slight correction. Flat earthers think the earth is round. Most people think its an oblate spheroid.

[@ruofanyu6699]

Rich Hall is rarely uproariously funny but I love his comments the most out of all the guests that have ever appeared.

[@appnzllr]

I find Rich Hall very funny

[@parkeradelaide4579]

the world is obviously flat, how else would it sit on the elephants?

[@tikitourz3974]

I worry about how the elephants manage to balance on the giant turtle...

[@parkeradelaide4579]

Cal Alaera the turtle swims in the cosmos

[@muskatDR]

But what gender is it?

[@parkeradelaide4579]

muskatDR why do you want to gender the turtle and elephants?

[@muskatDR]

Parker Adelaide Nonono...The elephants are no concern of mine. The sex of the turtle could be very important. It might encounter another turtle and so the sexes of said turtles could mean alot

[@ZakeBudek]

It's turtles all the way down.

[@LoneKharnivore]

This answer is underappreciated.

[@gothnerd887]

Is that a Terry Prattchet reference?

[@drdrdrk]

Goth Nerd , no ) it’s an anecdote... I think they talked about it in the first ever episode of QI

[@easylee]

It is from A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkings. A lady confronted him and told him the world was on the back of a turtle. When he asked what the turtle was on she said you cant catch me it's turtles all the way down

[@onemercilessming1342]

Zake Budek--Bravo!! Well done!!!!

[@Colorband]

"He blames Washington Irving, the American writer..." _(suspiciously cuts to Rich Hall)_

[@almostfm]

The Greeks knew the Earth was round because during a lunar eclipse, the Earth's shadow is always round. If the Earth was flat, the shadow from lunar eclipses that happen right after sunset or right before sunrise would be a rectangle. And to answer Alan's question-yes all stars are round, although they do have some amount of oblateness. The most oblate star we've found is Achernar (Alpha Eridani), which has been estimated to have equatorial diameter 56% greater than it's polar diameter, due to it's high rotation rate

[@xaverlustig3581]

How did they know it's the earth's shadow that's covering the moon, and not something else? There's still some assumption involved.

[@stevowilliams8279]

@@xaverlustig3581 because the simplest explanation is usually the right one

[@dougaltolan3017]

@@stevowilliams8279 Ahh, the "good" old Occam's razor.... A trite little sound bite that is wrong more often than right.... It only applies to our understanding, our model of reality, not reality itself. Astrophysics: the simple version of planetary orbits using purely Newtonian physics is incomplete. To suggest that including relativity is the simpler model is clearly wrong. The Greeks postulated the atom, the fundamental building block of everything. First chemistry shit that simple model to shreds, then quantum physics ground the shreds to dust. It seems that the universe is stubbornly complex, so the simplest model is not the best.

[@stevowilliams8279]

@@dougaltolan3017 what sound bite

[@dougaltolan3017]

@@stevowilliams8279 Occam's razor, that sound bite.

[@spencerraney4979]

Dante's set up of earth, hell, and purgatory, relies upon a model of the earth that requires it to be spherical.

[@samadhoosen6014]

Spencer Raney That's really interesting, can you tell us how? Or perhaps link an article?

[@stefanocontratto2101]

Samad Hoosen The entrance of Hell was near Jerusalem and Hell was shaped like an upside down cone going towards the centre of the earth. At the end of the cone there was Lucifer and after that, a long cave that would lead to the purgatory at the opposite side of the planet. On a flat earth model it would not be feasible.

[@fyllingenoy131]

It's funny that Bill's joke about planes just going in circles and things just being a lot closer together *is literally what flat-earthers actually believe*

[@brettjohnson536]

It's funny bit it's also kind of depressinhg, lol

[@rachelle10]

So all the pilots are in on it too?!? That's the funniest thing to me, for the whole theory to be true, about half the people in the world have to be in on it and yet no one slipped up. Why not just tell everyone at that point?

[@danielburger1775]

Look up Eddie Allende

[@pseudonayme7717]

The strangest thing about flearthers for me, is that they accept that every other significantly sized object in the universe is round but claim that Earth is not. Zero logic.

[@danielburger1775]

@@pseudonayme7717 That's not true, on more than one level.

[@tvdan1043]

Alan vs. Stephen in this clip is literally every conversation on the Internet ever.

[@paistinlasta1805]

I've always detested the "The world is not round, it's an oblate spheroid" thing. Round doesn't mean a perfect sphere, therefore an oblate spheroid is still round.

[@RubelliteFae]

I still find "round" annoying. A cylinder can be said to be round, so it's not a particularly useful word when talking about the shape of something. It's like someone asking the shape of a pentagon and replying "straight." Okay, sure.

[@Monkey80llx]

Round is a basic reference to something two dimensional. Spherical and cylindrical are two entirely different three dimensional forms. I’m not even particularly smart, by traditional standards and I know the difference. 🙄😆

[@paistinlasta1805]

"I’m not even particularly smart, by traditional standards" is possibly one of the most arrogant things I have ever heard

[@Ometecuhtli]

I hate it even more when people try to correct round with _oblong_ spheroid.

[@timothyheimbach3260]

There's a great line in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, at the beginning of the scene where he says "and that's how we know the world to be banana shaped"

[@ihathtelekinesis]

Still upset that we never got to hear how sheep bladders can prevent earthquakes.

[@kisbie]

I'm grateful QI corrected this historical fallacy, because few things are as irritating as those pseudo-science believing nutjobs that say "yeah, but people used to believe the world was flat, don't you know."

[@brokenwave6125]

They did believe that. Just not by the middle ages. You really think the first homo sapiens 250,000 years ago thought Earth was a ball?

[@GRAFFDEMON]

@@brokenwave6125 Yes but the initial point was what did people in the middle ages believe.

[@iagreewithyou7894]

Broken Wave do your really think the first Homo sapiens cared about the shape of the planet

[@WaxxyOne]

Technically they're still correct. Humanity didn't ALWAYS know the world was round, it's just that by the dark ages (and probably well before then), it was commonly known.

[@SKyrim190]

There is also a lot of "scientific" people that believe medieval people believed that, just so that they can have something to despise the medieval period about.

[@that-guy-pearce]

Fry is just a lovely man

[@jamestodd1104]

Secret Steve no he isn’t. Very intolerant to people’s religious beliefs

[@Sashi_Mee]

James Todd well maybe religious people should be pricks

[@davemuckeye]

Secret Steve ... who takes divine joy by being in another men's backside...

[@GRAFFDEMON]

@@davemuckeye What's wrong with that?

[@Ngamotu83]

Quite often engineers take into account the curvature of the Earth when building large structures, such as some suspension bridges. The towers on the Verrazano-Narrows suspension bridge for example, are slightly further apart at the top than at the bottom.

[@ujjwalreal]

Along with John Cleese, Stephen Fry is probably most boisterous and witty purveyor of the English language

[@karimqk1895]

I love it when Stephen feels the need to get curt with Alan 😂

[@kapitankapital6580]

Of course another piece of evidence is in the royal orb that pretty much every European monarch has. The symbol of the Cross wrapped above the orb is symbolic of Christ's authority over the Earth, and thus the round orb is a portrayal of the round Earth.

[@vroomkaboom108]

Patrick Ellis it’s convenient to think that, but it could also represent the universe, since in hebrew cosmology, the world is INDEED FLAT, with a dome sky where all the stars were studded and the underworld beneath.

[@demondwilson706]

Columbus didn't think the world was pear shaped, when he referenced a pear it was in a poetic context and not him literally describing the shape of the earth

[@benocq]

Demond Wilson What did he mean when he said it had a nipple on the top then?

[@tonydai782]

@@benocq That's a mistranslation, he thought the Garden of Eden was at the top.

[@OmegaMapDesign]

"And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped."

[@squishydafishy]

Very first thing i thought lmfao. Just taking a quick peek to see if anyone else made the comment. Gonna have to turn you into a Newt😁

[@Oceanmachine27]

This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedivere!

[@kelferg]

My first thought too!

[@jwillett7]

8 centuries BC, Isaiah wrote "It is he [i.e. God] who sits above the circle of the earth.” Original Hebrew suggests circle could be translated 'sphere.' Latin versions of that verse even used 'sphera'

[@LaughS0L0ud]

So peasants in the dark ages were more intelligent than modern day flat-earthers?

[@alexanderreusens7633]

They didn't have such a huge microphone as the flatties have now

[@varolussalsanclar1163]

Uneducated doesnt mean stupid. Flat earthers are educated but dumb as shit.

[@Onio_Saiyan]

It would appear so.

[@davidedwards3361]

That just about wraps it up for evolution. People are getting stupider not smarter.

[@luqas99]

Tila Tequila has a brain made for porn.

[@mfay6933]

Alan setting Stephen off is amazing

[@johnmullens2857]

Bill and Alan actually do (jokingly) use arguments that flat-earthers use lmao

[@RubelliteFae]

Indicating that we have done a poor job of educating everyday people for some time now.

[@LukeGeoDude]

The kind of shit they taught us in schools.

[@Mythraen]

"No one in the history of the world thought the world was flat." Stephen... you have not met the modern era.

[@RubelliteFae]

Also, everyone he mentioned was Western and rich enough to spend time in academic pursuits. We can never say, for example, what the Jomon people's conception of the shape of the Earth was-or even a peasant in the West. The only way to know the thoughts of someone from the past is if someone had written them down.

[@davidedwards3361]

Today's flat earthers also say Australia doesn't exist. It is just an island (not Australia) inhabited by actors. I'm sorry for wasting your time, but I don't exist, South Australia doesn't exist, and I am not writing this comment.

[@demetriosavdalis5574]

David Edwards what's a Sydney?

[@Ngamotu83]

They never say anything about us, your neighbours to the south-east.

[@twrampage]

@@Ngamotu83 We have neighbours to the south east?

[@greatiusiterfector4519]

@@twrampage yeah aliens, don't you know world ends there.

[@JouvaMoufette]

I mean, "David Edwards" DOES sound like a legit name of an actor...

[@geneticist8887]

Yes we've known the world is round since the 4th century Bc. Even eratosthanes calculated the size of the round earth with nothing more than sticks, shadows and angle from the sun. Its possible they even thought the earth was round from sumerian times 2000 bc as they were great mathematicians. We know at one time they thought it was flat but so little has survived from that period, we can never be absolutely sure that someone hadnt come up with it before. Ships sailing over the horizon and shadows of the round earth during an eclipse and all that.

[@mrfreeman2911]

the easiest way to know the Earth is round is a lunar eclipse :D The earths shadow on the moon. :) People in the ancient times had much more time to observe the world around them, as they didn't have netflix.

[@danielhenderson762]

But all human civilizations did not share their knowledge and informarion. I'm sure some civs did believe it was flat. Very few of the early civilizations had a written language, so we don't inow what they thought. But we know some thought this, and by logic, probably way more that we can't prove. So i disagree it's right to say "we have known since". The human race is not one singular entity

[@danielburger1775]

Unfortunately, the "Sumerians" are Victorian fiction..so, No.

[@ericabozanic6159]

Wow the world is shaped like a pine cone...that's amazing.

[@darthhodges]

It's my understanding that Columbus actually thought the Earth was smaller than everyone else did. He believed he could sail west from Europe all the way to Asia, his contemporaries were all sure he and his crew would die of starvation as it was simply too far for any journey to go without resupply. His contemporaries were right (at the time) except Columbus ran into a continent that Europe didn't know existed. What they really learned were that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were not one massive ocean but were actually separated by another continent.

[@CorsetGrace]

Excellent synopsis. Very true.

[@nocalsteve]

They had to know the size of the Earth at that time because Columbus had the technology based on it - a sextant.

[@CorsetGrace]

@@nocalsteve Columbus, and many others, had the right dimensions but the wrong actual number. They thought the world was about half it's actual size.

[@danielburger1775]

He thought he was going to India. And, according to the understanding of the time, he did reach India.

[@peterfireflylund]

It’s possible it was a ruse by Columbus. He might have known about Greenland and Vinland… and maybe, just maybe, Basque sailors had also been to North America.

[@appnzllr]

The key to the answer is the emphasis. What did "people" believe? You could ask the same question of people today and be correct to say that "people" believe the Earth is round. Generalities. You could also say that "people" today believe the Earth is flat, because there are people who believe that. Just because you have found some ancient writing that shows the author proved the Earth was round doesn't mean he wasn't coming up with a new concept in contradiction of what many people thought at the time. People thought the Earth was round, and people thought the Earth wasn't round.

[@jp4431]

1:42 actually yes, because of gravity. I skipped a few details on the explanation though.

[@ronrolfsen3977]

Ancient greeks figured out the earth was not flat by simply observing our planet and they did that with there limited tools they had. Now we can easily travel and easily observe this ourselves, yet still, some people believe in a flat earth. It keeps amazing me.

[@ingsve]

People used to think the earth was an oblate spheroid but now we know that it's actually flat, I saw it on the internet.

[@Terrakinetic]

i have watched more than two dozen episodes, but I still can't remember his name. I remember Stephen, I remember Bill, but somehow I constantly forget that third guy's name.

[@blackhairedgoon8218]

Terrakinetic Alan Davies?

[@dabidibup]

I bet in hundreds of years people will say “back in the TV ages people thought the galaxy was flat”… Or something, when in reality most of us never think about such things

[@onemercilessming1342]

That may be, but the ancient Romans believed the earth rested on the shell of a huge turtle. When a ship at sea sailed out of sight and then disappeared over the horizon (the topmost part of the sail is the last to be seen), they believed that the turtle swallowed the ship. The Northern Europeans in the early middle ages believed that the earth was tiered and centered around a tree.

[@kapitankapital6580]

Well one of the main signs of royal authority was the orb, a round metal object with a cross on top signifying Christ's authority over the whole Earth.

[@calliarcale]

I'm a bit disappointed that Stephen didn't bring up the single best evidence for the shape of the Earth, and the one which the ancient Greek philosophers used: anytime there is a lunar eclipse, you can see the shape of the Earth's shadow cast upon the Moon, and it is clearly circular, regardless of how high the Moon is over the horizon at the time you view the eclipse. (If the Earth were a disk, then the Earth's shadow on the Moon just after sunset would be just a thin sliver rather than a circle.) In fact, there will be a chance to observe this in less than a week for about half the Earth -- total lunar eclipse on May 26, 2021.

[@somebloke2238]

The premise of QI is basically just Everything you thought you knew is wrong

[@nocalsteve]

As opposed to the premise of Fox News that “we’ll just tell you what you want to hear.”

[@scratchfg212]

stars are round. The physics of it are clear, understandable and in books

[@AdmiralBonetoPick]

Yeah, Stephen Fry gives the impression of being an expert on all things when he's reading off his cue cards, but whenever he's asked something slightly off-topic by the panel - i.e. that he hasn't been briefed on for the show - he turns often out to be surprisingly ignorant. He is surprisingly gullible when the panelists make up facts: to an audience member we can tell they're having him on, but Stephen actually falls for it more often than not.

[@youremakingprogress144]

I think Bill was satirizing flat-Earthers and other conspiracy theorists, but Stephen actually got annoyed because he's dealt with people making those arguments seriously.

[@duggiebader1798]

Ha, love Stephen taking the piss without them even knowing it. The earth isn't actually "round" or "Spherical" to use the correct term its, as Stephen said, an "oblong or Oblate sphereoid".

[@scottorgan2255]

THANKS MURICA

[@briangarrow448]

My worry is about the people who STILL believe the world is flat.

[@michaelfarrell4824]

Mass 4chan troll movement, it's highly illogical that many people could be that stupid, a large portion of them must be just trolling

[@mandowarrior123]

I just worry about those that believe in global warming. They have voting power!

[@CMOT101]

Yeah but they're Americans so...

[@johnmullens2857]

I worry about the people who comments comments in the comments that have already been commented earlier in the comments..

[@Writeous0ne]

@@michaelfarrell4824 the smart ones are trolling, the rest are just gullible uneducated conspiracy theorists.

[@Anonymous9683]

Interesting how fry will square up his cards, then mess them up again, then square them again

[@justahotdog5153]

0:19 rob looks crushed

[@Theonlyleedsbasedjarling]

1:40 - 1:44 rich hall is off the ecstasy

[@CaptHayfever]

IIRC, the real issue was they didn't realize how *big* the planet is, or that there was a massive continent in the ocean between Europe & Asia (even though the vikings had already been here).

[@calliarcale]

Surprisingly, the ancient Greeks got a pretty good estimate of the size of the Earth. The trouble was, by the time Columbus attempted his voyage, people were using different units of measure and there was controversy over how large a "stadion" actually was. (That was the unit of measure that Eratosthenes expressed the Earth's circumference in.) Most scholars were pretty sure of what the conversion figure was (and modern scholars agree, and if you use this figure, it comes out surprisingly close to the real figure) but Columbus was siding with a minority view that a stadion was somewhat smaller, making the Earth smaller and therefore making a westward journey to India survivable. He was wrong, of course, but by sheer dumb luck found inhabited land anyway.

[@jeffc5974]

For most people, thinking of it as flat was as good enough of an approximation for everything they actually encountered. Even today that remains true.

[@mandowarrior123]

Jeff C from a travelling frame of reference, it is flatish.

[@TheIestynrhys]

It was from this episode of QI that Bill Bailey inspired the flat earth society XD

[@India.H]

"Can I read books, yes. Have I visited every star in the universe, no. Is that quite difficult to understand?" Intellectual burn from Fry there.

[@thetravelinghermit]

Columbus was right, our world has gone pear shaped

[@LoudMouth_]

It's funny watching them talk nonsense here but scary how many people actually believe this now.

[@michaelfarrell4824]

Mass 4chan troll movement, it's highly illogical that many people could be that stupid, a large portion of them must be just trolling

[@chrism7574]

There were believers in the flat earth, in fact they even had some evidence that was in admissible at the time when a man, near the water, watched a ship go down a river and was able to see the entirety of the ship the whole time. Only after discovering diffraction of light through water was it explainable that light was being bent by water creating that illusion, and that the ship would disappear sail last if the observer was high enough away from the water to negate the diffraction element.

[@luqas99]

The ancient Chinese thought the Earth was flat and square-shaped, and housed inside a giant stone egg.

[@andemaiar]

Fry was on his A game here.

[@pamelahomeyer748]

Even the Bible says the whole round of the Earth as you will notice that someone was taken up into the heavens and saw the whole round of the Earth

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

I saw the title. What went through my head? Stephen asks the question. Alan Davies answers "Flat" followed by the irritating sirens. Then I clicked.

[@JohnDoe-tx8lq]

I mean, let's not exaggerate... "All most no one in the history of the World thought the World is flat." 02:55 A LOT of people/religions have believed a lot of different things... But the Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, a Hinduism text, from 500 BC, mentions that humans and animals walking on earth is akin to ants crawling on a ball. - 500 BC!! 😎👍 (sorry I'm over 5 years late to the party, traffic was a nightmare!)

[@salwaaj1356]

It's expressions like''from every corners of the world'' or ''to the end of the world'' ..that suggest poeple thought otherwise..

[@dilekben]

To be fair, everyone's wrong. An oblate spheroid is a bit "flatter" than a sphere. So the flat earthers are just more wrong.

[@williamgardner2739]

To all you flat earthers out there, if you are correct then what other shapes does the world have? is it square or oblong or try angular or diamond or even star shaped as well as flat?

[@onlyweatherlol93]

He said round and FLAT... klaxon?! 🤪

[@tomasr.2945]

You fools! The world is half a sphere, resting on four elephants, who are standing on a giant tortoise.

[@mandowarrior123]

Tomas Rueda is that including or not including the firmament?

[@medievalist]

How dare you sir! The Great A'Tuin is a TURTLE, not a tortoise!

[@james5637]

You're all so dumb, everyone knows it's turtles all the way down 🤦‍♂️

[@gothnerd887]

I like turtles

[@UCUCUC27]

thers a very cheep and effective way to tell if the world is round or not so easy even flat earthers can do it! just tie a camera to a baloon and let it go when it reaches the upper atmosphere you will see the curvature of the earth

[@pierzing.glint1sh76]

Maxx Kroes and if you watch the sun set, then got in a plane and flew 200km west you’d see the sun come back up again lool.

[@michaelfarrell4824]

Kid on my street done it with his dad last year, the footage was amazing, was surprisingly cheap for the materials needed too

[@michaelfarrell4824]

If I remember right it landed within 30-40 miles away too so it wasn't a huge inconvenience to track the camera down either

[@zapkvr]

@@michaelfarrell4824 have you seen the bbc doc Orbit? They did this with a balloon. Its very impressive

[@jadenkhor3523]

does anyone know how/why rich gets invited to the show? like, what's his connection to the cast of qi / stephen fry?

[@sumertheory]

even the bible mentions that it's round

[@rawlinsonboy]

I personally think that the world is shaped like a saxophone

[@LostCylon]

Pear shaped? I suppose CC was kind of correct, they basically didn't know about the southern hemisphere back then. Terra Ingonita. Unknown Earth in English modern translation. An oblate speroid is basically a double ended pear, just more round than the ''pear shape future'' most politicians think of politics :) (Modern politicians view it as an overipe pear shape above them, about to come crashing down), but's that's just truths about them becoming known :p

[@DF-su8sj]

And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.

[@jeanclaudediscaya8735]

Earth's shadow is rounded.

[@shmookins]

I never got that. A plate could have different shadows.

[@thanksfernuthin]

Many people who wrote books knew it was round but that was tiny fraction of a percent. We don't know what the general understanding of most people was. Knowledge was not widely disseminated in those days. I think the whole point of this segment is disingenuous. Holy crap! I spelt disingenuous right, first try. Amazing.

[@chainsawgood123]

The thing is, as is also true today, what ordinary people with no academic background whatsoever thought about science is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter what shape your average peasant thought the world was, they weren't the ones this misconception was originally referring to in the first place. The focus of the question, and indeed on the myth this question is dispelling, is on what academics believed at the time. Your average peasant would likely never have given it a single thought. And even if they had, it wouldn't have meant anything.

[@James-sh1lw]

A well written comment! Couldn't agree more.

[@fluidthought42]

Shreyas Misra Well, particularly ancient Chinese depictions of the world referred to it as flat, but most of Europe got it as an update from the Greeks as to what the world is most likely like.

[@0nkelD0kt0r]

Mr. Seemingly Expected The greeks not only knew what "the world is most likely like", they were absolutely confident - they calculated the earths circumference to an almost spooky degree of precision for their time, less than 1% off the actual circumference. Incidentally that circumference also caused the clergy to have doubt in the plans of Christoph Culumbus because they knew roughly how far India would be to the west and Columbus couldn't have made a journey as far as that. Of course nobody could predict that there would be another continent in the way of India so the completely delusional Columbus, who thought the world was less than half as big as it actually is, somehow became a hero due to his stupidity. And he died without even realising his mistake.

[@fluidthought42]

Un1qZ Well, I was acting a bit coy about how the world is in fact an oblate spheroid, not a perfect sphere. How the ancient Greeks could have figured that tidbit out without calling in a few favors from Zeus is beyond me.

[@toketillubroke]

Definitely toblerone shaped

[@BillM1960]

Flat in that you could fall off one side of it, yes many did believe that, actually round don't know. Some thought it was the back of a turtle, round, yes, spherical no.

[@mandowarrior123]

Bill Mayhew no. One old lady in modern times believed that.

[@alwinpriven2400]

The world is a Klein bottle.

[@SlimThrull]

Ha. Trying solving gravity in 4D. No way it's a Klein bottle.

[@alwinpriven2400]

@@SlimThrull why do you think gravity is so much weaker than the other forces?

[@SlimThrull]

@@alwinpriven2400 Because... I... Hm... Look over there!

[@RubelliteFae]

@@alwinpriven2400 Because in every Universe in which gravity is stronger (or weaker) we don't come into existence to be able to observe the fact?

[@Zakimals]

I'm saying spherical

[@jb888888888]

Given that Columbus was planning to go all the way to India and only got as far as (what is now called) Hispaniola, I'd say his voyage was pear-shaped.

[@danielburger1775]

Actually, he successfully reached India. Words, especially geographic ones,had different meanings then to their modern understandings. For the vocabulary of the time, Columbus reached India. Just as Marco Polo went to India. And, even Stanley and Livingstone went to India...

[@bfkc111]

Most probably thought it was basically "the universe", that is, earth all the way (up to a point, in some desert or a coast, and then white all the way, as on a cold day or in the Matrix).

[@bfkc111]

And after some "infinite" thirty miles more Heaven and all that stuff. (By the way, thirty miles in the sky is still almost infinite to us.)

[@EleanorPeterson]

I was going to mention Terry Pratchett and Great A'Tuin, but then I thought I'd better not, because people get very, very angry about - Well, about everything, these days. Sigh. Oh. I've just mentioned Pratchett's turtle. Gosh, I'm so evil and attract so much hatred and contempt that I sometimes feel quite, quite faint. This is one of those times. And so I shall ask my chum the Death of Rats to make us a pot of coffee; we can sit in the Naughty Corner and nibble choccy Hobnobs and discuss the terrible thing I've done. Squeak? SQUEAK.

[@johns9652]

Nobody responded to your message, perhaps the Clacks is down.

[@DaPs166]

It’s not round, it’s a sphere

[@Scrubwave]

1:47 easy bait

[@douchopotamus3755]

And that, milord, is how we know the earth to be banana shaped.

[@geoffgeoff143]

What do you mean it's round. Round what?

[@Lord_Skeptic]

the world is not flat. it is not even level. surely mountains are the clue. Al Murray.

[@BoredDan7]

To be fair though, if you scaled the earth down to the size of a billiards ball it would be smooth enough to be one. "… This means that balls with a diameter of 2.25 inches cannot have any imperfections (bumps or dents) greater than 0.005 inches. In other words, the bump or dent to diameter ratio cannot exceed 0.005/2.25 = 0.0022222 The Earth’s diameter is approximately 12,756.2 kilometres or 12,756,200 metres…. So, if a billiard ball were enlarged to the size of Earth, the maximum allowable bump (mountain) or dent (trench) would be 28,347 metres. Earth’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, is only 8,848 metres above sea level. Earth’s deepest trench, the Mariana Trench, is only about 11 kilometres below sea level. So if the Earth were scaled down to the size of a billiard ball, all its mountains and trenches would fall well within the WPA’s specifications for smoothness. [UPDATE: See the comments section for a possible correction.]" - www.improbable.com/2012/04/03/billiard-balls-versus-the-earth/ of course as was pointed out in the comments, that while measurements from sea level show the earth as smooth enough to be a billiard ball, the oblong shape of the earth put the furthest and shortest points from the center of the earth outside the 0.22% tolerance. Point is the Earth is actually quite smooth relative to it's size.

[@Lord_Skeptic]

it was a joke

[@BoredDan7]

I know, but it was also a perfect segue into what I think is an interesting tidbit.

[@mandowarrior123]

Everest isnt the furthest point from the centre of the earth, it starts higher than any other mountain above sea level making it hard to climb as you can't breathe. Your calculations are fundamentally flawed, the sea bulges too.

[@Lord_Skeptic]

The furthest point away from the earth centre is mount chimborazo since the earth is not a perfect sphere. it is bigger at the equator than the poles.

[@ginge641]

An oblate spheroid is still round.

[@mandowarrior123]

Steel Xcaliber nahhhhh, its spherical.

[@johndaugherty7465]

Well according to Monty Python they believed it was banana shaped...and than witches were made from wood. Alan is using young Earth creationist logic (Ken Ham et al)...

[@astronomer83]

Yes, all stars are round. Not necessarily perfectly spherical, but definitely rotation spheroids.

[@readmylisp]

It's going pear-shaped so Columbus will have his day.

[@SmearCampaignsAreEvil]

If the earth was square/cubed I would rush to see the point of the world! 😁

[@walrusassociation9317]

My answer: round.

[@GenePalmiter]

Well, then why did Mercater draw it that way?

[@grimawormtongue1949]

Surely the title should be spelled "What Shape Did People *Use* To Believe The World Was?"

[@LuckyLucyHi]

Nope. Past tense.

[@grimawormtongue1949]

@@LuckyLucyHi I know it's past tense. You're missing the point. 'Use' here follows the verb 'did', so shouldn't be in past tense form itself. The "did' puts the sentence in the past tense from the start. "Did he require assistance" is correct, and "Did he required assistance" doesn't. So the verb following 'did' shouldn't itself be in past tense form. That's the point.

[@LuckyLucyHi]

I take your point.

[@Dim4323]

Yeah If they world was flat That mean were in Terry prachett discworld. With 4 elephants and a giant turtle.

[@boothroid71]

I miss fry

[@chopin65]

And... It all goes pear shaped. 😕

[@brianm6337]

We've devolved.

[@psammiad]

Well that went pear-shaped.

[@lukeyoung8705]

I know it!!!