Westerners initially thought what shape the earth was

Before the existence of writing, geographical knowledge was mainly passed down orally through mythology. There was no concept of the shape of the earth without the concept of the earth, and at that time people only had speculations and legends about the shape of the earth.

The ancient Russians imagined the earth as a plate on the backs of three whales, which in turn floated on the ocean. For example, the ancient Indians believed that the earth was a raised round shield, carried by three elephants, who stood on the back of a turtle, and this turtle floated in the vast ocean. These are the most primitive human understandings of the earth.

As early as 500 years B.C., Pythagoras believed that a sphere was the most perfect shape from a philosophical point of view, so he put forward the hypothesis that the earth was spherical. A master of Platonic deductive reasoning, he proposed that the earth is round and founded the theory of the center of the earth. In 300 B.C., Aristotle saw that the shadow cast by the earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse was arc-shaped, and proposed scientific evidence that the earth was spherical.

Later, Elladesthenes drew the first map of the world and calculated the circumference of the Earth.

But these are all theoretical, and the common people generally have no idea about the shape of the earth. It wasn't until 1522 A.D., when Magellan and his associates completed their orbit around the earth, that the concept of the earth as a sphere was established.

Flat bar. They believe that the Earth is the center of the universe.

It is because people's field of understanding is gradually expanding, which shows that human science and technology are advancing. Footprints have traveled to every corner of the earth, so to describe the shape of the earth, and then to give rise to the basic concept of the shape of the earth.

The average radius of the earth is 6,371 kilometers, the maximum circumference is about 40,000 kilometers, and the surface area is about 100 million square kilometers. However, it has been a long process to get this correct understanding.

In ancient China, as early as the Zhou Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, there was a kind of Gaitian theory that "the sky is round like a cover, and the place is like a chess game". With the development of production technology, the expansion of the scope of human activities, and the accumulation of various knowledge, people have finally discovered that there are some objective phenomena that cannot be explained by the intuitive and simple concepts of the early days. Practice forced people to revise their original erroneous concepts, so some people put forward the idea of arching the earth, which gave rise to the "Hun Tian Theory".

Ancient Indians believed that the earth was carried by four elephants, standing on a giant turtle. The ancient Chinese believed that the sky was like a pot and was semicircular; The ground, on the other hand, is like a square chessboard, which is flat. Zhang Heng, a famous scientist of the Han Dynasty, wrote in his "Notes on the Armillary Sphere":

The sky is like a chicken, the celestial body is round like a projectile, the earth is like a chicken in the yellow, living alone, the sky is big and the earth is small. There is water in the sky, and the sky envelops the earth, and the shell is yellow. Heaven and earth stand by air, carrying water and floating.

According to the analysis of the lunar eclipse, the ancient Greek scholar Aristotle believed that the edge of the part of the moon that is obscured by the earth's shadow is arc-shaped, so the earth is a sphere or an approximate sphere. Magellan also made a voyage to prove that the earth is a sphere.

I'm coming to you 1Using the shadow of a lunar eclipse is a long time ago Aristotle---'s method is very correct and intuitive.

2.If the earth is flat, you don't need to climb high and look far, you just need to look far.

3.The sailboat travels far away, gradually "sailing" out of the horizon.

4.At sea level, a ship that waits for a bend in the distance always sees the mast first and then the hull.

5.Satellite photographs of old liquid films, astronauts can see that the earth is a sphere in space

6.Traveling around the world can indirectly infer that the shape of the earth is spherical.

Anywhere in the Ground Turbulence Ball goes in one direction and eventually returns to square one, as is Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe. 7.The projection of the Emei Earth on the Moon is arc-shaped.

The ancients believed that "the sky is round and the earth is round", and later they believed that "the sky is like a hat, and the earth is like a plate".

The ancients' understanding of the earth is described in the story of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas".

There is a big natural disaster, the sky is tilting to the northwest, the earth is sinking to the southeast, the ancients have no planes, no cars, no measuring instruments, how to know the general topography of our country. The sky is round and the place is what our ancients knew about the earth.

Ancient people had the following main understandings about the shape of the earth:

1, Gai Tian said

Gaitian theory is the oldest system in China to discuss the structure of heaven and earth, and the early Gaitian theory believes that heaven is like a cauldron covering the earth like a chessboard.

2, Hun Tian said.

Zhang Heng wrote in the article "Notes on the Armillary Sphere": The sky is like an egg, the earth is like the yolk in it, and the sky is wrapped around the ground like an eggshell wrapped in the yolk, which is one of the classic expositions of the armillary theory.

In ancient times, people believed that the sky was round and the earth was round; Later, it was thought that the earth was curved in an arc; Around 500 B.C., Pythagoras envisioned the earth as spherical; About 100 years later.

Aristotle deduced that the earth was spherical by lunar eclipses; During the Eastern Han Dynasty in China, Zhang Heng proposed that "the land is like a chicken bush in the middle of the chaos"; In the 15th and 16th centuries, Magellan confirmed that the earth was spherical by circumnavigating the world.

Because the ancient science was not developed in time, the understanding of the earth was limited by the level of science and technology at that time, so the description of the shape of the earth was not accurate. Ancient people knew the earth intuitively, and they determined the shape of the earth based on the phenomena they observed, which is why they had those ideas. With the development of science and technology and the deepening of understanding of the earth, the understanding of the shape of the earth is becoming more and more scientific.

The understanding of the ancient potato generation is mainly that the sky is round and the place is round.

These ideas are mainly based on observation and conjecture. Be careful.

Even now, if you don't know about the earth, standing on the earth, you will definitely feel that the sky is curved and the ground is flat.

The reason for the birth of such an idea is because:

1.The scientific and technological conditions of the ancient rolling generation are insufficient.

2.It has not been experimentally confirmed.