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People from early antiquity generally believed the world was flat, but by the time of Pliny the Elder ( 1st century) its spherical shape was generally acknowledged. At that time Ptolemy derived his maps from a curved globe and developed the system of latitude and longitude. His writings remained the basis of European astronomy throughout the Middle Ages.
Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the renaissance of science several centuries later, some Christian writers questioned and even opposed Earth's sphericity, although it is not clearly known how influential their views were. Even before the Renaissance began, the flat Earth theory had almost died out; with the astrolabe, Arab astronomy reached Europe in the 11th century10th century 11th century 12th century other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. Events 1000 (cca), Vikings, led by Leif Eirikson, establish small settlements at and aro, and by the 1100sCenturies: 11th century 12th century 13th century Decades: 1050s 1060s 1070s 1080s 1090s 1100s 1110s 1120s 1130s 1140s 1150s Years: 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1108 1109 Events and Trends 1107 Emperor Toba ascends the throne of Japan The great at the latest, the geocentric modelThe geocentric model of the universe is a paradigm which places the Earth at the center of the universe. Common in ancient Greece after the discovery of the (more or less) spherical shape of Earth, it was believed by both Aristotle and Ptolemy. Most Greek had supplanted it in the minds of the learned people of Europe.
Belief in a flat Earth is found in humankind's oldest writings. In early MesopotamiaThis is an article about the ancient middle eastern region. For the region in modern times, see Iraq, Syria. See also Mesopotamia, Ohio. Mesopotamia ( Greek: , translated from Old Persian Miyanrudan "the Land between the Rivers" or the Aramaic name Beth-Nn thought the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the oceanOcean covers almost three quarters (71%) of the surface of the Earth. This global, interconnected body of salt water is divided by the continents and larger archipelagos into five oceans as follows: Arctic Ocean Atlantic Ocean Indian Ocean Pacific Ocean S, and this forms the premise for early GreekGreece formally called the Hellenic Republic (in Greek: ) Hellenike Demokratia , is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. It is bounded on land by Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania maps like those of AnaximanderAnaximander ( 609/ 610 BC c. 547 BC, in Greek ) was the second of the physical philosophers of Ionia, a citizen of Miletus, and a companion or pupil of Thales. Little is known of his life and work. Aelian makes him the leader of the Milesian colony to Amp and Hecataeus.
By classical times an alternate idea, that Earth was spherical, had appeared. This was espoused by Pythagoras apparently on aesthetic grounds, as he also held all other celestial bodies to be spherical. Aristotle provided physical evidence for the spherical Earth:
Earth's circumference was estimated around 240 BC by Eratosthenes, who knew about Syene (now Aswan) in Egypt where the sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice and used geometry to come up with a circumference of 252,000 stades, which, depending on the estimate of the unit stadia, is between 2% and 20% of the actual circumference, 40,008 kilometers.