Map making conceit

Early maps depict ships falling off the edge of the earth during a period in history when the majority of scarcely educated human beings believed the earth was flat. Among horrors at the illustrated edges were signs of endless falling into oblivion and dragons waiting to chew and painfully swallow visionaries who sailed out over the seas. As early as 195 B.C., however, there were scholars, including Eratosthenes, later Aristotle, later still, Christian theologians, then Galileo who argued from the clear-eyed stance of examining reasoned evidence, that the world was, indeed, spherical. These early scholars used direct evidence, as well as theoretical hypotheses based uponRead More →