This is the last line of an anecdote I once heard (something about the shape of the earth). Can anyone fill in the rest, and where it came from?
Just minutes ago I posted this thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=46357
It’s about the Flat Earth Society and how they believe we are all riding on the back of a turtle.
What are the odds that 2 posts of this nature would be posted within minutes of each other?
<insert eerie music here>
My memory of this is imperfect, but I’ll take a stab at it.
It’s a tale of ancient Persia. The story goes that the sultan asked his advisers, “What holds up this land we stand on?” The adviser says, “Your highness, it is said that the world is held up by a tremendous giant, who balances the land on his shoulders.” “Then what is the giant standing on?” the sultan inquired. “The giant is standing on a giant elephant,” the adviser replied.
“Very well, what is the elephant standing on?” the sultan asked. The adviser answered, “The elephant is standing on the shell of an enormous turtle, your highness.”
“Then what -” the sultan said, and the adviser interrupted, “After that, your highness, it’s turtles all the way down.”
… or you might check out Terry Pratchett’s discworld series, to learn about the giant space turtle A’tuin who carries four elephants (and the flat disc of the world) on his back, as he sails slowly through interstellar space.
I’ve seen all these words before, but never in that order…
Some Native American cultures (don’t ask me which, as it has been a while since I studied it) believed that the world was supported by a turtle as well. In fact, they refer to North America as "Turtle Island’.
Hawking uses this story at tha start of his book.
I swear I read an anecdote similar to this in Leon Ledderman’s “The God Particle”.
Chef Troy’s story is also attributed to Carl Sagan (whether it is apocryphal or not, I don’t know) in a discussion with a woman who held that the Indian myth was true. He started in questioning her as to what the next turtle stood on and she replied something like, “Oh, no. You can’t catch me on that one. It’s turles all the way down.”