# Whence the idea that Columbus discovered the world is round? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 20, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399 "2012-02-20T07:08:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/1 "2012-02-20T07:08:07Z")
There are people who believe that Christopher Columbus discovered the world is round, [as I demonstrate here.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13384999&postcount=35) My cites being sufficient evidence to show the idea exists, where does it come from? ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/2 "2012-02-20T07:29:34Z")
I can’t link to a cite at the moment but apparently Washington Irving is to blame for this idea. In 1828 he wrote a multi-volume biography of Columbus that has passages critics have described as “fanciful”. The flat earth business became popularly taught in schools because of what Irving wrote. ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/3 "2012-02-20T07:44:10Z")
[Try this article.](http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/russell/FlatEarth.html) Somewhere around the 9th paragraph he mentions Irving. You can also try Wikipedia. They mention it in several different articles. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/4 "2012-02-20T08:10:42Z")
It’s so galling that this myth persists because the truth is so much more interesting. (I wouldn’t have funded his little adventure either.) > [@](#): > > Neither Christopher Columbus, nor his contemporaries, believed the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers–even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earth is Jeffrey Burton Russell’s attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s–including how noted writers Washington Irving and Antoinne-Jean Letronne were among those responsible. He shows how later day historians followed these original mistakes, and how this “snowball effect” grew to outrageous proportions in the late nineteenth century, when Christians opposed to Darwinism were labelled as similar to Medieval Christians who (allegedly) thought the earth was flat. But perhaps the most intriguing focus of the book is the reason why we allow this error to persist. Do we prefer to languish in a comfortable and familiar error rather than exert the effort necessary to discover the truth? This uncomfortable question is engagingly answered, and includes a discussion about the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty. > > [Inventing the flat earth: Columbus and modern historians](http://books.google.com/books?id=6roqAAAAYAAJ&q=Inventing+the+Flat+Earth+%281991%29+by+Jeffrey+Burton+Russell&dq=Inventing+the+Flat+Earth+%281991%29+by+Jeffrey+Burton+Russell&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ov1BT-ngN6KxiQKR2MHNAQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA) by Jeffrey Burton Russell (University of Virginia). ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/5 "2012-02-20T09:00:01Z")
[Wikipedia.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth) ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/6 "2012-02-20T10:02:52Z")
In her introduction to the third edition of **Frankenstein** , Mary Shelley mentions a famous wager concerning Columbus and an egg. Columbus had bet someone (Amerigo Vespucci?) he could make an egg stand up straight on a flat table, pointy-side down. He won the bet by smashing the pointy end, allowing it to stand freely on its broken point, adding “When you do something first, it’s easy for the next fellow to do it.” I can see the story of Columbus and some vaguely spherical object morphing over time into “The world is round, not flat.” ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/7 "2012-02-20T12:17:17Z")
I guess it’s down to that rat bastard Washington Irving then. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/8 "2012-02-20T16:07:04Z")
> [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](#): > > I can’t link to a cite at the moment but apparently Washington Irving is to blame for this idea. In 1828 he wrote a multi-volume biography of Columbus that has passages critics have described as “fanciful”. The flat earth business became popularly taught in schools because of what Irving wrote. I’m amazed there was enough info on Columbus available to make a multi-volume bio. I wonder if he was paid by the word. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/9 "2012-02-20T17:05:22Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > I’m amazed there was enough info on Columbus available to make a multi-volume bio. I wonder if he was paid by the word. This shouldn’t be surprising. Columbus was a major figure and there is a great deal of original information and correspondence in the Archive of the Indies. Several accounts of his life and voyages were written in the years after his death, including a biography by his son Fernando. While the information on his early life is rather sparse, there’s plenty on his later life. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/10 "2012-02-20T17:29:29Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I guess it’s down to that rat bastard Washington Irving then. No, it isn’t. Washington Irving’s four-volume opus is in the public domain, which allows us to read it and see whether it’s worthy of the scorn heaped upon it. In many ways, it is. There is some really bad writing and gross historical exaggeration. But, even in Irving’s telling, _most_ Europeans accepted the sphericity of the Earth, and flat-earth objections played a relatively small role in Columbus’s struggle for funding. Irving’s description of the Council of Salamanca forms [Chapter IV of Book II of Volume I](http://books.google.com/books?id=uIADAAAAQAAJ&q=flat#v=snippet&q=flat&f=false), and so far as I can tell it is the only place where Irving discusses a flat Earth. He writes: > [@](#): > > To his simplest proposition, the spherical form of the Earth, were opposed figurative texts of Scripture. . . . Columbus, who was a devoutly religious man, found that he was in danger of being convicted, not merely of error, but of heterodoxy. Others, more versed in science, admitted the globular form of the Earth, and the possibility of an opposite and inhabitable hemisphere; but they brought up the chimera of the ancients, and maintained that it would be impossible to arrive there, in consequence of the insupportable heat of the torrid zone. Even granting this could be passed, they observed, that the circumference of the Earth must be so great as to require at least three years to the voyage, and those who should undertake it should perish of hunger and thirst, from the impossibility of carrying provisions for so long a period. This follows an earlier discussion of Columbus’ attempts to gain funding from Portugal, where flat-Earth objections are never raised, and discussion focuses on the practicality of the eastern versus around-Africa route to the Indies. Again, Irving’s description of the Council of Salamanca is bad writing. He wrote at a time when Americans conceived of explorers in general, and Columbus in particular, as 100% heroic, and of the Catholic Church as backward and obscurantist. He paints the Council of Salamanca in as ridiculous a light as possible. _But even in this telling_, he casts flat-Earth objections as held only by a minority and not decisive in the (early) Spanish rejection of Columbus. The few sentences mentioning flat-Earth objections were seized and distorted by later writers, with a different agenda for a different period. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/11 "2012-02-20T17:44:36Z")
I don’t understand your defense of Irving, **Freddy the Pig.** The passage you quote seems to be saying that Columbus faced objections (on Biblical grounds) to his idea that the world is round. And that seems not to have actually been the case. So it looks to me like Irving is guilty. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/12 "2012-02-20T18:49:32Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > I don’t understand your defense of Irving, **Freddy the Pig.** The passage you quote seems to be saying that Columbus faced objections (on Biblical grounds) to his idea that the world is round. Indeed. But that is a far cry from saying that _most_ educated Europeans of the Fifteenth Century believed the world was flat, or that Columbus went against the consensus on this issue. Irving never makes those assertions. Consider Russell’s article above, cited in Post#3: > [@](#): > > It was (Irving) who invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a “simple mariner,” appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate. This is false. Irving makes it quite clear that not _all_ members of the Council so believed, as my quote demonstrates. Note how Russell is subjecting Irving to the same careless distortion which Irving applied to Columbus. Irving is “guilty” of distorting history, but it isn’t fair to lay the entire blame for the “medieval flat Earth myth” at his doorstep. “People before Columbus” believed in a flat Earth" is as much an exaggeration of Irving as Irving is of the truth. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/13 "2012-02-20T18:51:22Z")
Still, fuck Washington Irving. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/14 "2012-02-20T20:33:22Z")
**Freddy the Pig** : But, regardless of what Irving claims Europeans believed, did he also claim **Columbus proved the world to be round**? It’s possible to prove something that most people already think is true. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/15 "2012-02-20T20:58:28Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **Freddy the Pig** : But, regardless of what Irving claims Europeans believed, did he also claim **Columbus proved the world to be round**? No, he does not make that claim. I’ve searched the four volumes for “round”, “flat”, “spherical”, and “sphere”, and the only place he discusses sphericity at all is in describing the Council of Salamanca. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/16 "2012-02-20T21:07:53Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **Freddy the Pig** : But, regardless of what Irving claims Europeans believed, did he also claim **Columbus proved the world to be round**? It’s possible to prove something that most people already think is true. Of course, it wasn’t Columbus who (empirically) proved the world was round anyway, but the voyage of Magellan/Elcano. _If_ Columbus had actually arrived in Asia, he would have proved it, but he didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/17 "2012-02-20T21:08:56Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > No, he does not make that claim. I’ve searched the four volumes for “round”, “flat”, “spherical”, and “sphere”, and the only place he discusses sphericity at all is in describing the Council of Salamanca. So it isn’t Irving’s fault after all, and our quest continues. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-idea-that-columbus-discovered-the-world-is-round/613399/18 "2012-02-20T21:11:01Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Of course, it wasn’t Columbus who (empirically) proved the world was round anyway, but the voyage of Magellan/Elcano. _If_ Columbus had actually arrived in Asia, he would have proved it, but he didn’t. Well, yes. Obviously. As I made a point of saying in the thread of mine I linked to in the OP. I should have put a note in the OP of this thread saying “Do not try to reason your way through this belief; you cannot, as it doesn’t even attempt to be internally consistent.”