Page 297 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

a change of place would not be quickly apparent.” In De Caelo, Aristotle named three evidences,
or proofs of a spherical Earth.

• Every portion of the Earth tends toward the center until by compression and convergence
they form a sphere.
• Travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon.
• The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round.

This latter point has been observed by mankind from ancient times, serving as evidence to multitudes
of the spherical form of the Earth. I have little doubt that it was observed by antediluvian man
thousands of years before the Greeks wrote about it.

Earth’s Shadow During Lunar Eclipse

The Greek astonomer Eratosthenes is regarded by some to be the first man to have calculated the
circumference of the Earth. The year was 240 B.C.. Being informed that in Syene (Aswan, Egypt)
the Sun is directly overhead during the Summer solstice, he measured the angle of shadows cast in
Alexandria, Egypt, some 50 stadia to the north. With this information, he was able to calculate the
complete circumference of the Earth. The exact length of the “stadia” he used in his measurements
is unknown, as there were multiple standards at the time. However, it has been determined that his
calculation deviated from the actual circumference of the Earth by no more than 2 to 20 percent.

The knowledge of the Greeks was passed along to the Romans, and was preserved through the
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st
ensuing centuries. Many Roman authors, such as Cicero (1 century B.C.) and Pliny (1 century
A.D.) make reference to the “rotundity of the Earth.” Strabo (64 B.C. - 24 A.D.) stated that the
spherical globe was known to mariners as far back as the time of Homer. When Homer lived is
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th
uncertain, but ancient accounts place him between the 9 and 13 centuries B.C..
Another common argument for the spherical shape of the Earth was advanced by Claudius Ptolemy,
an Alexandrian who lived from 90-168 A.D.. In the Almagest, his great work of astronomy which
served as a standard work on the subject for nearly 1,400 years, he set forth numerous evidences of
the spherical shape of the Earth. Among them was the observation that when a ship is sailing toward
mountains, to observers onboard the ship the mountains appear to rise up out of the sea. A corollary
to this which is frequently mentioned is that when ship’s are observed from shore, they appear to