Did our ancestors really think the world was flat?
HistoryExtra podcast
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The Evolution of Astronomy
I'm intrigued as to how Western anthropologists used other people's understanding of the planet. How they used beliefs of so-called uncivilized peoples to make judgments about them. What an imperialist, obviously rather notorious for the superior attitude. But it's also the case that as modern astronomy spread in the world many of the debates that were going on were between non-Europeans who may or may not have imbibed European astronomy. So I think that while those debates meant that the knowledge that the earth was a globe was spreading gradually over the entire world we shouldn't be saying well this is because the Westerners were enlightening everybody themselves.
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