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Category: Ancient cosmography

8 articles

The list below is believed complete, though membership – like everything here – is subject to revision.

  • Anaximander – The Milesian who first set the Earth adrift, unsupported at the centre of things – and left it, all the same, flat on top.
  • Babylonian Map of the World – The oldest known map of the whole world – a clay disc ringed by a "Bitter River", and so also the oldest flat-earth map.
  • The Counter-Earth – A tenth planet, placed where nobody could see it. Nine bodies were visible, ten is the perfect number, and the Pythagoreans made up the difference.
  • Egyptian cosmology – The world of Geb and Nut: a flat earth and an arched sky, held apart by a god posted permanently between them.
  • Firmament – The solid dome of the sky in ancient and biblical cosmology – figurative to most, load-bearing to the Aetheric Concord.
  • Gai tian – The oldest Chinese cosmology: a round heaven canopy over a flat, square earth – and the gnomon that measured its height.
  • Hindu cosmology – The Puranic world: a vast flat disc of ring-continents around Mount Meru, set in cycles of time a single day of which outlasts the Earth's age.
  • Norse cosmology – The walled middle-world of the Eddas: a flat Midgard ringed by the world-serpent and roofed with a giant's skull.

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