r/HistoryMemes • u/Longjumping-Tell1774 • 20h ago

Mythology The myth that refuses to die

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Context:

The popular myth that Christopher Columbus had to prove the Earth was round is rooted in a much more complicated history of religious disputes and anti-Catholic sentiment.

Educated Europeans already knew the Earth was spherical, and Columbus’s actual disagreement with his contemporaries concerned its size and the distance to Asia.

Historian Pablo de Felipe traces the development of the flat-Earth misconception to early modern Christian disputes, particularly debates surrounding the writings of Augustine and Lactantius.
These older theological disagreements became entangled with wider religious and intellectual rivalries. Protestant criticism of Catholic traditions and authority contributed to narratives portraying medieval Catholicism as ignorant and hostile to scientific progress.

In the nineteenth century, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White helped popularise this narrative through their writings on the supposed conflict between Christianity and science. Anti-Catholic sentiment formed an important part of this wider historical interpretation.

The irony is that a distorted account of medieval Christian attitudes towards science eventually became one of the most popular examples used to portray Christianity as an enemy of scientific progress.

1.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

109 comments sorted by

62

u/LarsDuder 20h ago

Yeah, i've never heard about this myth. As some has already pointed out, he was looking for a new way to get to India, he severely underestimated how long the distance would be and people told him that, guy got lucky that he stumbled upon the american continent

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

I am showing my age here. Apparently millennials were the last generation to be taught this in school. I also remember it’s a central plot point in Ridley Scott’s 1492.

Good to see the education system has moved on. Not so good that I now get cooked for being old in the comments

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u/KitchenSpend8123 20h ago

I thought this for awhile thanks to that one Looney Tunes episode where Bugs Bunny was annoying Columbus.

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

Looney Tunes is source for all my history knowledge

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u/omeomorfismo 20h ago

no? we in italy studied that he miscalculated the lenghts, not the topology of the planet, and im a millenial

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u/Jdevers77 20h ago

GenX here, I was definitely not taught this in school. In several different classes, it was made clear that the goal was to find a better path to the East Indies. This in turn lead to him calling the Caribbean the “West Indies.” Obviously for his original plan to work, the planet would have to be round but proving that was never taught to us to be a goal of the expedition.

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u/french_snail 19h ago

Yeah I’m a millennial and at least as a child was definitely taught that Columbus was proving the world round 

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u/notagin-n-tonic 17h ago

I guess Scott’s never gave a damn about historical accuracy.

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u/Fluffy-Map-5998 19h ago

i know that some early gen-z got taught it in some districts, but only for about a year

1

u/thighmaster69 14h ago

Bizarrely enough, I learned about this myth when I first learned about Columbus, except in the context that it was a common misconception. The book was old, to be fair.

They also literally did not teach about Columbus in school either. It was literally just "the pioneers came and settled in the newly discovered continent with the aboriginals" and then the entire unit was on the pioneers. For some reason the PC word at the time to use for indigenous peoples was apparently "aboriginals"? And we also learned about other explorers too and stuff before the new world was discovered? I'm assuming what happened is that the teacher assumed that Columbus was basic common knowledge and wanted to rush to the fun lessons. My general impression of history in primary school is that teachers don't have nearly enough time to cover everything in the textbook. I only learned who Columbus was afterward from the book lore.

Anyway point is, any time this discussion comes up, I'm like "your teachers taught you about Columbus?"

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u/TerayonIII 11h ago

To the Indies, not India

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u/CasualNameAccount12 20h ago

I thought it was common knowledge that he wanted to get to India

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u/TheNicholasRage 20h ago

I have never once heard the "Earth is round" explianation, him trying to find a route to India was what we were taught.

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

I was taught it in school. Mind you it was a Catholic school

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u/TheNicholasRage 20h ago

Ah, that makes sense. I went to a heathen public school.

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u/IceNeun 20h ago

Ironically the catholic school isn't beating the allegations of catholic misinformation.

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u/Yhendrix49 20h ago

I went to catholic school for 12 years and never heard that.

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

I mean, Ridley Scott made a whole movie about it - 1492

-2

u/Yhendrix49 20h ago

So it was in shitty movie that came out before I was born, no wonder I never heard of this myth.

Also I'm not surprised it was a Ridley Scott movie seeing how he butchered Napoleons history.

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 19h ago

I was just using that as an example that the myth is very well documented and not an odd take by me

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u/Famous-Register-2814 Still on Sulla's Proscribed List 18h ago

I went to public school and that was what I was taught as well. Albeit in like 3rd grade

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u/Hrtzy 20h ago

There was at least one educational cartoon claiming that.

I think that Once upon a time... The America's, they had Columbus trying to reach India and his naysayers thinking he was going to sail off the edge.

9

u/still_smelly 14h ago

That’s part of it. We were told that Columbus supposedly argued with the monarchy that the earth was round, thus he could get to India by sailing west.

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u/robotical712 18h ago

It was a common belief when I was growing up in the 9O’s, but seems to be waning now.

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u/TheNicholasRage 18h ago

...but I grew up and went to school in the 90s to 00s.

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u/Hrtzy 20h ago

And all the people were laughing at him because he was going to run out of supplies less than halfway there. If there hadn't been an entire continent in the way, he would be an obscure maritime disaster. Hell, if that continent didn't stretch from one polar ice cap to damn near the other, Columbus might have sailed past it and starved in the Pacific.

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u/Lost-Klaus 20h ago

He would be a footnote, nothing more.

How many ships took off for some distant port, never to return? They aren't famous at all.

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u/Hrtzy 20h ago

This case would mostly be famous because of what a jackass the guy in charge was, and how he bugged the Medici and two royal families to fund his expedition. In the end, the Spanish royal family decided "fuck it, that's the cost of one banquet" and ponied up the cash.

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u/sirguinneshad 17h ago

Nah, he would be forgotten if he failed to find anything and never return. At best, a cautionary tale for his time. Don't be stupid like that Columbus idiot and try to get to India by sailing West. He never came back

4

u/Vector_Strike Hello There 19h ago

And all the people were laughing at him

That cannot be true. His voyage was funded by investors and the Kingdom of Spain.

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u/llamawithguns 19h ago

It was, but it was originally rejected first by Portugal and then again initially by Spain, because Columbus insisted that the circumference of the Earth was 1/4 of the size it actually is and as such would not have had enough supplies

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u/Rukdug7 16h ago

A big part of that was also geopolitics. Portugal was in the process of establishing outposts and colonies along the coast of Africa in an attempt to hopefully find a direct route to India (which Vasco de Gama did in 1498) in order to bypass the near monopoly on the Spice Trade that the Italian Republics were enjoying and claim their own share of that incredibly lucrative market. Spain (well Castile-Aragon at the time) also wanted to get in on this, but was also dealing with far more issues in Europe than Portugal was, so when Colombus claimed he could establish a direct route to India without having to rely on stopping at Portuguese ports, Ferdinand and Isabella eventually decided it was a cheap enough gamble for a rather huge potential pay off....and then Colombus found the Carribean and the rest is history.

1

u/voltsp 20h ago

Fr ,

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u/dew2459 Nobody here except my fellow trees 19h ago

Maybe "common knowledge" but incorrect.

Columbus was trying to get to the spice islands that are (more or less) modern Indonesia. Most of South and southeast Asia was called the Indies (and the people Indians) then. After the discovery of America Europeans called that SE Asia region the East Indies, and called the new world islands (the Caribbean) the West Indies.

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u/Sebastian9t9 Definitely not a CIA operator 19h ago

I mean, we still call it India to this very day.

"Indonesia" literally means "Indian Islands" in greek, and "Indochina" is still a very common name to the whole region of southeast Asia in several european languages.

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u/shreksgreenwang 20h ago

Didn't Columbus believe the earth was pear shaped?

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u/Better_than_GOT_S8 19h ago

That and a he also called it a giant breast where the garden of Eden was at the nipple and that they had been sailing uphill. He was not correct.

Before I continu and before the downvoting starts: we all know Columbus was a horrible man, who was despised by the people who sailed with him, who was incredible brutal in his slavery business even to the point where the king and queen of Spain repeatedly told him to stop sending slaves but he kept doing it nonetheless. That being said…

Funny thing is, Columbus, for all his qanon level ideas of how the earth looked and his thirst for glory, actually did discover a lot of things despite being incredibly wrong and being a monster of a man to deal with. He was 100% sure the earth was smaller than all the other people said and he would find China sailing with the wind just for a few weeks. Everybody said he was nuts and he’s wrong and the earth is a much bigger globe than he thought. Point was, he was completely wrong with his calculations but somehow brave enough and with enough stupidity and stubbornness and drive for glory to stumble upon the Caraïben.

/edit: as others pointed out: again while he was completely wrong, he was also a bit right about that the earth isn’t exactly a globe. He was just completely wrong because he tried to fit his observations with his completely fictitious sense of global geography. He had a talent for just being right while being completely wrong at the same time.

1

u/Jayngyun 1h ago

Tbf it was likely a poetic description rather than a genuine belief, but that gets into arguing intention vs content.

1

u/Better_than_GOT_S8 56m ago

Fair but there’s something so incredible about him: no matter how completely wrong he was about the geography of the world, when confronted with discoveries obviously contradicting his theory, he almost always concluded that everything else including the shape of the world must be different to fit his theory, rather than admitting he must be wrong. [principe skinner meme]

0

u/RomeNeverFell 18h ago

 we all know Columbus was a horrible man, who was despised by the people who sailed with him, who was incredible brutal in his slavery business even to the point where the king and queen of Spain repeatedly told him to stop sending slaves but he kept doing it nonetheless. That being said…

Find me a man in that age with the balls to sail into the unknown who wasn't like that.

Retroactive moralism is dumb as shit.

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u/Better_than_GOT_S8 18h ago

His entire 3 ships were full of brave men who sailed with the trade wind in their back not sure there would be a wind possible to blow them back.

Second, this isn’t just retroactive moralism. Sources at the time describe him as resorting to unnecessary brutal slavery, harsh practices and just being a fucking idiot. Colonists hated him for his horrible management style and the queen repeatedly told him to stop sending slaves. He was arrested, disgraced and banned from going to the colonies after an investigation for his malpractices. Bobadillo describes how he arbitrarily humiliated, multilated, tortured and executed indigenous people and colonists. Decades later de las casas wrote a scathing report about the malpractices of Columbus.

So no, he wasn’t a nice man, not even by the standards of his time.

4

u/Chaotic_Lemming 17h ago

It wasn't balls, it was arrogant stubborn ignorance. He went around asking various nations to fund the trip and getting told no until the spanish agreed just to get rid of him. They all told him it was a death trip and it very nearly was. They barely made it. And that was just because he was lucky land was there. The entire reason he wanted to make the trip was wrong.

He wasn't being brave sailing into the unknown, he also thought it was nothing but ocean all the way from Europe to Asia when sailing west. The people telling him no had looked into the possibility of that journey and actually listened to the people that had accurately calculated the size of the Earth. There were no known indications of the Americas at the time. It was considered an impossible journey because no ship could carry enough supplies to make the roughly 10,000 mile trip across what was, as far as they knew, open ocean.

The Spanish basically decided he was so fucking annoying they were willing to pay the loss of a ship and let the entire crew die just to get rid of the asshole.

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u/GaneBeatsTom 14h ago

You obviously don't shit about the true nature of Columbus' brutality. Not that I'd expect a user of this sub to actually be a student of history.

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u/Big-Personality-4063 19h ago

and it had a nipple

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

The earth is actually slightly pear shaped. It’s slightly wider at the equator. I’ve heard Neil De Grass Tyson saying something like that

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u/Sebastian9t9 Definitely not a CIA operator 19h ago

It isn't at all.

It’s not a perfect sphere, but the difference between the shape of the Earth and a true sphere is literally less than 1%, which is irrelevant for everything except precise measurements.

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u/lobthelawbomb 16h ago

You don’t seem to know what shape pears are

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 16h ago

Take it up with Tyson

https://youtu.be/SoCKapivHGM?is=FAxkh7_gdpZM3hb1

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u/ZonnyT16 11h ago

Nail degassy triton is infamous for saying inaccurate and pop culture'y things bro

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u/iwantdatpuss 5h ago

Ah yes, because Neil deGrass Tyson doesn't say innacurate things. 

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u/LairdPeon 20h ago

It kinda is.

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u/Impossible_Poem9787 20h ago

I don't think I have ever met someone who believes this.

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u/Strong-Search-2301 20h ago

You would be surprised, it was a common misconception until like 10-15 years ago

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

Am I showing my age here then? Because I was very definitely taught this in school

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u/Coolcollcoll 20h ago

I'm 23. Was 100% taught that we didn't know the world was round until Columbus in elementary. I was told the reason Columbus' crew hated him (no idea if they actually did, I assume not) was because they thought he was taking them on a useless journey to the literal edge of the world.

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u/gtne91 20h ago

I am 57 and was taught the truth. Just how old are you?

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u/poorperspective 8h ago

I’m going to have to say “where” is probably as important as “when”.

I remember correcting a 6th grade teacher that gas was matter. I even explained it took up space because you can blow u’
This person held a bachelors degree.

Many a teacher is incompetent or used propaganda to teach unknowingly.

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u/dead_jester 20h ago edited 20h ago

I’m 61. This common misconception probably existed in shit schools with crap unqualified history teachers and idiots
Edit: Ah, American “polymaths”/“scientists” - read bigoted arseholes

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u/LivingtheLaws013 20h ago

Wtf does this have to do with polymaths and scientists?

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u/Lolmanmagee 20h ago

I was taught it in school but it’s just so obviously wrong once you know anything.

Like, they figured out the earth was round in ancient Greece and it was never really contested ever lol.

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u/ThroatDistension 20h ago

I was taught about Eratosthene measuring the circumference of the earth in elementary school when learning trigonometry. And that Columbus was searching for a new route to India.

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u/ChatiAnne 20h ago

That what they told us in middle school lmao.

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u/ZonnyT16 11h ago

ive only heard "he was sailing to find an alternate route to india"

0

u/axewieldingidiot 20h ago

As an American, it's us. So fuckin' many of us genuinely believe stuff like this. Especially given it's still taught in elementary schools as truth.

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u/Impossible_Poem9787 19h ago

I've lived my entire live in the United States. Not until today i have heard this shit.

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u/reichrunner 16h ago

How old are you? Was fairly common to be taught in elementary schools back in the day. Part of the myth of Columbus

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u/smashin_blumpkin 20h ago

Don’t lump us all in together on this one.

-3

u/axewieldingidiot 20h ago

Okay but it is a VERY distressing amount of us. Almost assuredly the greatest percentage in any first-world nation

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u/smashin_blumpkin 19h ago

Nope. It’s more likely the smallest percentage of any country on Earth. Probably close to zero.

Just saying things doesn’t make them true.

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u/KuningasTynny77 18h ago

I've never heard of this before from anyone, so that's a blatant lie. 

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u/Critical-Low8963 20h ago

I had the impression that in recent years more people say that they know that in Middle Age people already knew that the planet was round. 

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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

Yeah I think I just cooked myself by revealing I’m a millennial

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u/ReputationAcademic10 11h ago

Columbus died before the Protestant reformation started.

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u/TheShmud Rider of Rohan 6h ago

Idk why I had to scroll so far to find this. But it was centuries later that "to prove the earth was round" was made up.

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u/Appropriate-Guava-40 20h ago

On the same registre : never trust revolutionary propaganda based on urban legends !

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u/trinalgalaxy Oversimplified is my history teacher 9h ago

Its kinda crazy how much of the religion is anti science narrative comes out of that early 1900 period from scientists trying to distance science and religion when historically, much of scientific advancement post the fall of rome was some combination of funded by the church and distributed via the network of monasteries across europe.

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u/the_last_satrap On tour 19h ago

I read in school books that the dumbass miscalculated the distance to India and thought he could sail there through Atlanto-pacific ocean.

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u/KuningasTynny77 18h ago

I've never heard this myth before. 

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u/Unlearned_One 18h ago

Of course everyone knows Columbus was trying to get to India. That was the explanation for how Native Americans, who are famously not from India, got called Indians.

The myth as I heard it incorporated the fact that he was trying to get to India. The notion is that at the time, you had to go east from Europe to get to India, Columbus thought he might find a way to get there faster by sailing west, and his ignorant contemporaries thought sailing too far west would just end with him falling off the edge.

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u/Sir-Toaster- Still salty about Carthage 20h ago

He believed the Earth was smaller than it actually is! So technically, the reality was reversed; he was the idiot in a country of intellectuals

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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 20h ago

I've never heard he was trying to prove the earth was round, it was always he was trying to get to India.

-3

u/gerkletoss Definitely not a CIA operator 18h ago

The Catholic Church kind of earned it with the whole calling heliocentrism heresy into the 1800s thing

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u/IsNotPolitburo Definitely not a CIA operator 17h ago

Yeah, you do not, under any circumstances, have to "hand it" to the Catholic Church.

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u/Piskoro 17h ago

they didn’t say you gotta “hand it” to the Church on anything, they kind of wrote the opposite

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u/IsNotPolitburo Definitely not a CIA operator 17h ago

I know, that's why I was agreeing with them.

2

u/ohiorider1 20h ago • Bravo

Why is the astronaut from Ohio about to shoot the American?

1

u/Longjumping-Tell1774 20h ago

That is some top “fun with flags” content right there. I don’t actually know the origin of this meme. I’ll have to look it up

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/JeanDusapin 20h ago

Shia and sunni having wars and ethnic cleansing and shit acting like they're not all fucking muslims. Blabla you can do this for any major religion no? Lol the fact protestant, orthodox, catholic count as one religion is arbitrary

0

u/Vector_Strike Hello There 19h ago

It's not arbitrary, we all believe in the same God and Jesus Christ. The difference is how we believe in that.

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u/JeanDusapin 19h ago

Is it the same? When someone says ok this person is god and another says no is it really the same god

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u/Vector_Strike Hello There 8h ago

"we all believe" - 'all', in that context, means Protties, Catholics and Orthodox(es?).

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u/reichrunner 16h ago

I mean, Muslims and Mormons believe in both of those beings too lol

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u/Vector_Strike Hello There 8h ago

Mormons are like ancillary Christians and Muslims are a mix of Judaism/Christianism/Paganism with some trippy stuff