But the meme’s central claim was that contrary to history lessons trotted out every October in schools throughout the United States, Christopher Columbus didn’t actually “prove the Earth was round” or disabuse sailors of their fear that their ships would plummet off the edge of a flat ocean should they travel too far. It was after his travels across the Known World, to places such as Portugal and the West Coast of Africa, that he returned to his native Nuremberg, where he convinced the city council of his hometown to commission a globe from him.Īll three of the images are roughly correct, if possibly off by a few years across the millennia. Behaim, a German, was a well-known geographer, merchant, mariner, and philosopher. Also known as “ Erdapfel,” or “Earth Apple,” the artifact ( dated coincidentally to 1492) is believed to be the earliest surviving actual globe:Īlso called the Behaim Globe, the construction of the Erdapfel is credited to the 15th century polymath Martin Behaim. ![]() ![]() ![]() Third cited by the meme was “Behaim Globe,” started presumably in 1490 CE. Crates devised one of the earliest, if not the earliest, known spherical model of the Earth (also known as a globe) around 150 BCE, fairly close to the meme’s representation. the meme cites the “Crate of Mallus globe” from 160 BCE Crates of Mallus was a philosopher and grammarian in ancient Greece. Although experts still dispute its precise age, it came from well before the time of Columbus. The first image at the middle top left appeared to show Greek titan Atlas, represented, as he frequently is, in his now-familiar position “with bent knees and back, straining to hold the globe on his shoulders.” Depictions of Atlas date back to at least six centuries before the current era, or BCE, and the precise year labeled in this image is 148 BCE.Ītlas as seen in this particular meme is a work known as the Farnese Atlas, dated to around 150 BCE. “COLUMBUS DISCOVERED THE WORLD WAS ROUND”Ĭlockwise from the top left, three images including spherical globes were captioned: In the above meme, the top and bottom text read: In October 2019, a number of memes about the legacy of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus circulated on Facebook around Columbus Day, among them a meme about the claim that he “proved” that Earth is round:
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