Inventing the Flat Earth
Map of the Square and Stationary Earth : Four Hundred Passages in the Bible that Condemn the Globe Theory, or the Flying Earth, and None Sustain It...Orlando Ferguson. 1893. Geography and Map Division.
The concept of a flat Earth holds that the planet is not a spherical object but rather a flat disc. Historically, this understanding was common among ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians and Babylonians, before being questioned by Greek mathematicians around 500 BCE, who argued for a spherical Earth based on their interpretations. During the Dark Ages, certain readings of biblical texts helped preserve flat Earth ideas among some groups, even as many educated individuals leaned toward a round Earth model. The Age of Discovery further promoted the round Earth view, yet flat Earth perspectives experienced a revival in the early 19th century, particularly among Christian fundamentalist communities who were skeptical of modern scientific claims and saw them as part of a broader agenda.
The Flat Earth Society's most recent planet model is that humanity lives on a disc, with the North Pole at its centre and a 150-foot-high (46 m) wall of ice, Antarctica, at the outer edge. The resulting map resembles the symbol of the United Nations, which Johnson used as evidence for his position. In this model, the Sun and Moon are each 32 miles (51 km) in diameter.
BEYOND THE ICE WALL 3.0
The World Turtle, also called the Cosmic Turtle or the World-Bearing Turtle, is a mytheme of a giant turtle (or tortoise) supporting or containing the world. It occurs in Hinduism, Chinese mythology, and the mythologies of some of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The comparative mythology of the World-Tortoise discussed by Edward Burnett Tylor (1878: 341) includes the counterpart World Elephant.
