Some of The History of Flat Earth

Dan

From the beginning of recorded history, and for thousands upon thousands of years, cultures across the entire world all believed the Earth was flat.  Their various cosmologies and cosmogonies differed in slight ways but their overall geographies and astronomers were incredibly consistent and in fact virtually identical. The Earth was a stationary plane void of any motion or curvature, flat across its entire expanse except of course for hills, mountains and valleys.  The North Pole was the magnetic  mono-pole center-point of the flat Earth with Polaris, the North Pole star situated directly above.  Polaris was the only motionless star in the heavens with all the other constellations revolving perfect circles over the Earth every night.  The stars were divided into two categories known as the fixed stars and the wandering stars.  The fixed stars were so-called because they were observed then as we can observe today to stay fixed in their constellation patterns night after night, year after year, century after century, never changing their relative positions.  The wandering stars, what are today referred to as “planets,” were so-called because they were observed then as we can observe today to wander the heavens taking their own unique spirograph-like patterns making both forward and retrograde motions over and around the Earth during their cycles.



The Sun and Moon were both of equal size and they too revolved over and around the motionless Earth as immortalized in the Chinese Yin Yang symbol.  The Sun and Moon were much closer to Earth than supposed nowadays and each shined with their own unique opposite lights, the Sun’s being warm, golden, drying, preservative and antiseptic, and the Moon’s light being cold, silver, damp, putrefying and septic.  

The Sun and Moon as though connected to a magnetic maypole made alternating spiral journeys over and around the Earth every year.  The Sun began its journey at the Tropic of Capricorn at the Winter Solstice where it made its fastest and largest circle over the Earth.  For the next three months every day the Sun slightly narrowed its path and slowed its speed until by the Spring Equinox the Sun had spiraled its way from the Tropic of Capricorn to the equator.  Then for the next three months again every day the Sun continued to slightly narrow its path and slow its speed until the Summer Solstice when the Sun made its smallest, slowest circle around the Tropic of Cancer.  Once the Sun reached this innermost circle, like the ribbons and dancers around the maypole, the Sun would then begin its opposing, widening, quickening journey back to the Tropic of Capricorn.  For the next three months every day the Sun slightly widened its path and hastened its speed until the Autumnal Equinox the Sun had spiraled its way from the Tropic of Cancer back to the equator.  Then for the next three months again every day the Sun continued to slightly widen its path and hasten its speed until the Winter Solstice when the Sun made its largest, fastest circle around the Tropic of Capricorn and the annual journey began again.

The Moon had a similar yearly path revolving over and around the Earth but unlike the Sun, which constantly changed its speed to keep a consistent 24 hour day, the Moon’s speed never changed so depending on its latitude the Moon was observed then as we can observe today to take approximately 24.7 – 25 hours per cycle.  This is why at different times and places during each month we can see the Moon in the morning, afternoon or night.  This is also the origin of old fairy tales such as the the Hare and the Hedgehog or the Tortoise and the Hare.  The Hare, like the Sun, begins the annual race full of energy, excitement and ego, declaring himself the definite winner and gets off to an immediate head-start.  Meanwhile, equally confident in his seemingly lesser abilities, the humble, slow and steady Tortoise Moon begins as well allowing the Hare to lead.  As the race carries on, the cocky hare tires and slows down or takes a nap at which point the Tortoise overtakes him.  This is analogous to the Moon reaching the Tropic of Cancer before the Sun each year and beginning its return journey.  When the Hare reaches this half-way point of the race he realizes his lackluster attitude has resulted in being overtaken by the slower Tortoise and begins to speed up again.  Then for the remainder of the race, the Sun picks up speed day by day gaining on the Moon, but ultimately losing as the slow and steady Tortoise reaches the finish-line before the Hare and wins.

So for ancient man, Earth and Polaris were the two immovable center-points of the Universe around which the Sun, Moon and other stars all revolved in a dome-like shape.  Some cultures believed in a literal, physical solid dome or firmament to which the fixed stars were bound.  Other cultures mythologized the axis mundi as the World Tree with Polaris at the center and all the other constellations forming the branches.  In these flat Earth depictions the North Pole occupied the centerpoint, and “South” was all straight lines extending outwards from there.  East and West were not straight-lines as is assumed nowadays, but were in fact circles just like all lines of latitude and the paths of the celestial bodies.  The southern circumference of Earth was surrounded by a gigantic wall of ice 150-200 feet above sea-level holding the interconnected oceans in like a world cup.  Beyond the ice wall, some cultures claimed a firm barrier existed through which no human could penetrate.  Other cultures believed there were entire worlds and other civilizations existing beyond the Antarctic ice.

Currently, and for the past half century there has existed an International Antarctic Treaty preventing all independent exploration of Antarctica.  Pre-approved guided tours exist which take visitors to a few coastal regions of Antarctica, but no independent exploration of the continent is allowed.  Sailors like Jarle Andehoy have been caught attempting to explore Antarctica and threatened, turned around at gunpoint, fined, and jailed for violating this militarily enforced international treaty.  As a result the public currently has no way to confirm or deny the seemingly fantastical claims of ancient man concerning what may or may not exist at the southern-most extremities of the Earth.

We can however confirm that this 200 foot ice-wall surrounding the southern circumference of the Earth most certainly exists.  We can confirm that Polaris is indeed the only non-moving star in the sky.  All the fixed stars indeed rotate perfect circles around Polaris while remaining stuck in their relative constellations night after night, year after year, century after century.  The wandering stars or “planets” do indeed wander the heavens taking their own unique spirograph-like paths when charted from a geocentric perspective.  The Sun and Moon are indeed observably of equal size and revolve over and around us in daily cycles.  Just as the ancients observed, the Sun’s annual path does indeed travel from the Tropic of Capricorn at the Winter Solstice, to the Equator at Spring Equinox, to the Tropic of Cancer at the Summer Solstice, back to the Equator at Autumnal Equinox, and finally back to the Tropic of Cancer at Winter Solstice.  The Sun’s light is indeed warm, golden, drying, preservative and antiseptic, while the Moon’s light is indeed cold, silver, damp, putrefying and septic.  A thermometer placed in the Sun’s light will always read warmer than a thermometer placed in the Sun’s shade, while a thermometer placed in the Moon’s light will always read cooler than a thermometer placed in the Moon-shade.  Plant and animal substances exposed to sunlight quickly dry, shrink, coagulate and lose their tendency to decompose and putrify, whereas plant and animal substances exposed to moonlight will quickly show symptoms of putrefaction and decay.

Last but not least, just as the ancients espoused, the Earth is observably motionless to all our senses, and the horizon remains perfectly flat as far as the eye can see.  Not only does the horizon remain perfectly flat 360 degrees around the observer, but whether at sea-level, the top of Mount Everest, 35,000 feet high in an airplane, or even at over 100,000 feet high, the highest any amateur hot-air balloon has ever flown, the flat horizon actually rises to the eye-level of the observer all the way up.  On a globular Earth, no matter how large it is assumed to be, the horizon would remain where it was and the rising observer would have to tilt his head downwards further and further the higher they rose to see the steadily falling horizon.  Many people will be shocked to know that to this day, every single scientific experiment ever devised to show the alleged motion of the Earth has failed to do so (or given evidence of the opposite, that the Earth is indeed motionless) and every attempt ever made to measure the alleged curvature of the Earth has failed to do so (or given evidence of the opposite, that the Earth is indeed flat).

The first person in recorded history to ever claim that Earth was anything but the flat, motionless center of the universe was a Greek mathematician and philosopher named Pythagoras of Samos around 500 B.C.  Interestingly enough, Pythagoras has also been touted by Freemasonic historians such as Albert Mackey, James Anderson, William Hutchinson and William Preston as being the very first Freemason!  Presented more as a thought-experiment than a complete cosmology, Pythagoras posited that if the Earth were a spherical globe turning on its vertical axis once per day while revolving annually around a stationary Sun, that this model could also equally explain the cyclical motions of the heavenly bodies.  This heliocentric model was taught to initiates at Pythagoras’ Crotona school but never became popular or had an influence outside of Greece for another two thousand years.




A century later, another Greek mathematician and philosopher named Plato also espoused a spherical Earth cosmology, except he claimed the Earth globe to be the motionless center of the universe with the Sun, Moon and stars revolving around.  His most famous student, Aristotle also wrote about this geocentric globe-Earth cosmology in his book “On the Heavens,” offering three main points of evidence for his theory.  Firstly Aristotle noted that when sailing away from an observer on shore, ships approaching the horizon disappeared from view hull before masthead and he postulated that this occurrence was due to the curvature of the Earth.  Aristotle argued that the hull disappeared first because beyond the horizon the globe-Earth curved downwards causing the hull and eventually the masthead and entire ship to drop below the curvature.  Today we can easily prove that Aristotle was incorrect in his assumption by using telescopes, binoculars and zoom cameras.  Once a ship has completely disappeared beyond the horizon, modern technology allows us to zoom in and bring the entire vessel, hull and all, back into full view.  This proves that ships do not disappear hull-first due to the alleged curvature of the Earth, and that the horizon line is in fact merely the vanishing point of perspective from a given observer’s point of view, and not as Aristotle supposed, the beginning of the Earth’s curvature.  The horizon is subjective and varies in distance depending on the weather, the observer’s height, and the strength of his eyesight or instruments.  As noted previously, the horizon actually rises to the eye of the observer no matter how high he climbs, which also proves that the horizon line is not some objective point of curvature on a convex Earth, but rather the subjective vanishing point of perspective from a given observer’s point of view.




Aristotle’s second point of evidence offered for his spherical Earth theory was the Earth’s round shadow cast on the Moon during lunar eclipses.  To this day heliocentrists still offer this argument as proof of a spherical Earth, claiming that during lunar eclipses the Sun, Earth and Moon align in a perfect 180 degree syzygy like three billiard balls causing the Sun to cast the Earth’s shadow onto the Moon.  This clever but faulty assumption is rendered completely invalid, however, due to the fact that lunar eclipses have happened and continue to happen regularly when both the Sun and Moon are still visible together above the horizon!  As early as the time of Pliny the Elder there are records of eclipses happening while both the Sun and Moon were visible in the sky, and continue to be recorded by the Royal Astronomical Society today.  Obviously if the Sun and Moon are both observable simultaneously during an eclipse then they are not aligned in a 180 degree syzygy and it is therefore impossible that the Sun could be casting Earth’s shadow on the Moon, and some other explanation must be sought.  Another explanation, in fact, already existed in many cultures around the world, who posited that a third celestial body known as Rahu, or “The Black Sun” also existed equal in size to the Sun and Moon.  This translucent dark body passed affront of the Sun and Moon during solar and lunar eclipses causing their lights to dim.





Aristotle’s final point of evidence offered for his spherical Earth theory was the appearance of Polaris and other stars to gradually decline overhead as an observer travels southwards.  He argued that the gradual declination and eventual disappearance beyond the horizon of certain stars and constellations as one traveled southwards was evidence that the observer was traveling over a convex curved surface.  Similar to the ships disappearing over the horizon argument, Aristotle posited that the horizon line was the literal curvature of his spherical Earth, and the stars which declined and disappeared beyond it became invisible because a mass of curved Earth existed between them and the observer.  In actual fact, however, the gradual declination of objects in the sky towards the horizon is merely a product of the law of perspective on plane surfaces.  As any art student of point perspective knows, the human eye views the world in a pyramidal shape so that when looking down a long hallway, the floor appears to rise, the ceiling appears to sink, and the walls appear to narrow into a point at the center of the observer’s view.  Of course, the dimensions of the hallway remain constant for its entire length; The floor does not actually rise, the ceiling does not actually sink, nor do the walls actually close in; but to the human eye everything is perceived this way.  Similarly when the Sun, Moon, airplanes or clouds appear to sink towards the horizon as they move away from us, they are not actually losing altitude and slowly approaching sea-level.  They are in fact maintaining the same altitude except they are moving away from you and so the law of perspective makes them appear to sink.

The first person in recorded history to ever claim that Earth was anything but the flat, motionless center of the universe was a Greek mathematician and philosopher named Pythagoras of Samos around 500 B.C.  Interestingly enough, Pythagoras has also been touted by Freemasonic historians such as Albert Mackey, James Anderson, William Hutchinson and William Preston as being the very first Freemason!  Presented more as a thought-experiment than a complete cosmology, Pythagoras posited that if the Earth were a spherical globe turning on its vertical axis once per day while revolving annually around a stationary Sun, that this model could also equally explain the cyclical motions of the heavenly bodies.  This heliocentric model was taught to initiates at Pythagoras’ Crotona school but never became popular or had an influence outside of Greece for another two thousand years.

Fast-forward to 1522 A.D. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan became the first person in known history to successfully sail around the world.  This circumnavigation of Earth soon became and continues to be touted today as absolute proof of the spherical Earth theory.  If Magellan was able to sail East-West around the entire world and return to his original starting point, surely the Earth cannot be flat and must be a globe, right?  Wrong.  Just as a compass can place its center-point on a flat piece of paper, trace a circle either way around, and return to its starting point, so can a ship or plane circumnavigate a flat Earth.  The only kind of circumnavigation which could not happen on a flat Earth is North-South-bound which to this day has still never been done.  Both the North Pole and Antarctica are military-enforced no-fly/no-sail zones due to restrictions originating from none other than the United Nations – the same United Nations that haughtily uses a flat Earth map in their official logo and flag.