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“They thought the earth was flat”
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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Then, just like now, the generally accepted view of anything isn't based on the absolute state of human knowledge, but on the state of mass education.
It's true, and we don't have a lot of sources to infer what the commoner knew. But when a scientific fact is a consensus among scholars, even if literacy is low, it finishes in the mind of the whole population. In the 13^th^ century, the roundness of Earth was a consensus for more than 1000 years... it's safe to assume that it was known by almost everyone. Moreover priests, even low profile priests, received at least a basic education, and they would know that the Earth was round, and they would spread that knowledge.