Even in Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, spherical Earth was the consensus among Christian scholars, even if the flat Earth idea did made a come back at these times.

Every sailor that ever sailed knew there was a curvature to the earth and the only possible explanation was it was round

(A 16^th^ century illustration in a 13^th^ century book.)

Dome earth >:(

I thought it was just that he thought it was smaller than it is and he wanted to find another route to India by going west instead of east. Not that he wanted to prove that the earth is smaller.

A lot of people currently believe that people of Columbus’ time believed he risked sailing off the edge of the earth.

No, the point of the meme is to contradict people who think that people in the middle ages were stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Teton_National_Park

the earth is flat because we hit a nail and can't stay inflated

Books of you to assume that there will be a future

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.

Yes, Significantly

We are closer to the medieval age than the medieval age is to Aristotle.

The rough shape has been known for some 3000 years before the classic Greek times.

But I don't know how the precision evolved. I know the Greek measured it to some 5% precision.