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Did Columbus Really Have to Prove the Earth Wasn’t Flat?
Published February 5, 2011 | 
In a word, no.
This is a persistent myth, regularly and derisively used by anyone still under the evolutionist impression that modern science had to save the old world from ignorance.
Famous historian Samuel Eliot Morison, firmly in the camp of conventional, evolutionist-influenced scholars, clearly bristled at the idea that Columbus had to prove the world was round. In his popular 1942 biography of Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Morison emphasized:
…of all the vulgar errors connected with Columbus, the most persistent and the most absurd is that he had to convince people ‘the world was round.’ Every educated man in his day believed the world to be a sphere, every European university so taught geography, and seamen…knew perfectly well from seeing ships ‘hull-down’ and ‘raising’ mountains as they approached, that the surface of the globe was curved. (pg 33)
Note that was written in 1942. How many students have been — and still are — taught the “vulgar error connected with Columbus” long since Morison railed against it?
In his marvelously written Oxford History of the American People (1965), Morison continued to assert that the Greeks (c. 300s BC) and medieval theologians (AD 600-1500) taught that the world was a sphere and “Columbus never had to argue for it.” (pgs 17-19)
British author and researcher Ian Wilson, famous for his books on the Shroud of Turin, published an intriguing book on Christopher Columbus and the fishermen of Bristol, England, in 1991. Called The Columbus Myth, it examines a number of interesting possibilities regarding Columbus himself, his previous knowledge of America, maps, documents, and fishing trips by Bristol seamen across the Atlantic at least as early as the 1480s. We’ll blog more on that later.
But here’s a quote from the book (pg 6) regarding the opposition Columbus faced in getting backing for his expedition:
Nor, despite popular supposition, was it his [Columbus] belief that the world was round that attracted such opposition. This [belief] was accepted by most educated people. It was his estimates of the distance to ‘Asia’ that were so hotly derided.
But that’s medieval Europe. What about the ancients?
Didn’t the earlier civilizations believe the Earth was flat, surrounded by water, sitting on pillars (or a turtle) and covered with a dome? John Byl, Ph.D. in astronomy, notes at his bylogos blog that such a picture is
more a reflection of the ignorance of modern scholars than of ancient civilization. Ancient man was a much keener observer of the night sky than modern desk-bound scholars. They were well aware that the stellar sky rotates daily. Hence it cannot be a solid hemisphere held up by pillars fixed on the earth. Further, they were well aware of months and seasons. Hence the sun and moon were not fixed in a stellar shell. They were also well aware that the sun and moon were much more distant than flying birds. [See Dr. Byl's interesting post on this subject at bylogos.blogspot.com in "Genesis and Ancient Cosmology"]
We go even further on the cosmological expertise of “ancient man.” The issue of earliest man’s intelligence and knowledge of the Cosmos was something we tackled head-on in our 1994 work They Came From Babel. [See our blog(s) on the flat-Earth subject at the new TCFB site] Throughout history, men certainly have descended into various forms of ignorant and idolatrous beliefs. As Peter Tompkins discusses in his Secrets of the Great Pyramid (1971, 1978), there was a decline of ancient knowledge. The Greeks were “mainly handling and mishandling traditional data of an advanced science that preceded them, and which they only understood in part.” (Tompkins, pg. 215)
For more on the extent of ancient knowledge and biblical accuracy regarding the Cosmos, see TheyCameFromBabel.com.
Welcome to an Untwisting of Conventional History
Published January 31, 2011 | 
Do you enjoy history? Are you concerned about the urgency of understanding our past and its impact on our present? Do you like discovering “the real story”? Would you like to have a convenient resource for supplementing your kids’ (and your own) history education, to counter politically correct or philosophically biased agendas?
Would a convenient source of book reviews save you time in determining what you or your kids most want and need to read? Could you benefit from a source that finds books you might not otherwise ever find on your own?
At Untwist History, we just like to root around and dig up as much truth as we can and place it in as broad and sensible a context as possible. If you’re looking for a better, truer understanding of history, we’re here to do much of the digging and organizing for you.
Are you a homeschooler or a Christian schooler who needs a little help in reconciling conventional history accounts with biblical history? We have found that our research reflects and supports a more literal, biblical worldview of people and events, though such a worldview isn’t required to benefit from information found on this site.
Why Wasn’t I Taught That??
This Untwist History project started decades ago when I was in college, taking undergraduate courses in Latin American history as well as ancient and medieval history. I made some basic observations regarding pyramids in Egypt and pyramids in the Western Hemisphere and wondered, “Why do historians draw such hard and fast lines between these cultures and view the oceans as insurmountable barriers to “pre-modern” navigational skills?” There had to be communication between these peoples, I thought naively.
In the university library, I happened onto a history of the Incas written by half-Spaniard Garcilaso de la Vega, in which he recounts a story of Noah and the Flood told to him as an Incan tradition by his mother, an Incan princess. I later discovered that cultures around the world shared Flood versions and other legends and traditions, biblical and otherwise. Why wasn’t I taught that? Again, there had to be a lot of communication between these peoples worldwide, I thought naively. Why wasn’t that possibility even considered in high school and college history courses?
When I began to research the famous Plymouth Pilgrims, I wondered why I wasn’t taught about their original patent, that they were supposed to be on the Hudson River in New York (then Virginia), that the crew recognized Cape Cod from previous experience (Europeans had been fishing American waters long before Columbus), or that their disastrous experiment in communal survival quickly gave way to a much more successful system of private property and enterprise. Why wasn’t I taught that? Even elementary school kids can understand those concepts.
We took civics and government classes in high school but I was never given anything approaching an adequate and true understanding of the purpose of the electoral college or the reasons for having state legislatures decide who would represent their state in the U.S. Senate. I was allowed the impression these procedures reflected “backward” thinking rather than a wise strategy to balance power.
Even though I was a history major in graduate school, I only recently discovered, thanks to Harlow Unger’s marvelous biography, that James Monroe, rather than Thomas Jefferson, deserves the real credit for the Louisiana Purchase, that Monroe and his wife heroically rescued Lafayette’s family during the French Revolution, and that Monroe was America’s most popular president (next to Washington), and yet Monroe is virtually ignored.
We’re here to join those who are already endeavoring to set the record straight on a variety of issues, events, and people in that part of the historic record ranging from the time of Christ to the present. This site is the “A.D.” version of They Came From Babel. Just as with TCFB, Untwist History takes a generalist approach and draws from a wide range of sources that, even if not biblically oriented, offer some valuable insights.
Let us know if you find the information enjoyable and helpful and please visit often!
Only One Generation Away
In conservative circles, the traditional, powerful, generally pro-West military is the central hope for maintaining a workable level of reason, secular government, and stability in Egypt — an Egypt which sits astride the all-important Suez Canal, possesses a lot of heavy firepower (courtesy U.S. aid), and has one of only two Middle East peace agreements with Israel.
Shiite Iran is indeed stirring the pot, as stated by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and fully expected by most conservative watchers. Sunni radical cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, formerly exiled, has been unleashed and may prove to be as incendiary an influence as Iran’s 1979 version, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
But a new comment caught our eye this morning, from the same DEBKA article. Sources, it reveals, believe that young military leaders “have executed a coup and displaced the veterans.” Did anyone think to see that coming? In all the reassuring, expert comments that “the military is in control,” did anyone stop and consider the age-old scenario of the wiser veterans vs. the young hotheads?
Read II Chronicles 10 about King Solomon’s son Rehoboam, who forsook the counsel of the old men and listened to his peers. As a result, the Kingdom of Israel went from its zenith as a world power into a downward spiral of division, degeneration, and captivity.
We are always only one generation away from revolution, for better or worse.