*actually* that's a modern myth, that people believed in a flat earth. That's a modern fiction. *Truth* is, people always knew the earth was round, with the exception of a couple of mythologies here and there. The concept that ppl once believed the earth was flat was made up in the 19th century (or perhaps they believed it to be true) by promoters of Science... which was in a bit more of a primitive state than it is today... subject to the same PT Barnum style tactics as it seemed *everybody* was using from the 1840s-1890s.