Before early 15th and 16th century naval explorers like Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan

could get sailors to agree to join them on their expeditions, they had to first convince

them that they weren't going to just literally sail off the edge of the earth.

Because in the era before satellite photos, NASA and widespread formal scientific education,

a lot of people were super duper dumb and very superstitious.

A lot of ding-dongs.

In addition to just falling out into space or hell or wherever they thought they might

end up, sailors were also genuinely worried about monsters like the Kraken.

An ancient sea creature took a mile in length that could grab hold of your ship and pull

it down to the murky depths of the sea, crushing and eating everyone on boarder, just letting

you drown, I guess.

Either way, bad outcome.

Ancient sea monsters, time suck all to themselves.

These sailors were worried about dragons overhead, they were worried about sirens luring them

into crashing into the rocks.

All kinds of crazy shit because not everyone had cameras on their phones and it was harder

to prove that no one had ever seen any of this stuff in real life.

And all these creatures and their brains lived on a flat planet.

But even in ancient times, the thinkers of their day believed the earth was not flat.

Pythagoras, South of the earth, was most likely spherical way back in the 6th century BC.

Way before smartphones.

Way before the internet.

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