Rome and their revival in Renaissance and 

 later times. These cathedrals, after all, 

 were not built by German tribes who had 

 their heyday in the third to fifth centuries. 

 The names of several peoples who con- 

 quered the waning classical world — Goths 

 and Vandals in particular — became pejo- 

 rative terms for anything considered nide 

 or mean. For that matter, the word barbar- 

 ian comes from the Latin term for for- 

 eigner. 



Our conventional divisions of Western 

 history are mired in these twinned errors 

 of false categorization and pejorative des- 

 ignation. I know that professional histori- 

 ans no longer use such a taxonomy, but 

 popular impression still supports a divi- 

 sion into classical times (glory of Greece 

 and grandeur of Rome), followed by the 

 pall of the Dark Ages, some improvement 

 in the Middle Ages, and an eclat of cul- 

 ture's rediscovery in the Renaissance. But 

 consider the origin of the two pejorative 

 terms in this sequence — and the relation- 

 ship of taxonomy to prejudiced theories of 

 progress becomes clear. 



According to historian J. B. Russell, Pe- 

 trarch devised the term Dark Ages in about 

 1340 to designate a period between classi- 

 cal times and his own form of modernism. 

 The term Middle Ages for the interval be- 

 tween classical fall and Renaissance re- 

 vival originated in the fifteenth century but 

 only gained popularity in the seventeenth 

 century. Some people consider everything 



from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance 

 as Dark, others as Middle. Still others 

 make a sequential division into an earlier 

 dark and later middle, separated by 

 Charlemagne or the arbitrary millennial 

 transition of 1000. Such uncertainty only 

 shows the foolishness of attempting to de- 

 fine fixed categories within continua. In 

 any case, the intent of darks and middles 

 could not be more clear — to view Western 

 history as possessing a Greek and Roman 

 acme, with supposed loss as tragic, fol- 

 lowed by the beginning of salvation in Re- 

 naissance rediscovery. 



Such prejudicial tales of redemption re- 

 quire a set of stories to support their narra- 

 tive. Most of these legends feature art, lit- 

 erature, or architecture, but science has 

 also contributed. I write this essay to point 

 out that the most prominent of all scientific 

 stories in this mode — the supposed dark 

 and medieval consensus for a flat earth — 

 is entirely mythological. Moreover, when 

 we trace the invenfion of this fable in the 

 nineteenth century, we receive a double 

 lesson in the dangers of false tax- 

 onomies — the second and larger purpose 

 of this essay. For the myth itself only 

 makes sense under a prejudicial view of 

 Western history as an era of darkness be- 

 tween lighted beacons of classical learn- 

 ing and Renaissance revival, while the 

 nineteenth-century invention of the myth, 

 as we shall see, occurred to support an- 

 other dubious and harmful separation 



"Capistrano — every year Capistrano — Can 't we ever go anywhere else ? 



wedded to another legend of historical 

 progress — the supposed warfare between 

 science and religion. 



Classical scholars, of course, had no 

 doubt about the earth's sphericity. Our 

 planet's roundness was central to Aristo- 

 tle's cosmology and assumed in Eratos- 

 thenes's measurement of the earth's cir- 

 cumference in the third century B.C. The 

 flat earth myth argues that this knowledge 

 was then lost when ecclesiastical darkness 

 settled over Europe. For a thousand years 

 of middle time, almost all scholars held 

 that the earth must be flat — Uke the floor 

 of a tent, held up by the canopy of the sky, 

 to cite a biblical metaphor read literally. 

 The Renaissance rediscovered classical 

 notions of sphericity, but proof required 

 the braveness of Columbus and other great 

 explorers who should have sailed off the 

 edge but, beginning with Magellan's expe- 

 dition, returned home from the opposite 

 direction after going all the way around. 



The inspirational, schoolchild version 

 of the myth centers on Columbus, who 

 supposedly overcame the calumny of as- 

 sembled clerics at Salamanca to win a 

 chance from Ferdinand and Isabella. Con- 

 sider this version of the legend, cited by 

 Russell from a book for primary-school 

 children written in 1887, soon after the 

 myth's invention (but little different from 

 accounts that I read as a child in the 

 1950s): 



"But if the world is round," said Columbus, 

 "it is not hell that lies beyond that stormy 

 sea. Over there must lie the eastern strand of 

 Asia, the Cathay of Marco Polo."... In the 

 hall of the convent there was assembled the 

 imposing company — shaved monks in 

 gowns... cardinals in scarlet robes.... "You 

 think the earth is round.... Are you not 

 aware that the holy fathers of the church 

 have condemned this belief. . . . This theory 

 of yours looks heretical." Columbus might 

 well quake in his boots at the mention of 

 heresy; for there was that new Inquisition 

 just in fine running order, with its elaborate 

 bone-breaking, flesh-pinching, thumb- 

 screwing, hanging, burning, mangling sys- 

 tem for heretics. 



Dramatic to be sure, but entirely ficti- 

 tious. There never was a period of "flat 

 earth darkness" among scholars (regard- 

 less of how many uneducated people may 

 have thus conceptualized our planet both 

 then and now). Greek knowledge of 

 sphericity was never lost, and all major 

 medieval scholars accepted the earth's 

 roundness as an established fact of cos- 

 mology. Ferdinand and Isabella did refer 

 Columbus's plans to a royal commission 

 headed by Hernando de Talavera, Is- 



14 Natural History 3/94 



