Question

Columbus and other Europeans of his time believed that the Earth was

Answer 1

Answer:

roughly 50 percent smaller than it really is.

Explanation:

The myth of the flat Earth is a modern misunderstanding according to which the predominant cosmological view during the Middle Ages consisted in considering that the Earth was flat, and not a sphere.

During the first part of the Middle Ages, virtually all scholars held the view that the Earth is round, as the ancient Greeks expressed it. By the fourteenth century, the belief that the Earth was flat was practically non-existent among educated men.

However, among medieval artists, the image of the flat Earth was common. The exterior of the famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Bosch, is an example of the Renaissance in which an image of the Earth appears in the shape of a disk floating inside a transparent sphere.

Answer 2

Answer:

Columbus and other Europeans o his time believed that the Earth was roughly 50 percent smaller than it really is.

Explanation:

There were a few well-developed methods to measure Earth, the most influentials for Columbus and other Europeans of the era were the classical greeks ones and the Arabs method the one proposed by Posedinius found that the earth was at least 3/4 smaller than what Eratosthenes of Cyrene believed. The thing was that those perspectives were subject to debate and that the earth was smaller from what they believe was because civilization was challenging by nature, so they defied it. The Arab method suggested Posedinius was right about the measure, however, the Arab unit of distance was different from the Greek one and they realized the size was not certain. Those methods were impulsed by light, shadow, and calculations of distant objects. Those were minimized and challenged by the community. Leading them to believe that they were inaccurate at calculating the size of the earth and that the big quarter difference between the greeks classic and the distance difference between the Arab uni measure and the greek one were big enough to believe that the earth was at least 50% smaller than it is.