Flat Earth Society
Overview
Flat Earth
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
instead of an oblate spheroid
Spherical Earth
The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC, but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given...
. The modern organization was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton
Samuel Shenton
Samuel Shenton was the founder in 1956 of the International Flat Earth Research Society, usually known as the Flat Earth Society, based in Dover, England...
in 1956 and was later led by Charles K. Johnson
Charles K. Johnson
Charles Kenneth Johnson was, from 1972 until his death, the president and energetic promoter of the International Flat Earth Society, which he and his wife ran from their home in California...
, who based the organization in his home in Lancaster, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The formal society was inactive after Johnson’s death in 2001 but was resurrected in 2004 by its new president Daniel Shenton.
The belief that the Earth was flat was typical of ancient cosmologies
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
until about the 4th century BC, when the Ancient Greek philosophers proposed the idea that the Earth was a sphere, or at least rounded in shape.
Unanswered Questions
