ShmoopTube

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here's your shmoop du jour brought to

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you by Gothic statisticians gathering data on the best brand of black lipstick [Girl putting on black lipstick]

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so you don't have to okay here's the question the earliest geographers in the

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Western tradition to discover that the earth was spherical were who? and here

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are your potential answers... whether

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you're a dog person or a cat person a Star Wars lover or a Trekkie we can all

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agree on one thing the Earth is spherical... well almost all of us but who

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are the first people to come up with this idea back when it was still as wild

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and crazy as Scientology is today let's start by exploring E - the Carolingian [A sunset with birds flying]

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court had scholars often called doctors aplenty they were particularly well

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known for their interest in the arts literature architecture law and religion

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but as you can tell Carolingian court doctors were more concerned with the

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shape people's morality was in than with the shape of the earth meaning we can

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excommunicate E - Lets delve into D so Turkey the country not the lunch meat was [Plate of Turkey and a playground with the Turkish flag appears]

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founded on October 29th 1923 making Turkish geometers practically babies in

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the great scheme of geometry in fact Turkish geometers have pretty much

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always known the Earth to be round also because this knowledge is pretty old

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school so discard D how about B well Goths hese days are all about Marilyn [Marilyn Manson playing the guitar]

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Manson and wearing all black but the gothics of ye oldie are famous for some

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seriously intense architecture as well as a whole bunch of horror fiction [Building slants to the side]

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however gothic statisticians are about as relevant to this question as well

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something irrelevant would be... so we can bury D.. let's take a look at A - The

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big debate for Roman astronomers was whether or not the earth was the center [Aliens looking down on Earth]

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of the universe the idea that the earth was spherical wasn't really a big deal

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for Roman astronomers which certainly suggests that they weren't the only ones

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to discover it so we can abandon A and that leaves us with C the Ancient Greeks

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had their fingers in a whole bunch of pies [Man stood with selection of pies]

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figuratively we hope we wouldn't eat pie after someone stuck there grimey one in it..

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Pythagoras, famous for that geometric theorem well he theorized that the

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horizon was not in fact the edge of the world as people had previously believed [Man falls off edge of the world]

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he reckoned that the world around us was actually round and so C is the right

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answer nothing like a little A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared to warm

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up the brain or contemplating the universe.. have at it! [Pythagoras contemplating in Rome]

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