People have known the shape and size of the earth for thousands of years, but what did they think the other parts of it looked like? Before Christopher Columbus, Europeans knew it was round, and also that the earth was too large to reach East Asia by sailing west from Spain. But what did people think Columbus was going to find? Were they confident that he would find nothing but empty ocean?

Were there any interesting myths involving the spherical earth and what was on the other side? Were there conflicts in ancient pagan societies similar to that between Galileo and the church in which ancient astronomers were persecuted for arguing against the cosmological traditions in their societies?