Keep in mind that monks in Carolingian France knew the Earth was round in the 8th century. It took a few hundred years for this knowledge to work its way into popular literature (but was present by at least the 13th century). If the paper had been thrown out, this would have made a great topic for a follow-up.
8th century nothing. It was known in ancient times. Eratosthenes correctly computed how big it was around 240 BC, and Posidonius confirmed his measurements in the 1st century BC. The story of how a certain Christopher Columbus came to read these results 1700 years later and disregard them is fascinating[1]
What I don't understand is, if there was such confusion over units, why didn't they simply use known values for the distances involved? I imagine angles weren't a problem. Or, god forbid, do their own measurements now that they had the technique? If it was repeatable to that degree of precision 240 years apart nearly 2000 years earlier, I should have thought they could at least settle the gross magnitude error that misled Columbus.
> 8th century nothing. It was known in ancient times.
I was referring specifically to the pattern of how long it took in the Middle Ages for literature folks to get ahold of the idea. The fact is those 8th century monks got the idea from classical sources.
The subtext of the paper would be "you English teachers can't expect to know about scientific discoveries of the last couple hundred years, can you?"
