If they knew the earth rotated, then they could assume that noon happened at different times at different locations. But did they have a way to prove this without being able to travel or communicate fast enough to observe the effects?
In: Mathematics
Around 200 BC(E), Eratosthanes discovered that the Earth was round and measured its circumference after learning that the sun gave different angles to shadows in different places at the same times on the same days.
He, and anyone with his dataset and even a modest proportion of his skillset, could definitely figure out that the Sun is over a different place in the sky depending where you are on Earth at the same time, so they could figure out that when it is midnight here it must mean that it is noon on the other side of the world.
From WikiPedia page on Eratosthanes:
>In his three-volume work Geography (Greek: Geographika), [ERATOSTHANES] described and mapped his entire known world, even dividing the Earth into five climate zones: two freezing zones around the poles, two temperate zones, and a zone encompassing the equator and the tropics.
>This book is the first recorded instance of many terms still in use today, including the name of the discipline geography.
>He placed grids of overlapping lines over the surface of the Earth.
>He used parallels and meridians to link together every place in the world.
>It was now possible to estimate one’s distance from remote locations with this network over the surface of the Earth.
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