I loveee your post about how Nandor isnt really a dumbass! however I was just watching the ep where they go to Atlantic city and nandor still thought the world was held up by four elephants? How could this map into what you've explained in the post?
Unfortunately that is one of the holdouts that I have trouble with lol. That being said, the four elephants is actually a misnomer that came later? Originally in Hindu cosmology (yes I went to Wikipedia for this, because my trivia knowledge is good... but sadly it's not that good lol) it's eight male elephants and eight female elephants that represent the eight 'zone' of the Universe. So, sixteen elephants! There's no mention of a turtle at that point either.
We can surmise that Nandor may have heard that belief at some point in his human life. But, I don't know if he would have taken it literally? At that point he might have just marked it down and didn't think on that part much further.
But here's where it gets interesting.
The idea of four elephants on the back of a turtle? That doesn't come around until 1599. In a letter by Emanual de Velga, Wilhelm von Humboldt (who was a linguist among other things) suggested that the idea of elephants may be from a misinterpretation of the Sanskrit word Nâga, being that it can refer to both "serpent" and "elephant" (because of the snake-like trunk). He suggests that through misinterpretation, the idea of the elephants actually comes from the idea of the World Serpent - such as Jörmungandr in Norse mythology.
Now, he did write that with absolutely zero proof, but that does open up another line of questioning for us.
It's known that the Vikings made their way all the way to the Holy Land. There are stories that they helped the Knights Templar during the Crusades.
Now, Nandor was Supreme Viceroy in a part of Persia. That's pretty removed, geologically speaking, from where the Crusades were being waged. Though, the Ninth Crusade, from 1271 to 1272, would have been being waged when he was a little boy. And word travels.
I am going to suggest, perhaps, that one of his tutors when he was a young boy, was either a Norseman himself, or had at least encountered the Vikings at some point in his history. After all, people travel, ideas travel.
So maybe Nandor was taught the idea of Jörmungandr, not necessarily as a fact, but while his teachers were telling him stories. He's somewhere between eight and ten years old, and the idea latches on. It takes his fancy, but he also misinterprets the the meaning of 'serpent', because he's a child who has been also taught some of the Hindu cosmology, as part of his lessons, to open his mind.
So, now two different cultures have taught him that there's "elephants" holding up the world.
And then, he's a Vampire, and he's able to travel to places he'd never dreamed of as a boy. Places he didn't know existed. Like the New World.
And the Indigenous people here tell him the story of Sky Woman, and the great Turtle that is Turtle Island - North America. And it all clicks together! Another culture that believes in the world either being, or being supported by, a turtle!
Even though those lovely people didn't mention elephants, they must be there! They're there in all the other beliefs!
I suggest that Nandor just... learned the mythology at a very young age, and it gripped him.
Sure, he would have learned Empedocles and Anaxagoras' arguments that the Earth was a sphere and not flat - it would have been included with both his Classics lessons and his arithmetic lessons. And probably history lessons.
But, he never questioned that, did he? He drew a spherical earth held by the elephants. So yes, he absolutely learned that the Earth is round, and not flat. He absolutely learned everything that the Ancients had already discovered about the Earth's place in the Universe. But he also believed that the sphere was held up by the elephants and rode the back of a great turtle.
And then came Copernicus, in the early to mid 1500s, who suggested that the Sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the universe. Nandor, still educating himself at this time, would have read this theory and probably immediately found it sound.
Of course the Earth moves around the Sun! It's on the back of a turtle! And that's why it takes a year! Turtles are very slow!
I think Nandor's belief in the World Elephants (and turtle) are less about a failure of his education, and less about his intelligence, and more about one of those long-held beliefs of childhood. Because it fascinated him as a child, even if it was just a myth. It just... he liked the idea and then it just sort of cemented itself in his mind.
And, when he stopped seeking out further knowledge, he missed the advancements in astronomy etc. I think learning about the Big Bang as the theories developed would have fascinated him, rather than having it all dumped on him one evening by Colin Robinson.
Poor man had his entire childhood and worldview eradicated in one blow.
