> Also people had little understanding of the scale of things. There is nothing indicating that the moon is smaller than earth or that the sun is much, much bigger than earth, and both appear equally large in the sky...

The Ancient Greeks were actually quite clever about trying to calculate things:

* https://physicsteacher.blog/2021/05/31/from-the-earth-to-the...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distances_(Ar...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Sizes_and_Distances_(Hippar...