He believed, though, that the shape of Earth was that of a cylinder rather than the sphere that later Greek philosophers would conjecture.
请教一下曹老师,我在词典上查到cylinder的释意有一条是any object shaped like a cylinder,那么原句是否可以直接写成the shape of Earth was a cylinder?
另外,原文在讨论地球的形状和组成,为什么这里的Earth可以不加the?