In 499 CE an Indian astronomer wrote that the Earth rotates on its axis — and the stars only appear to move.
“Just as a man in a moving boat sees the stationary objects on the bank move backward, so the stationary stars are seen by people at Laṅkā as moving westward.”
— Āryabhaṭa, Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE)
Earth's daily axial rotation; the heliocentric mechanics later formalised by Copernicus (1543 CE).
A genuine, defensible parallel.
At just 23, Āryabhaṭa produced a mathematical astronomy of stunning quality. He argued that the apparent daily motion of the stars is caused by the Earth's own rotation — illustrated with the famous boat analogy — over a thousand years before Copernicus. He also explained eclipses correctly as shadows (the Earth's shadow on the Moon, the Moon's on the Sun), rejecting the demon Rāhu as a physical cause, and computed the Earth's circumference to within a couple of percent.
This one needs almost no hedging — it is solid, documented history of science. The only honest nuance is that not all Indian astronomers accepted the rotating Earth (Brahmagupta, a brilliant mathematician, rejected it), and Āryabhaṭa's system was still broadly geocentric in layout. But the core insight — a spinning Earth and shadow-eclipses — was centuries ahead and entirely his own.