the same way? As I read it, the ancients were the ones who put their stone marker right on the equator, whereas later "modern" scientists did not.

Another thing we were told while in Equador was that one of their mountains that we saw when crossing over the mountains by car, Mount Chimborazo, is actually the highest mountain on Earth if you measure from the Earth's center instead of from sea level, as the Earth actually bulges around the equator due to the spin of the Earth.