That map of California as an island I spotted in an old atlas blew my mind

I was flipping through a 1700s reproduction atlas my buddy picked up at an estate sale last weekend. There it was, a map from 1720 showing California as a giant island floating off the coast. I knew about the old myth but I didn't realize cartographers kept printing it for like 150 years even after explorers proved it was wrong. How did that mistake stick around so long when they had ships sailing up and down the coast?

2 comments

2 Comments

oliver52325d ago

That bit about "ships sailing up and down the coast" is the real key here. The thing is, a lot of those old explorers were working with secondhand stories from Spanish sailors who kept their routes secret to protect their trading rights. So you had map makers in Europe getting garbled reports from different sources, and once one big name like Henry Briggs printed that island map in 1625, everyone else just copied it for the next hundred years because it was easier than finding the truth. It's like how some Wikipedia article people keep updating with wrong info because nobody wants to do the actual research to fix it.

linda_clark25d ago

Guilty as charged, I've definitely been that person just copy-pasting from an old source instead of tracking down the original... sigh. Guess the 17th century mapmakers and I have more in common than I'd like to admit.