How Old Maps Got Things Wrong

▶ In this video I talk about old maps which depicted parts of the world incorrectly.

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[General.Knowledge]

*Do you think Australia should try building artificial lakes and rivers to make their desert lands inhabitable?*

[TheUncleRuckus]

I think the reason they thought California was an island initially was bc of they saw the Peninsula of Southern California and guessed the rest of California looked the same way.

[samuele]

European maps had been impressively accurate long before the advent of satellites. Obviously they weren't as correct about the lands they were exploring at the moment of drawing a map, but starting from the late 15th century they did an impressive job considering their very limited tools, and by the 18th century their renditions of Europe, norhern Africa and the middle east were almost perfect.

[stevenmichaelhachey]

7:38
Some Ancient Greek philosophers believed that to keep the world “balanced” there was the same amount of land in the Southern Hemisphere as the northern.

[BamBamGT]

A popular one was also the north american inland sea. People believed you could take a boat upriver on the east coast, and you'd end up at this inland sea, which could also connect to the pacific. It's also how New York came to be. The Dutch were looking for a specific river that supposedly connected to this inland sea. Hudson found this river and followed it till it became too shallow. The entire area was then claimed by the Dutch, which leed to the founding of new -Amsterdam, later New York.

[PurelyCoincidental]

Some of the maps of California as an island honestly look like they took a map of the Salish Sea (eventually can lead to Seattle) and the Gulf of California, combined them, and just assumed they must meet.

[Ktkt]

One thing that I learned from my mom was that certain people would sail by continents or landmasses, note any details of the region, then give it to mapmakers to connect the dots visually. Idk when this practice took place but it would make sense for why mapmakers would make mistakes here and there.

[willhatton]

Hi! I think I read somewhere that the reason they thought there was a Terra Australis was because they felt that there had to be a similar amount of landmass in the southern hemisphere to "balance" the landmass they knew was in the northern hemisphere! Also, please can I recommend that you read a book called "The Phantom Atlas" by Edward Brooke-Hitching - fascinating read, beautifully illustrated and expands upon this fascinating subject :-)

[gerardbryant]

The idea of an inland sea in Australia came about because early European explorers discovered several rivers running roughly to the Northwest, on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. These all run into the Darling River, which runs Southwest, and joins the Murray river. Lake Eyre is a large inland body of water, but is isn't permanent.

[MirkoC]

Especially I think to remember you are Portuguese, so I'm surprised you did not mention that distorted / dislocated South America map from Spain that gave you Brasil.

[tigersharkzh]

While Captain James Cook rectified the mistake of Terra Australis, he made two mistakes mapping New Zealand. Stewart Island was mapped as a peninsula connected to the South Island and Banks Peninsula was mapped as an island as he thought Lyttelton Harbour and Akaroa Harbour were connected.

[thomasrinschler]

The story of the Island of California is a bit more complex than that. When the Spanish first discovered Baja California, they did indeed think it was an island. But with in a few years, it was quickly determined that it wasn't (you know, by not being able to sail north without hitting land). So, for years, it was, correctly, depicted as a peninsula on maps. Then an explorer at the northern end of the Gulf of California saw some lagoons where the Colorado River flows into the head of the bay, and started spreading rumors that he thought they might be actually the start of a full-fledged straight (presumably to get himself more exploration commissions). So - despite the fact that people had been recorded *walking* to Baja California around the northern edge of the Gulf of California, cartographers suddenly took this one explorer at his word and started portraying California as an island again. This took about a century to fix, when the King of Spain literally sent more people to walk on dry land to California to prove to everyone that it was attached to the mainland.

[franl]

Talking about scale, one French king remarked that he'd lost more land because of his cartographers than he'd ever lost through war.
I've read that Chinese compasses pointed south, not north, so maybe their maps were orientated to have south at the top? I've no idea what their compass needles pointed to, unless they just followed the south end of a needle that was actually pointing north.

[demetrialowther]

I know in early maps of Tasmania that Macquarie Harbour was often vastly overscale compared to the rest of the island and this appeared in a few maps of the time. The west coast of Tassie was inhospitable and wild for most of colonial history and repelled many surveyors from discovering what lied within. Lake Pedder was also one of these features that saw some repeated errors, namely that the rivers that flowed in and out (before it was impounded in a modern reservoir) were often shown to flow backwards, draining into the Huon. I generally assume that this was because it seemed that the mountains formed a wall to the west that was clearly the source, when in reality, the Serpentine River actually punched through the mountains via a gorge and drained west to the Gordon. Also on Tasmanian west coast cartography issues, the southernmost extent of Macquarie Harbour, a little arm known as 'Birchs Inlet' seems to have not been accurately mapped until modern aviation in the 40's. In reality, it's shape is long and heads in a straight line south, but early surveys of Macquarie Harbour that only peered through it's mouth, misread it as having a swollen, curved shape. This weird error went on unnoticed for a century or so to the point that the latest I've found a map to still show it like this was the 1950's. At that point, aerial surveys were widely referenced and the old misunderstanding was erased for good.

[jemleye]

If you ever do a part two, Scandinavian region is a very interesting example of this:
1. Older maps had Greenland as another extended peninsula of Northern Europe connecting to northern Norway.
3. The number of peninsulas in the Scandinavian region took a lot of time to settle into what it actually is, going from one peninsula of Norway and Sweden with modern Finland on a vague eastern continental side, to having up to three: Scandinavian peninsula, Finland and the mythical land bridge to Greenland.
4. A bit more niche, but Europe's largest lakes of Ladoga, Onega and the White sea were placed initially a bit all over the place, within the Finnish peninsula mostly, and with the White Sea often represented as a lake.

[breysendettwiller]

I have heard a statement (I think by Map Men?) that may explain the weird island in Mexico. A lot of cartographers used to add some small false pieces of information as a sort of watermark to indicate that someone else stole their work if it was put into another map. It could be that someone did this and maps just kept using that same piece of information for years. It could be something else as well though.

[DuleAres]

One of the better videos in this year! Good work!

[GarageGamere]

The reason I think they showed california as an island is the giant lake may have had more water a few hundred years ago and no one wanted to walk around to confirm that.

[ajsarabia]

Regarding Bermeja, Mexico is actually in North American continent not South America.

[erdnasiul]

This makes Pedro Nunes maybe one of the most underrated genius ever.