Am I the only one who gets sketched out by those 'lost continent' maps people keep buying?

I was at a garage sale last weekend and overheard a guy bragging to his friend about a map he bought online. He said it was some 'secret landmass' off the coast of Japan that the government supposedly covered up. He spent $75 on it and was dead serious. I didn't say anything, but I looked it up later and it's just some fantasy map from a niche artist who makes fictional geography. People are out there taking these things as gospel and even trying to plan trips based on them. It makes me wonder how many folks in this community are buying weird maps for fun versus actually believing in fake places. Has anyone else run into a map that was being sold as real but was obviously made up?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenixh741mo ago

Oh, man, I actually have to chime in here because that's not quite right about the Japan one. The map you're thinking of is probably "The Island of the Gods" or something similar, but the real lost continent people talk about off Japan is "Mu" or "Lemuria" - that's a whole different rabbit hole of 19th century pseudoscience, not some artist's creation. I've seen those fantasy maps too and they're meant to be pretty obviously fake, like with dragons and impossible geography. But the Mu thing actually has a long history of people believing it was real, starting with a guy named James Churchward who claimed to have ancient tablets showing it. It's honestly kind of fascinating how these ideas get twisted over time, but yeah, $75 for a map of something that never existed is wild. People really will buy anything if you tell a good enough story around it.

uma3061mo ago

but is it really that different though? like i get what you're saying about Mu having that old pseudoscience history vs. a modern fantasy map, but at the end of the day someone is still paying $75 for a piece of paper with a made up place on it. the guy at that garage sale was probably as serious about his secret Japan landmass as the people who bought into Churchward's stuff back in the day. i've seen people on here argue that the "Eye of Africa" is Atlantis and then link to some sketchy Etsy shop selling a map of it with coordinates. same vibe, just a different coat of paint. i think people just want to feel like they're in on some hidden truth, and a cool map is a good prop for that fantasy.