Debate: Are those old 'Isle of California' maps just bad geography or did someone actually believe it?

Last weekend at a flea market in Portland I found a 1625 map showing California as an island, and I'm trying to figure out if the cartographer genuinely thought it was or if they were copying a mistake someone made 3 years earlier to sell more maps to collectors.

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher_west126d ago

Have you noticed how often we just pass along things without questioning them? That's exactly what happened with those old California maps. It started with some Spanish explorer's notes being misinterpreted, and then every mapmaker just copied the next guy because nobody wanted to be the one to get it wrong and look foolish. Same thing happens today with all those viral stories people share on Facebook without checking if they're true. People are more worried about being part of the crowd than about being accurate. So yeah, I think the mapmakers believed it in a lazy way, not because they had proof, but because everyone around them was saying the same thing.

kim.emma26d ago

Read a great piece about how mapmakers just copied the Spanish mistake for centuries.