An old map with New Zealand attached to Australia finally made me laugh

I used to just glance at those vintage maps with goofy borders and move on, but last week I found one from 1875 where New Zealand was basically glued to the east coast of Australia. Had to stop and actually look at the details, like how they labeled Tasmania as part of the mainland too. Now I spend way more time zooming into old atlases to catch these mistakes. Anyone else got a favorite wrong border that still cracks them up?

3 comments

3 Comments

danieltaylor20d ago

Stumbled across one from 1750 where California was drawn as an island floating off the west coast... now I'm wondering how many people actually thought that was real back then.

derek_dixon7820d ago

lol wait hold on, you really think people back then were that dumb? maps back then were mostly for show or for rich people to hang on their walls, not for actual navigation. like yeah some cartographers messed up but that doesn't mean everyone believed california was an island. sailors and explorers knew the coastline better than some dude drawing from legend. plus a lot of those old maps were based on myths or bad info from earlier explorers, not what regular folks thought. so chances are most people who saw that map just shrugged and figured it was artistic license.

butler.brian20d ago

Ah man, I gotta kinda push back on that a little. Those old maps weren't just for decoration, a lot of them were used by explorers and even government officials to plan expeditions and claim land. Sure, sailors had better local knowledge, but if your boss is looking at a map that shows California as an island and he's launching a ship, you're probably gonna follow that map, not argue with it. So yeah, I bet a decent number of people back then honestly thought California was separate from the mainland, mistakes just spread way slower and stuck around longer without good charts to correct them.