Showerthought: old maps of California showing it as an island

I was at a garage sale last weekend in Austin and found this old atlas from 1750. The seller was this older guy named Bill who collected antique books. He pointed out how California was drawn as a separate island way after explorers knew it wasn't. I asked him why map makers kept doing that and he just laughed and said they copied from each other for decades. It stuck with me because we do the same thing now with online info we just repeat stuff without checking. Have you ever found a map with a mistake that spread across multiple editions like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.olivia1mo ago

Got that atlas home and stared at it for like an hour... I used to think map mistakes were just old timey people being dumb, you know? But realizing those cartographers had actual deadlines and just copied each other to save time really changed my mind. We do the exact same thing on Wikipedia with urban legends or faulty sources, we just keep repeating it until someone actually checks. That Bill guy sounds like he knew his stuff too.

the_simon1mo ago

just kept repeating it until someone actually checks" - exactly. I've seen this happen so many times. Back in the old forum days someone posted that the "Bermuda Triangle" was caused by methane gas bubbles and people just kept copying that into articles for years before anyone bothered to fact check it. Map errors are even worse because once it's printed on paper it becomes the truth to most people. There was a town in Ohio that appeared on maps for like 20 years that never existed, just a cartographer's mistake that got copied over and over. The Wikipedia comparison is spot on - we're all just lazy and trust whatever came first until someone proves it wrong.