Today it is easier to discover and adventure on foreign islands than in previous decades. Tools like Google Maps, Map Quests or Wiz have made navigation as simple as the touch of a button. But centuries ago, people had no choice but to rely on the words of their trusted explorers. Naturally, this led to many errors, some of which remained unnoticed until the twentieth century.
As the adventurers traveled to the seas and recorded the sights they had seen, people could not believe that the lands they described in the stories were real. These stories led to the emergence of places that people now call the imaginary islands, the islands that were plotted on the maps, but after they were proven to be non-existent, they were wiped off the map.
Imaginary islands: Miracles, secrets and blunders
Imaginary islands have been on the map for decades. Some of them were removed from the map due to natural issues such as earthquakes and some were renamed. At that time, the islands were nothing more than fantasies, and since there was no evidence that they existed, they could be wiped off the map.
But if you think all these geographical errors were corrected during the development of technology, you’re wrong. In 2012, an imaginary island called Sandy Island was rejected by an Australian surveyor ship, the “Southern R / V Surveyor”
The sandy island was hypothetically located in northern New Caledonia in the South Pacific. The island was also plotted on maps and related data had been written since the late 19th century. Two centuries later, the island was officially declared an imaginary island during the “Southern Surveyor” trips.
Some of these errors appear to have been deliberate. For example, Lake Philip Eisel Wallace and Ponckarney were named after Louis Philippe, Marcois de l’Eurillier and honored him. Philip was a government official who sponsored exploration trips.
It was not only the imaginary islands that were plotted on the map. In the past, there were imaginary mountains and sea routes. One of the most famous areas that never existed is the Kung Mountains. The area was thought to be near West Africa and near the Niger River and continue to the imaginary mountains of the moon.
After Louis Gustavo Benger’s 1887-87 expedition and his own scans, the surveyors deleted the names of the mountains from the map. Despite these major flaws in navigation and geography, one can see further errors in the future. Do you think there are any other errors that remain undetected?