In the other days of mapmaking , plotting out the world was no easy task . It ’s not surprising that cartographer got some things incorrect ( it ’s probably more surprising how much they gotright ) . One of the most far-flung misconceptions in the 16th century involved an sphere of the mostly unexplored continent of North America , a place called California , which mapmakers often present as an island .
The bother began not with explorers , butwith a author . In his 1510 bookLas sergas de Esplandián , Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo write " Know , that on the good hand of the Indies there is an island called California very near to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise ; and it is peopled by black women , without any man among them , for they live in the mode of Amazons . "
The island of California was strictly a figment of de Montalvo ’s imagination . Still , though the westerly coast of North America had typically been show as a peninsula in the 1500s , when Spanish Explorer visited the sphere in the 1600s , they conclude that the region was , in fact , an island .
At that sentence , single-valued function were very valuable guides to new district and , therefore , intimately guard . So how did this myth perpetuate ? " The story is , the Dutch raided a Spanish ship and found a secret Spanish single-valued function and brought it back to Amsterdam and circulated it from there , ” single-valued function collector Glen McLaughlintoldWired . ( you’re able to see McLaughlin ’s total collection of Island of California maps , which he donated to Stanford , onlinehere . )
And that may have been exactly what the Spanish require . " I ’ve been told that Spain get laid it was n’t an island , but it was politically expedient for others to think it was , " writer and map partisan Rebecca Solnitsaid in a Stanford press sack . " They were n’t break to share what they knew with everybody else . "
By 1622,drawing California as an islandwas all the fad among European mapmakers . The map above , part of the appeal of the Library of Congress , was drag by Dutch cartographer Johannes Vingboons in 1639 . The misconception endure even after Eusebio Kino , a Jesuit non-Christian priest , top an junket in the area between 1698 and 1701 and issue a report — perfect with mapping called " A musical passage by Land to California"—that debunked the notion . It would take another half - century before California became reattached to the continent in mathematical function . In 1747 , even King Ferdinand VI of Spain weigh in — his royal edict declared " California is not an island . "
The Afternoon Mapis a semi - veritable feature article in which we send map and infographics . In the afternoon . Semi - regularly .
