Thursday, January 20, 2011

Question - 597


A map from the 1650's perpetuating what cartographic error (and its associated mythical nomenclature)?

4 comments:

Dinesh said...

Island of California. Is the nomenclature the "gulf of California"? Nice Question.

Anonymous said...

One of the major geographic misconceptions originating during the discovery and exploration of North America was the depiction of California as an island. Based on erroneous Spanish manuscript accounts, European cartographers began in 1622 to portray the western coast of North America as a separate island. Major publishers, especially the British and the Dutch, accepted this concept well into the early eighteenth century, long after Father Eusebio Kino confirmed during exploration of the American southwest from 1698 to 1701 that California was not an island.
Krithi

Divya Shankar said...

Map shows Island of California - a misconception that California was an island separated from N.America mainland.

Kaushik said...

A c. 1650 map showing the Island of California, a long-held European misconception, dating from the 16th century, that California was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island separated from the continent by a strait now known instead as the Gulf of California. The belief persisted until the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774–76.