| deltav |
04-19-2014 01:05 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt 26z
(Post 20055807)
Looks like the western US must have been flooded. I don't think you can attribute this to a map making mistake. If they want so far as to draw islands then there must have been a body of water there.
|
The cartographers hit the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California from what is now mainland Mexico, and just assumed the peninsula of Baja California (literally, "Lower California") didn't connect to land. Baja is 1,000 miles long, so you can travel quite a ways north before the mainland bridges over. I just drove it in January and it's a long journey, very very interesting country tho...
Then other cartographers copied said map, even after later expeditions cast doubt on the island theory. It should be noted that until modern times, map-making was a very very inexact science, and you had all sorts of mythical and/or extrapolated places filling in blanks that the explorers never set foot in.
Cool post though. |
