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Found a 150 year old map that shows Antarctica with no ice
I was digging through some old books at a library sale last month and found a map from 1865 that shows Antarctica as a green continent with rivers and mountains. The weird part is they didn't discover Antarctica was ice covered until way later, so how did the mapmaker know the shape under the ice? Does anyone have info on old maps that don't match what we're taught about history?
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the_terry2mo ago
Alright, let's pump the brakes a little here. It's a cool find for sure, but a map from 1865 showing a green Antarctica is more about the mapmaker filling in blank space with guesses than some lost secret knowledge. Back then, they knew there was land down there but had no clue what it looked like, so artists just drew mountains and rivers based on what they thought a southern continent should look like. I see these old maps pop up on eBay all the time where the mapmaker just winged it for the uncharted parts.
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moore.beth2mo ago
Oh man, here we go. Look, I get it, old maps are neat and all, but this isn't some hidden history bombshell. Mapmakers in the 1800s didn't have satellite photos or anything, so when they got to the bottom of the world they just drew whatever looked good. Mountains and rivers were the default "I dunno, let's make it look like a real place" fill. You can find a dozen maps from that era with fake islands and imaginary coastlines, Antarctica was just the biggest blank spot they had. It's not that deep.
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