Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Brave new world
THE AMERICAS, c.1700
In the past, accurate information about faraway places was often difficult or impossible to
obtain. One result of this is that old European maps of other continents often presented geo-
graphical conjecture as fact. Perhaps the most notorious of these errors was the island of Cali-
fornia. Although it had been correctly depicted as part of the American mainland on 16th-
century printed maps, a misconception arose early in the 17th century that California was an
island and, for more than a hundred years, many European mapmakers drew it that way.
