The biggest mistakes in mapmaking history

Many early maps portrayed faraway lands with mythical creatures or locations like the Garden of Eden.

• True

• False

1. What did the message "Here be dragons" mean?

• • It is a rare message stamped on a tiny copper globe created in the early 1500s.

• • It was a common marking made by medieval European mapmakers to signify blank spaces on maps.

• • It depicted the existence of mythical beasts in Southeast Asia's coast.

2. What are cosmographies?

• Functional maps showing trade routes, settlements, topography, water sources, the shapes of coastlines, or written directions

• • Maps depicting the Earth and its position in the cosmos, including constellations, gods, and mythic locations

• Maps produced from the Middle Ages to mid-17th century that depicted the world's geography with features from functional maps and cosmographies

Who often scrawled dragons and sea monsters over blank spots on the map?

• Mapmakers of Southeast Asia

• Medieval European mapmakers

• Islamic mapmakers

• Chinese mapmakers

6. What did the Chinese mapmakers attempt to depict sub-Saharan Africa based on?

• Their own travels

• Accounts of traders who'd been there

• Mythical stories

• None of the above

3. What were mappae mundi?

• • Islamic maps that emphasised geographic details over fantastical elements

• • Maps featured the Garden of Eden or mythical creatures and showed the world's land as one mass divided roughly into the shape of a T

• • European maps expanding their scope as explorers traveled the world

What does Terra Incognita mean?

• Here be dragons

• Rupes Nigra

• We were here first

• Land unknown

5. What misstep did the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller make in his map?

• • He mapped the Americas as a thin sliver of land where the east coast would be.

• • He failed to depict the concept of sub-Saharan Africa in the map.

• • He thought Europe, Asia, and North Africa wrapped all the way around the flattened sphere.

Which US state was mistakenly portrayed as an island for over 100 years?

• Hawaii

• Florida

• California

• Texas

6. Why did Spanish maps depict the "Island of California" detached from the rest of the continent?

• They depicted the continent based on the accounts of the traders who'd been there.

• Their impressions of the land misled them astray based on accounts from an expedition to the Baja Peninsula.

• They wanted to create blank spots for mythic beasts in their maps.