I've done some washing, gone to Tesco for some bits, done some writing, a little housewifery, gone to Tesco again because I forgot to take the dry cleaning this morning and have written an article for the writing blog.
I'm writing stuff about research and I get sucked in ridiculously sometimes. For example, did you know that on nineteenth century maps there are a range of mountains known as Mountains of Kong around the area of Senegal and Niger. I inherited my great-great-aunt's atlas which she dated 1898 and it shows the map.
They don't exist. They were a figment of the mapmaker's imagination. That's a whole range of mountains, hundreds of miles long, just dumped randomly on a map.
Things haven't changed much, to be honest. I may not encounter random missing mountain ranges but trying to get directions from Google Maps makes me understand the frustration of the traveller in search of mythical mountains stuffed with gold. 'Take the next left' it says, and I trustingly take it and end up in a back alley surrounded by garages and the satnav giving the electronic equivalent of a 'tut' as it wasn't the next left that I should take but the next next left...
The article is here, if you're interested, but shows that research can take you down a blind alley - very much like Google Maps when I need directions.
Hugs and good health to all.
That's really interesting about the maps. How great that you inherited an atlas that shows this!
ReplyDeleteMy Google Maps complaint - I'm tired of it taking me down dirt roads!!! Not sure why it doesn't put me on paved roads (rolling my eyes).
I've just come over from The Cottage at the End of a Lane, being nosy. I smiled at the non-existent mountain range.
ReplyDeleteSatnav is wonderful when it's up to date, otherwise doing a 15 point turn in a field gate isn't much fun!
The adding of fictitious information was a way of copyrighting maps. It was a way of being able to prove that another mapmaker had copied your map rather than creating their own. It is still done today (or at least it was before the yeart 2000, I'm not sure abnout now) , the A-Z series used to include an incorrectly named road in their maps.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I didn't notice that my post was "anonymous"
ReplyDeleteToo funny about random imaginary mountain ranges in maps! I can just imagine the cartographers saying, "Oh, that looks too flat and boring because we really don't know what is there - let's make it interesting and put a mountain range! There must be a mountain range, somewhere!" LOL!
ReplyDelete