The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies And Blunders On Maps, by Edward Brooke-Hitching

This is the sort of book that, by any rights, ought to be good. What is there not to appreciate about a book that seeks to provide an atlas of areas of the map where people have, for one reason or another, gotten things wrong. Yet this book does not live up to the promise of its title, instead failing for reasons based more on its subtitle, which gives the contents of the book to a truer degree. This book is not so much an atlas as a compendium whose subject is about errors on atlases, generally speaking, rather than being an atlas itself. And, it must be admitted, this book would have been vastly more fun as a shorter work that sought to provide funny and mistaken atlases from time past rather than repetitive looks at the sorts of things that the author views as erroneous. One of the more notable, if poignant, aspects is the way that mistaken information on maps literally led people astray as they sought to verify and conquer such specks of imaginary land, or were led to avoid areas that offered the possibility of travel in polar areas because of fears of ice, or in tropical areas because of massive and (mostly) imaginary mountains that supposedly stopped transportation through the Sahel region of West Africa.

One of the problems of this book is that the author does not really distinguish between various types of mapmaking errors. Some of what the author reports as being phantom map listings are, in fact areas that were islands at the time they were mapped and are now shoals, and ought to be on maps still to warn those traveling by sea of narrow areas. Others are maps of genuine places, or geographical information that appears to have a solid base in truth but were misunderstood by others or mistakenly placed islands and other phenomena (like the Congolese mountains, labeled as being the Mountains of the Moon, that are truly the source of the Nile River, whatever people might say about Lake Victoria). There are other places that were mistakes that appear to have come from fraud, sometimes of places (like Formosa, that actually exist), or sometimes of places that do not exist but which people imaginatively create for one reason or another. The author, though, appears out of his depth when he talks about myths relating to religion, talking about the Garden of Eden as if he has any credibility in the matter. It is in places like this where the author most reveals his ignorance and his biases against certain types of materials and in favor of others. He would do better just sticking with the curiosities of various creatively drawn human and mistakenly viewed animals–some of which are still well described if a bit garbled through the recounting of stories–and leave religion to those who know something about it and don’t have a blind prejudice against it.

In terms of its contents, this book is about 250 pages of material organized more or less into chronological order, rather than in a thematic or chronological or regional fashion. This size is considerably padded by reproductions of atlases (probably the best part of the book) as well as blank space between sections that shows how the contents are somehow a bit lacking. Included in the contents are the following listings: Straight of Anian, Antilla, Atlantis, Aurora Islands, Australia’s Inland Sea, Bermeja, Bradley Land, Buss Island, the city of the Caesars, the sea monsters of the Carta Marina, the island of California, the Cassiterides, Crocker Land, Croker’s Mountains, Davis Land, the Isle of Demons, Dougherty Island, Earthly Paradise (the Garden of Eden), El Dorado, the Flat Earth, Fonseca, Formosa (of George Psalmanazar), Fusang, Gamaland and Compagnies Land, Great Ireland, Great River of the West, Grocolant, Hy Brasil, Java La Grande, Juan De Lisboa, Lost City of the Kalahari, Mountains of Kong, the island of Korea, Lost Continents of Lemuria and Mu, Maria Theresa Reef, Mayda, the Mountains of the Moon, the lands of Benjamin Morrell, Norumbega, the creatures of the Nuremberg Chronicle Map, Patagonian Giants, Pepys Island, the territory of Poyais, the kingdom of Prester John, the Rhipaean Mountains, the Rupes Nigra, St. Brendan’s Island, Sandy Island, New Caledonia, Sannikov Land, Satanazes, Saxenburgh Island, the Sea of the West, Taprobana, Terra Australis, Thule, the Sunken City of Vienta, Wak-Wak, and the phantom lands of the Zeno Map. The quality of the description and the nature of what is untrue about these things–if anything–varies widely from example to example. The book then ends with a select bibliography, index, acknowledgements and credits.