What in the World? Busting Some Common Geography Myths
The world's a big, complicated place, and it's no wonder that certain geography myths have gotten ingrained in our collective consciousness. Here are the facts about four.
Geography myths aren't as potentially damaging as myths about allergies or medicine, but like any myth, they chip away at our understanding of the real world and our place in it. This is quite literally true, since geography is defined as the study of the Earth's surface.
If you're not certain where you stand, join us as we explore the truth behind four common myths about geography.
Myth 1: Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain in the world.
According to some sources, this is one of the world's most pervasive geography myths, because "height" all depends on how you measure it. At 29,035 feet, Everest's peak is most definitely the highest point above sea level, but there are other mountains that challenge it from other perspectives.
For example, Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador is actually about 6,900 feet higher if measured from the center of the Earth, since it's located at the bulge of the Earth's equator. Mauna Kea in Hawaii measures 33,480 feet from the bottom of the sea to its peak, though the part above sea level is "only" 13,796 feet.
Myth 2: The Sahara is the world's biggest desert.
Actually, Antarctica is. Another persistent geography myth has it that deserts have to be hot. They don't -- they just have to be arid, with very little if any rainfall. Africa's Sahara is indeed the hottest sandy desert in the world, but it gets a little rain; more of the interior of Antarctica never sees any precipitation at all.
Myth 3: Greenland is almost as big as North America.
The truth is, Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) isn't much bigger than Alaska. Because of the way that world maps are made, Greenland often appears to be a roughly triangular blob nearly as big as the whole North American continent. However, this is just an artifact of the attempt to map a curved world onto a flat surface. While Greenland is considered the world's largest island, if you take a look at a map of just North America and Greenland together, and you'll see that Greenland is in fact much smaller.
Myth 4: The former existence of lost continents like Atlantis and Lemuria is well documented.
These aren't just geography myths, they're historical and literary ones as well. While a great deal has been written about these mythical lands, which supposedly sank beneath the sea in ancient times, it's almost entirely elaboration on tiny grains of literary supposition. First of all, continents can't sink.
Second, Atlantis was invented by Plato in ancient Greece for use as a metaphor in one of his dialogs; this is the only original mention of Atlantis. Everything else about it has been made up. Lemuria was invented by biologist Philip Sclater in 1864 to explain the distribution of fossil lemurs in Madagascar and India.
Sclater had never heard of continental drift, so he decided a continent must have once spanned the Indian Ocean to connect the locations where his lemurs were found. The idea of Lemuria was later adopted by occult and science fiction writers for their own purposes, but make no mistake: it's pure geography myth.
