I checked and it’s the ‘K’ sound from Komodo (Merian Cooper visited the island and got the idea for the giant lizard battle there) plus ‘Congo’. A coincidence but a cool one.
I just had a conversation with someone who believes in a Russian ethnicity called Tartarians. I had to look it up: Tartary (or Tartaria) was a name that European mapmakers used for a huge, poorly understood area of northern and central Asia. On maps from roughly the 1500s through the 1800s.
Apparently, that has turned into a conspiracy theory which says it was a secret advanced civilization with free unlimited energy and governments today have covered it up. But it was on an old map so it must be true.
I think we put way too much trust in the apparent objectivity of printed data. When I was looking through 19th century cartography the craziest anomaly I found was the Mountains of Kong.
English geographer James Rennell just drew this massive fictional mountain range across west africa in 1798 Because his map looked official other mapmakers just kept copying it for nearly a hundred years. It basically became the institutional firmware for European geography. phantom mountains were only removed in late 1880s when a French explorer actually walked through region and realized the terrain was completely flat.
pigfoot | 19 hours ago
The Mountains of Kong if you’re having trouble finding that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_of_Kong
The Kong region of northern Ivory Coast was the source of the name apparently. It’s a region of flat sub-Saharan grasslands.
Beekeeper_Dan | 18 hours ago
Wonder if King Kong was chosen for this reason… naming a mythical beast after a mythical mountain range has a certain poetry
pigfoot | 18 hours ago
I checked and it’s the ‘K’ sound from Komodo (Merian Cooper visited the island and got the idea for the giant lizard battle there) plus ‘Congo’. A coincidence but a cool one.
ebonymahogany | 18 hours ago
I just had a conversation with someone who believes in a Russian ethnicity called Tartarians. I had to look it up:
Tartary (or Tartaria) was a name that European mapmakers used for a huge, poorly understood area of northern and central Asia. On maps from roughly the 1500s through the 1800s.
Apparently, that has turned into a conspiracy theory which says it was a secret advanced civilization with free unlimited energy and governments today have covered it up. But it was on an old map so it must be true.
LordofNarwhals | 16 hours ago
I watched a good video by Mia Mulder about that a while ago. It's certainly one of the dumbest conspiracies out there.
[OP] Effective-Dish-1334 | 20 hours ago
I think we put way too much trust in the apparent objectivity of printed data. When I was looking through 19th century cartography the craziest anomaly I found was the Mountains of Kong.
English geographer James Rennell just drew this massive fictional mountain range across west africa in 1798 Because his map looked official other mapmakers just kept copying it for nearly a hundred years. It basically became the institutional firmware for European geography. phantom mountains were only removed in late 1880s when a French explorer actually walked through region and realized the terrain was completely flat.