Kong mountains

The Kong Mountains on a map from 1882.

Map by John Cary from 1805 with the Mountains of Kong (at the 10th parallel)

Map by John Pinkerton from 1813 with the Mountains of Kong (right, center of the picture, at the 11th parallel).

The Kong Mountains ( English Mountains of Kong ) are a fictional mountain range that was drawn in almost all maps of Africa until the early 20th century .

Origin of science falsification

The British geographer James Rennell (1742-1830) took over geographic data from Mungo Park in 1798 , which were based on his discoveries. However, he falsified parks data by close of the 10th degree of latitude , a mountain called Mountains of Kong pasted ( "Mountains of Kong"). He obviously did this to support his thesis about the course of the Niger . Subsequent geographers adopted the Kong Mountains in their own maps. The Kong Mountains have been depicted as the watershed between the Niger in the north and the Gulf of Guinea . It should have a length of about 1000 km and run parallel to the 10th parallel. Some legends have been built up around the mountains themselves . So "snow-capped peaks" and gold deposits were described and it was claimed that the mountains as an "insurmountable natural obstacle" did not allow the population to trade between the coast and the hinterland.

The Kong Mountains were first depicted in Aaron Arrowsmith's work Africa , published in London in 1802 , and were last drawn in 1905 in Trampler's Middle School Atlas (Vienna). The Kong Mountains also found their way into world literature. In Jules Verne's work Robur the Victorious (1886) it says in the 12th chapter: On the horizon the Kong mountains of the kingdom of Dahomey rose in an indistinct line .

In the fourth edition of Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon from 1880, the Kong Mountains are among other things as " unexplored mountains, which north of the coast of Upper Guinea on a distance of 800 to 1000 km between the 7th and 7th. 9th degree of latitude up to 1. ° west L. v. Size dragging on ”. At the east end lies the city of "Kong, which no European has yet set foot in, but which, according to the indigenous people, is the largest market in these areas and produces cotton fabrics, which have a reputation in Sudân."

resolution

The French officer and Africa explorer Louis-Gustave Binger traveled to Africa in 1887/88 and reached the city of Kong on February 20, 1888 . He found that the Kong mountains marked on the maps were not there.

literature

• TJ Bassett and PW Porter: From the best authorities: The mountains of Kong in the cartography of west Africa. In: Journal of African History 32, 1991, pp. 367-413.
• RF Burton : The Kong Mountains. (PDF; 259 kB) In: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 4, 1882, pp. 484-486.
• RF Stock: Africa south of the Sahara. The Guilford Press, 2nd Edition, 2004, ISBN 1-572-30868-0 , p. 16.

Web links

Commons : Kong Mountains  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• Researched and invented. In: Die Zeit issue 33 from August 7, 1992.
• Evolution of the Map of Central, East & West Africa , Princeton University (English).
• J. Douch: Geographical Information Systems and Development. dated May 30, 2007, p. 28 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ J. Verne: Robur the winner, Chapter 12, U. Hartleben Verlag, 1887.
2. ^ Author collective: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Publishing house of the Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna, fourth edition, 1885–1892.
3. ^ Evolution of the Map of Central, East & West Africa, Section: The Mountains of Kong. Retrieved July 6, 2009 .