The worst river violations ever...

[rdanhenry]

Does anyone know why these kind of errors are so common? I look back over my old maps, some done as a child (ten, if not earlier) and even when my spelling is terrible and my drawing crude(r than now), the worst things I kind find are an inland lake with no outflow that I think I hadn't planned on being salt water and perhaps a tendency (that has not left) to somewhat exaggerate the meandering of my rivers. Is it just people trying to make maps without any real familiarity with them or something else? I'm inclined to think there is more involved, since these errors seem so common, while I am not seeing such frequent, obvious errors in other factors.

[Ascension]

My thought is that people just draw maps from old memories and don't really think about it. Memory is often wrong, ask anyone in law enforcement. They get the idea of squiggly meandering rivers with branches but don't even think about rivers joining up to form bigger rivers so they split 'em. They get the idea of a river delta but don't think about it being close to the coast so they start their deltas about 1000 miles upstream. They get the idea of rivers going into lakes but don't think about the lake having to drain...they know about the Great Lakes but forget about the St. Lawrence seaway. When they do think about drain they don't know about one outflow so they put in a bunch...so this is more technical and less common-sense. By and large, people just do and don't bother with the thinking part...that seems to require too much effort, and while that is good for some things (being instinctual is a great boon for say an athlete or a lothario) it is not so good for other things (like physics and medicine). But, that's why we're here...people who want to learn do so and they come here to do it.

[Amazon_warrior]

Maybe they just didn't pay attention in Geography?


(I'm pleased to say that my GCSE Geography project was all about a river - nothing like actually studying the real thing!)