The Mountains of Kong: How Map Makers Got Africa Totally Wrong

If you are 46 or older, you probably saw the Mountains of Kong in your school atlas

For centuries, maps claimed a massive mountain range stretched across West Africa — but it never existed.

The myth lasted 225 years — from 1798 to 1995

European explorers and mapmakers convinced the world that a great mountain chain — the Mountains of Kong — ran across West Africa, from Guinea through Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. Some maps showed a vast range; others drew smaller clusters. None were real.

The error began with French cartographer Philippe Vandermaelen in the early 1800s. He built a world atlas using reports from explorers who never fully traveled the region. Hearsay and local legends about hills or highlands became a grand imaginary chain. Later cartographers copied his maps, spreading the mistake for generations.

Philippe Vandermaelen’s 19th-century atlas spread the Mountains of Kong myth worldwide.

By the late 1800s, explorers like Heinrich Barth, René Caillié, and Alexander von Humboldt proved the geography wrong. Yet many publishers kept copying outdated maps instead of correcting them. Shockingly, even Goode’s World Atlas still showed the Mountains of Kong in its 1995 edition before finally deleting them.

If you studied geography before the mid-1990s, your classroom atlas or encyclopedia likely included the Mountains of Kong — a powerful example of how unverified information can persist for generations.

Today, the saga of the Mountains of Kong is a cautionary tale. It shows why cartographers, geographers, and educators must question sources and update knowledge as new explorations reveal the truth. Maps are not just art — they shape how we understand continents and their people.

Modern African cartographers emphasize accuracy and indigenous knowledge to avoid errors like the Kong range.

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