What are Phantom Islands? (Atlantis, Antillia, Brasil, Thule)

Phantom Islands have always existed before the age of satellite technology, and many of the supposed lands that did exist, had a history of their own. In this video, we're looking into the history of some of these Phantom Islands.

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If you're a history buff like me, then you might have a vested interest in old maps of the world, seeing how the maps improved, changed, developed and were woefully inaccurate over the years. One of the very common artifices to find in these maps is a phenomenon referred to as Phantom Islands. What are they exactly? Phantom Islands are simply lands that are proposed to exist and showed up on maps but were later found out to either non-existent, a different land, or simply stopped being mentioned. In this video we will be looking at some of these phantom islands and the history behind them. We won't be looking at all of them, just due to the sheer number that you can find and have existed. But we will be looking at four of the more commonly cited or well-known examples.

The most famous example by far was the mythical island of Atlantis. I plan to do a more detailed episode about the history of Atlantis sometime in the future, so I won't be going into much detail here. Atlantis was first mentioned by Plato in the mid third century BCE. Stating how Athenians had defeated an invasion attempt by the people of Atlantis. Even during his time, scholars debated about whether or not the mythical island actually existed. Interest in this land was sparsely mentioned for well over a millennium, least from the surviving sources. It wasn't until the mid 17th century that interest in Atlantis became more common with the age of exploration being in full-swing. It was suggested that Atlantis may have very well been the new world, or a large island in the middle of the Atlantic that sunk into the ocean among many other theories.