Saw these old maps, from the late 1400s and mid 1600s respectively, and enjoyed their most speculative parts.
On the left is derived from the Erdapfel globe, from just before Columbus's voyages. The Americas are nowhere to be seen, just a big ol' ocean and then further west, Java and India etc. And the big thing north and east of those is "Cipangu", a very speculative version of Japan, which Europeans had probably only heard about via Marco Polo's journeys?
On the right, one of multiple maps featuring the Island of California, which appears to be people being confused about how Baja and the California coast interrelate.
What I love most about these is how they're more or less doing the best they can with limited information. We're invited into the imaginations of people from centuries ago, vague images based on tales handed down from a few travelers, conceptions that have little to do with real places whose geographies and cultures we now know in detail.
Wouldn't it be amazing if the California peninsula was actually an island like that though?