Category: Exploration Myths

• The "Hollow Earth" Pole Hole (1909)

  This theory claimed that Robert Peary’s 1909 polar expedition did not merely reach the North Pole or fail to reach it, but encountered evidence of the polar opening long predicted by hollow-earth believers. In its stronger forms, Peary was said to have found the entrance and then been paid or pressured into silence. The theory drew on a longstanding tradition of hollow-earth literature that imagined large openings at the poles, combined with the extraordinary symbolic weight of polar exploration and the fact that Peary’s claim itself was contested almost immediately.

• The Lost Colony of the Welsh Indians

  This theory held that descendants of the medieval Welsh prince Madoc had crossed the Atlantic in the twelfth century and survived among Native peoples in North America. In the nineteenth century, the Mandan in particular were often claimed to be “Welsh Indians,” and explorers, writers, and antiquarians repeatedly sought evidence of European features, Christian traces, fortified settlements, or even the Welsh language among them. The documented record clearly shows that the Madoc legend circulated for centuries and that the Welsh-Indian hypothesis remained active throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What is not supported is the claim that the Mandan or any other Native nation were actually descendants of a lost Welsh colony.

• The "Hollow Earth"

  This theory argued that the Earth was hollow and open at the poles, and that an expedition to the far north or south would discover entry into a habitable interior world. John Cleves Symmes Jr. became the leading American advocate of the theory after 1818, circulating printed appeals, lecturing widely, and petitioning Congress for a government-backed expedition. In its strongest form, the theory treated the polar openings as gateways to new lands, resources, and perhaps new peoples. The historical record clearly shows that Symmes campaigned intensely for official support, that Congress considered his petitions, and that his ideas influenced later polar-expedition enthusiasm through followers such as Jeremiah N. Reynolds. What remained theory was the interior world itself.