There’s no evidence of pirates making treasure maps.

When we think of pirates, some instantly recognizable iconography comes to mind: eye patches, peg legs, treasure maps, parrots. But as it turns out, only some of these ideas are grounded in truth. For one thing, as far as we know, pirates did not, in fact, make treasure maps. Though they are believed to have buried treasure on occasion — those ill-gotten gains had to go somewhere — there are few documented cases of them doing so, and even fewer (read: none) of them creating a map where “X” marks the spot. Treasure maps are a double-edged cutlass, after all: For as much help as they might be to the pirate in question, they could also fall into the wrong hands. 

Pirates made people walk the plank.

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Like drawing treasure maps, walking the plank is thought of as a classic pirate activity. But there’s little evidence that it ever happened, and it seems we have Daniel Defoe and other writers to thank for creating the myth in the first place.

The myth of treasure maps may have originated with the legendary exploits of Captain William Kidd, who was believed to have buried some of his riches on Gardiner’s Island in the 17th century. Novels like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881-1882) helped further popularize the idea of buried treasure in general and treasure maps in particular.

In fact, many of our ideas about pirates come more from novelists (and, of course, screenwriters) than from historians, which makes it difficult to separate truth from legend when it comes to the seafarers, who have long occupied an outsized place in our collective imagination. There is some good news, though: It seems likely that some pirates really did have parrots — among other exotic pets.

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