List of past presumed highest mountains
Encyclopedia
The following is a list of mountains that have been presumed, at one time, to be the highest mountain in the world. How general the following presumptions were is unclear.
  • Chimborazo
    Chimborazo (volcano)
    Chimborazo is a currently inactive stratovolcano located in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes. Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around 550 AD....

    , 6267 metres (20,561 ft). Presumed highest from sixteenth century until the beginning of the 19th century. Not in the top 100 highest mountains.
  • Nanda Devi
    Nanda Devi
    Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India and the highest entirely within the country ; owing to this geography it was the highest known mountain in the world until computations on Dhaulagiri by western surveyors in 1808...

    , 7816 metres (25,643 ft). Presumed highest in the world before Kangchenjunga was sighted in an era when Nepal
    Nepal
    Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

     was still closed to the outside world. Now known to be the 23rd highest mountain in the world.
  • Dhaulagiri
    Dhaulagiri
    Dhaulagiri is Earth's seventh highest mountain at ; one of fourteen over eight thousand metres. Dhaulagiri was first climbed May 13, 1960 by a Swiss/Austrian expedition....

    , 8167 metres (26,795 ft). Presumed highest from 1808 until 1838. Now known to be the 7th highest mountain in the world.
  • Kangchenjunga
    Kangchenjunga
    Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain of the world with an elevation of and located along the India-Nepal border in the Himalayas.Kangchenjunga is also the name of the section of the Himalayas and means "The Five Treasures of Snows", as it contains five peaks, four of them over...

    , 8586 metres (28,169 ft). Presumed highest from 1838 until 1852. Now known to be the 3rd highest mountain in the world.
  • Mount Everest
    Mount Everest
    Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

    , 8848 metres (29,029 ft). Established as highest in 1852 and officially confirmed in 1856.

Related notes

  • This list has no relevance before the first world-wide explorations in the 16th century.
  • The summit of Chimborazo is in fact the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center, due to the equatorial bulge
    Figure of the Earth
    The expression figure of the Earth has various meanings in geodesy according to the way it is used and the precision with which the Earth's size and shape is to be defined. The actual topographic surface is most apparent with its variety of land forms and water areas. This is, in fact, the surface...

    . (There may be a close tie with Huascarán
    Huascarán
    Huascarán or Nevado Huascarán is a mountain in the Peruvian province of Yungay, situated in the Cordillera Blanca range of the Western Andes. The highest southern summit of Huascarán is the highest point in Peru, and all the Earth's Tropics...

    .)
  • An inaccurate survey in the 1980s led to claims that K2
    K2
    K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...

    , 8611 metres (28,251 ft), was in fact higher than Everest. These claims were widely reported but were found to have no validity.

See also

  • World altitude record (mountaineering)
    World altitude record (mountaineering)
    In the history of mountaineering, the world altitude record referred to the highest point on the Earth's surface which had been reached, regardless of whether that point was an actual summit. The world summit record referred to the highest mountain to have been successfully climbed...

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