Long-Held Beliefs About Skull Islanders in King Kong Movies are Actually Wrong (Part I)

Nerdy considerations on the very real science beneath Skull Island’s science fiction.

If you’re one of those people who’ve never been certain about whether or not it existed, there is no such place as “Skull Island.”

Just kidding, True Believer!

Believe it or not, there actually is such a place, but that very real Skull Island is just a teeny, tiny islet located in the South Pacific Ocean’s Solomon Islands chain.

The fantastical, mist-hidden isle that serves as the home of a menacing, ape-like demigod (and his nervous worshippers) in the 1933 film King Kong, however, isn’t real.

But there is a surprisingly real basis for it.

“Well, every legend has a basis of truth.” – Carl Denham, King Kong (1933)

In the science-fantasy masterpiece in which Skull Island first appeared, the location of the uncharted locale is described as being reached by sailing 2 degrees south by 90 degrees east of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. From there, the daring mariner is instructed to continue in a southwesterly direction until the mysterious boundaries of a…