Fact check: Image of alleged ‘building inside stump’ is not a real photograph, but an artist’s collage

Suggesting that a collage made by an artist is an unaltered photograph, a post on Facebook showing a tall building inside a giant tree stump has been shared as alleged proof of a “Flat Earth” conspiracy theory that real trees no longer exist. The post does not show a genuine photograph, but rather a collage made by Spanish artist Fernando Martin Godoy in 2015.

A Facebook user shared the post (here ) in a group called “Ancient Giant Tree Truth” with over 34,000 members and the caption “Tall building inside stump?” 

Shown here on Godoy’s website, the image is of his 2015 collage on paper “Rockscraper.” Images of the artist’s other works using the same medium can be found here .  

Godoy told Reuters via email: “The title of the series is taken from an album by Depeche Mode. It is a series of collages where I play with the idea of human intervention on the landscape.” In terms of materials, he said, “As (with) most of my collages, it is an old school collage piece, using found material and working with a cutting knife and a glue stick.”

The Facebook post and group in question speak to a belief among Flat Earthers, conspiracy theorists who contend that our planet is not a globe but a flat surface (here), that “real” trees no longer exist.  

As explained here in Quartz by arborist and environmentalist William Thompson in 2019, many Flat Earthers believe that “the trees we see now are small ersatz versions of giant, 20-mile-high trees that used to exist on earth in ancient times. In short, the things we think are trees today are actually…bushes.” 

According to Thompson, this idea emerged in a 2016 YouTube video called “There are no forests on Flat Earth Wake Up” that has since been removed (here). A subsequent version of the video is still available here .  

In 2016, The Atlantic published an article on the theory that summed it up as follows: “Thousands of years ago, a cataclysmic event destroyed 99% of the Earth’s biosphere, and when it happened, it took away the real forests. Real trees are nothing like their stunted cousins, the miserable perishing scraps of wood that we see today; they were truly vast, hundreds of kilometers tall, magical organisms that sustained a total living ecology of the flat earth” (here).  

Those who believe in this theory claim that geological formations like Devils Tower in Wyoming, Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and Uluru in Australia are actually giant tree trumps ( here , here ). Reuters fact-checked claims on social media arguing Devil’s Tower was a tree stump, here .  

VERDICT

Missing context. An image being used to suggest that that the earth is flat and trees are not real is actually of a collage made by Spanish artist Fernando Martin Godoy in 2015.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check Team. Read more about our fact-checking work here. 

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