If you haven’t been paying attention there has been a movement afoot to “redraw” the map of the world in order to accord the proper size of landmasses to each continent/country. According to those behind this push, the traditional maps of the Earth are racist as they were drawn by Europeans. Europeans being inherently racist, intentionally misled the world by making Europe- as well as other European controlled land masses- appear larger than continents with darker colored populations. Therefore, everything you know about how the planet looks is not only racist, but incorrect.
You would think that NASA could easily solve this problem by showing us the photographic evidence of the continents of Earth in their proper locations and scale, but of course NASA and all of their optics are also inherently racist so they must also be perpetuating a fraud upon the darker colored people of the world.
Photo of Earth and the United States of America (systemically racist nation) taken by NASA from space (allegedly).
ALL maps face the challenge of making a round globe appear to scale in two dimensions. Most maps can only keep EITHER size or shape consistent — but, never both. Of course, this skews our perception of continents and countries one way or the other.
Another problem with map-making is that maps are always made with the beliefs and prejudices of their makers’ political or social ideology. For example, here is a map made in 1285, called Hereford Mappa Mundi.
I know the details are hard to distinguish, but the map records how thirteenth-century scholars interpreted the world not only in geographical terms, but spiritual matters as well. Jerusalem is at the center of the world. East is on top, showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world. Christ at the map’s apex, waiting for the day of judgment. There are about 500 drawings depicting what the people of that time thought were important to include on a map; 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology.
[Side Note: Christopher de Hamel, a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, said of the Mappa Mundi, “… it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.” For more info, the following website is truly informative and beautiful …..http://www.themappamundi.co.uk/ ]
The “standard” map you saw hanging in your high school history class is called “Mercator projection”. Developed in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes. The linear scale is equal in all directions around any point.
The “problem” with this map is that it distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite. The projection stretched the poles to infinity because the commercial world of the time had no interest in them, and was trading east to west, not north to south. In other words, the farther one travels from the equator, the larger the object becomes. Let’s take a look.
So, what can we glean from the above map?
—- Greenland is as big, if not bigger, than Africa
—- Including Alaska, only about two USA’s would fit in Africa
—- Russia is WAAAAY bigger than Africa
—- Alaska is much bigger than Mexico, and about the same size as Brazil
—- The Scandinavian countries are almost as long as America is wide
—- Europe, including Scandinavia, would barely fit inside the continental USA.
—- England looks like a crummy little island.
Of course, all the above is patently false (except for the last one)
Is there a solution? Of course there is, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting! It’s called the Gall-Peters projection, or simply the Peters Map. The simple definition is —- “the map is a cylindric equal-area projection that squeezes the regions closer to the poles in order to preserve the country’s real size.” It looks like this;
Holy Cow! Look at the size of Africa (above)! However, the map still does not quite fully give the reader an appreciation of the true size of Africa …. which encompasses continental USA, Eastern and Western Europe, China, and Japan ……..like this one does.
OK, that’s the end of the narrative. Kool Maps follow;