What’s right and wrong about different versions of the world map

What are the correct and incorrect aspects of different versions of the world map?

Author, Jaroslav Lukiv

Published 42 minutes ago

Reading time: 3 minutes

The United Nations (UN) has just called for the current mainstream world map to be replaced with one that more accurately reflects the true size of continents such as Africa.

The "Corrected Map" resolution passed by the UN General Assembly aims to correct a discrepancy on the Mercator map, which shows the African continent to be similar in size to Greenland - even though the continent is actually about 14 times larger than Greenland.

It uses a new map - the Equiterrestrial projection, which better represents the true size of the landmass - but it has its own problems.

In fact, there have been many attempts over the years to solve the problem of accurately representing a sphere on a planar rectangle, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Mercator projection

The now widely used Mercator map was drawn in 1569 by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator.

As Professor James Cheshire, professor of cartography at University College London (UCL) explains, its main purpose was to help European sailors navigate the oceans.

He told the BBC: "He wanted the straight lines drawn on the map to look like straight lines in real life if you followed the direction of a compass. That's what it was designed to do, and it does an excellent job at that."

In fact, to keep these angles correct on a flat map, the Mercator projector must widen the grid lines as they move from the equator toward the poles.

His map also takes into account the curvature of the Earth, making countries near the equator appear much smaller than they actually are, while countries near the poles appear elongated.

This distortion is due to the inability to accurately represent the Earth's surface on a two-dimensional diagram.

More than 450 years later, Mercator's maps are still the basis for many of the maps we see in classrooms, on television and online, including Google Maps.

Critics of Mercator's maps, however, argue that making some places appear smaller than they really are, and making other places appear larger than they actually are, has a psychological effect. Because humans inherently believe that bigger things are more important.

For example, Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo told the BBC that this actually underestimates Africa's rich resources, population and investment opportunities.

"Maps are more than just guides for travelers. They also shape people's political and economic perceptions of various regions," he points out.

Earth Equality Map

The Equal Earth map aims to solve this problem through the Mercator projection.

It was developed in 2018 by a team of cartographers who wanted to more accurately represent the size and shape of landmasses. It was inspired by the 1963 Robinson projection: a map that showed the entire Earth's surface simultaneously.

In February this year, member states of the African Union adopted the "Equal Earth" map.

But this sacrifices the straight lines that make the Mercator projection ideal for navigation. Furthermore, it cannot be used to measure true distances between different locations.

Professor Cheshire told the BBC: "You can keep the area the same, or you can keep the shape the same, or you can keep the distance and the direction the same, but you can't do it all perfectly at the same time, otherwise you're back to a sphere."

Peters map

The Peters world map was designed by German historian Arno Peters in the early 1970s.

This rectangular map is based on a projection first described by Scottish cartographer James Gall in 1855.

This projection sacrifices accuracy of shape for accuracy of proportion. As a result, the polar regions are compressed, while areas near the equator are stretched.

This solves the problem of the size of Greenland and Africa, allowing users to understand the relative sizes of different land areas while maintaining the linearity of longitude and latitude lines.

However, this map severely distorts the shape of Earth's landmasses, making them all look slightly out of place. For example, Russia looks much smaller.

Furthermore, the straight lines on Peters' map did not represent true constant compass bearings and therefore could not be used for navigation.

Other ways to draw a world map

Of course, there are other ways to map the world.

For example, the Azimuthal equidistant projection places regions of the world at correct distances proportional to a single selected center point.