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🇵🇱 Poland /Technology

Maps Have Misled Us for Centuries: Africa ‘Shrinks’ as Greenland ‘Grows’

From Rzeczpospolita · () Polish

Translated from Polish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • The United Nations has backed efforts to promote the Equal Earth projection, which shows the actual areas of continents more accurately than the Mercator projection.
  • Mercator maps make Greenland appear nearly as large as Africa, although Africa covers about 30 million square kilometers compared with Greenland’s roughly 2.2 million.
  • Cartographers say every flat map distorts some combination of area, shape, distance or direction, while critics warn that map distortions can influence perceptions of regions’ importance.

Africa is roughly 14 times larger than Greenland, yet on the Mercator projection the two can look almost alike. That visual mismatch has shaped generations of school maps, television graphics and online maps, and the United Nations now supports a move toward a more accurate alternative.

The United Nations General Assembly backed an initiative to limit the distortions associated with Mercator and encourage the use of Equal Earth, or “Równa Ziemia.” The projection represents the areas of continents and countries more faithfully, although it cannot preserve every feature of a spherical world on a flat surface.

That limitation applies to every map. A projection must distort area, shape, distance or direction in some way. The Mercator projection, created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, was designed primarily for sailors. It allowed a course set with a compass to appear as a straight line on the map.

He wanted a line drawn on the map to correspond to a straight line in reality, if you sail according to the compass. And that is exactly what this projection does exceptionally well.

· James CheshireThe University College London professor explained to the BBC why Gerardus Mercator designed the projection for navigation.

As James Cheshire of University College London explained to the BBC, Mercator wanted “a line drawn on the map to correspond to a straight line in reality, if you sail according to the compass.” The projection does that exceptionally well, but it stretches the map grid increasingly farther from the equator. Regions near the poles therefore appear much larger than they are.

Africa covers about 30 million square kilometers, while Greenland covers approximately 2.2 million. Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo told the BBC that reducing Africa’s apparent size could affect how people perceive its economic, social and political significance. “Maps are more than guides for travelers. They shape how regions are perceived politically and economically,” he said.

Equal Earth was developed by a team of cartographers in 2018. African Union countries initially supported it, and the proposal later gained backing from the United Nations. It removes some of Mercator’s problems, but it cannot preserve the straight directional lines that made Mercator so useful to navigation.

Maps are more than guides for travelers. They shape how regions are perceived politically and economically.

· Kioko MuendoThe Kenyan geographer warned that maps’ visual distortions can influence perceptions of Africa’s significance.
About this summary

Originally published by Rzeczpospolita in Polish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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