Transcription
55 countries just banned this map. The African Union, every country in the continent of Africa representing 1.5 billion people, formally voted to stop using Mercer projection as the world map.
One of the groups leading the campaign called it the longest running misinformation campaign of all time. Strong words, but look at this. This is Greenland and this is Africa. At the actual size and the same scale, Africa is 14 times larger. But on the Merkar, they look like they're about the same size.
China fits inside of Africa. So does the United States. So does India. Oh yeah, US. Even including Alaska, it all fits all at the same time. Nearly 12 million square miles. And on the most common map of the world, it looks like about the same size as an island with 57,000 people.
Merkar was built in the 1500s for ocean navigation. A straight line on this map is a true compass bearing. That's why every ship and every mapping app still uses it. Nobody's arguing with that.
But the African Union's point is that we took a tool designed for 16th century sailors and made it the default picture of the world. And when you shrink a continent on a map, you shrink it in people's minds. How much aid it receives, how much investment it attracts, how seriously its leaders are taken at the table. For four and a half centuries, the default map has been telling the world that Africa is less significant than it actually is.
So they voted to replace it with this. This is the equal Earth projection. Three cgraphers built it from scratch in 2018. Every continent is shown at its relative true size. The World Bank uses it. NASA uses it. And the cgraphers that designed it made it available for free. Anyone can download this and print it out in any size you want from equal-earth.com. We're not affiliated in any way with them. I just think it's a great resource. I make maps for a living and I think this might be one of the best digital maps available anywhere and it costs you