Take a look at the world maps we use all the time. Do you see something wrong about them? Look carefully…
Imagine this: Brazil has an area of 8,514,877 km2. South America has an area of 17,840,000 km2. On the other hand Europe has an area of 10,180,000 km2 (including the part of Russia in the european continent), while Greenland has an area of about 2,000,000 km2.
Take another example: The Indian Ocean is 73,556,000 km² in area. (see here) The US is just 9,826,675 km2 in area (see here). Now take a look at these maps below. Can you “fit” the US (including Alaska) into the Indian Ocean more than 7 times into all these maps? Probably not…
Yes. It is that the North Hemisphere is “over-grown”… In the maps we use, South America is much smaller than Greenland alone! And yet it is much LARGER than Europe AND Greenland together! Mistake? Or deliberate?
Similar problems exist with other “non civilized” areas of the world. Take Africa for example. Does it look like all these countries can fit into the black continent?
Check out the “The True Size Map” site which shows countries in their “true,” relative sizes. The inventors of the handy online tool point out that most maps are based on the Mercator projection, a schema that distorts the scale of many countries because it enlarges nations as they get farther from the Equator. While helpful in some cases, this doesn’t give travelers a totally accurate vision of the Earth’s spacial layout. True Size’s answer to map-making, however, will seriously put your trip into perspective.
The propaganda of Western “civilized” countries takes many forms…
PS. For those who do not believe this is a widely used map, here are the results of the search for “world atlas” in Google images.
And here are the results for the search for “world map” in Google images…
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