How Big Is Africa, Really?

When I first interviewed for my present position at the University of Auckland, I was also invited to interview at the University of Western Australia, in Perth. Not having been to the Southern Hemisphere, I did what all good geographically challenged Americans do — I looked at the map and estimated that it would take two or three hours to fly from Auckland to Perth.

Actually, no. It takes nine hours, not two or three. It takes six hours to fly across Australia alone — longer than it takes to fly across the U.S.

Why was I so mistaken? In part, because the traditional Mercator map, which dates from around 1569, is accurate regarding shape instead of size. A mapmaker cannot accurately represent both — if you want an accurate shape for land masses, you have to sacrifice proportionality, i.e., the relative sizes will be distorted. Moreover, the distortion increases as you move away from the equator, becoming severe near the poles. This leads to what is known as “the Greenland Problem.” Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet the land mass of Africa is actually 14 times larger:

The Mercator map similarly distorts the relative size of the north and the south. The south is actually more than twice as large (38.6 million square miles to 18.9 million):

And compare Europe vs. South America (3.8 million vs. 6.9 million):

Finally, compare the former Soviet Union vs. Africa (8.7 million vs. 11.6 million):

All of this, of course, has a political dimension. The Mercator map is obviously psychologically convenient for the North, reinforcing its centrality and importance, relegating the developing world (literally) to the margins.

If you are fan of The West Wing, you already know that there is an alternative to the Mercator map, one that is accurate by size instead of shape. It’s the map at the beginning of the post. The map, which is known as the Peters map after its creator, is endorsed by the United Nations Development Programme and widely used by developing countries and international aid groups.

The Peters map remains controversial, often dismissed as being nothing more than political correctness gone awry. Here is one particularly caustic response:

Please, let’s use this map as an example of what it is — a scam capitalizing on the cartographic ignorance of most people and, sad to say, many teachers at all levels, and which survives quite nicely in a climate of political correctness where it is inappropriate to criticize anyone who claims to criticize the “the status quo”…

I’m afraid that keeping the debate alive only confuses the ignorant — they’ve been led to believe they know what “racist” maps look like because some teachers keep comparing a Mercator to a Gall-Peters in an inappropriate and misleading racial context.

The most interesting — and perhaps most fair — response came from a coaltition of seven North American cartographic associations. Their solution? Reject all rectangular maps:

WHEREAS, the earth is round with a coordinate system composed entirely of circles, and

WHEREAS, flat world maps are more useful than globe maps, but flattening the globe surface necessarily greatly changes the appearance of Earth’s features and coordinate systems, and

WHEREAS, world maps have a powerful and lasting effect on peoples’ impressions of the shapes and sizes of lands and seas, their arrangement, and the nature of the coordinate system, and

WHEREAS, frequently seeing a greatly distorted map tends to make it “look right,”

THEREFORE, we strongly urge book and map publishers, the media and government agencies to cease using rectangular world maps for general purposes or artistic displays. Such maps promote serious, erroneous conceptions by severely distorting large sections of the world, by showing the round Earth as having straight edges and sharp corners, by representing most distances and direct routes incorrectly, and by portraying the circular coordinate system as a squared grid…

I don’t know who is right in the debate over which map — Mercator or Peters — is better. Perhaps the cartographers’ solution is the best of all. Nevertheless, the existence of the Peters map is — as many cartographers have themselves admitted — a necessary reminder that even something that seems as innocuous as map-making is actually a political process with potentially significant social effects.