The commonest world map is the Mercator projection which dramatically distorts land masses. It’s accurate near the equator but land masses closer to the poles are inaccurately expanded. This expands Russia and Canada relative to Africa.
The Dymaxion projection was created by American architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller in the mid-20th century. Unlike traditional maps, it unfolds Earth’s surface onto an icosahedron, a shape with twenty triangular faces, which can then be laid flat with minimal distortion of landmass size and shape. (Buckminster Fuller also invented the geodesic dome.)
The Dymaxion projection also shows the countries that border the Arctic Ocean. With global warming and melting of the Arctic Ocean, trade routes and resource competition in the Arctic will increase. It’s also clear that Africa is a huge continent (it also has the fastest population growth). That’s why it may be on-topic for METAR.
I don’ think t anyone anywhere has been “fooled” about any country’s or continent’s importance based on some fantasized effect of the illusion of size on a commonly accepted map presentation. The only people i have ever heard of bringing this up as some kind of attempt to deceive the world over somebody’s perceived importance has been people from Africa who in the last 500 years never bothered to invent a superior less offensive mapping system that left nothing to some people’s wild imagination
Nope. It’s well established that colonial powers often used maps to exaggerate the importance of their empire. Britain used to show Australia/NZ on both sides of the split to effectively double-count land mass. In the 1400’s the Roman Catholic Church’s “official map” put Jerusalem at the center of the map to “prove” that Jesus was the true Messiah. The French loved the Mercator because it seemed to show that Canada was bigger than the US. (Actually it is, so long as you know you’re counting “ice” way up North there.)
And how many times have you seen the map showing how all the Red counties voted in the last election (as though “acres” somehow get to vote.)
Oh, maps have been used throughout history to propagandize and misinform. I read a whole book about it once, can’t find it now, about the same time I read “Lying with Statistics”.
Haven’t read this one but it looks like it might be good:
The How to Lie With Maps PDF was a quite good concise summary the issues that must be addressed in modern mapmaking, but also with chapters focused mostly on the messes made by bureaucrats and special pleaders (developers, anti-developers, cheating lying pols….). I was introduced to topographical maps at age 6, and have loved them all my life. The short section on topos was quite good, as were those on how to lie to governmental commissions, and so I give it a solid thumbs up.
But the Dymaxion projection grossly distorts distance and direction. Every 2D map is inherently inaccurate. It is not possible to put a 3D surface on a 2D piece of paper without stretching, moving, exaggerating, or altering relative positions of the land masses on the globe. Peal an apple. Then try to lay the skin flat on a cutting board. It won’t look like an apple. The Mercator projection is an intentional distortion of reality. It was the preferred map during the age of exploration and discovery because it was accurate in direction. Which if you were trying to sail home was useful to know. Its continued use on classroom walls, in Google Maps, in the media probably is because of its familiarity, but it also reinforces various political ideas. Whenever a map is used, the purpose of the map should determine the projection used, and readers should question why a particular projection was used.
