The World, Equinational: Showing Each Country in the Same Size

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No flat world map can do our three-dimensional globe justice. So why not go the whole hog and produce a without any pretense to topographic accuracy? This ‘equinational projection’ goes where no Mercator or Peters projection ever went, and shows a world in which every country is the same size. A world which is a little different from ours.

The American continent, especially its northern half, is covered by relatively few states, resulting in an atrophied New World – except for the Carribbean, where all those tiny island nations each now occupy the same space as giants like the US and Canada.

Europe, its territory littered with lots of states, medium or small (compared to America), holds a dominating position. Russia (Nr 138) is a mere appendage of Europe.

Africa, long squeezed and thereafter painfully stretched by the aforementioned Mercator and Peters projections, now holds what at first glance seems the largest block of nations.

Asia consists of a few very large countries (Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan) which accounts for its relatively small size. This contrasts to almost any other projection, be it size, population or economic growth.

Australia and New Zealand are the most visible constituents of Oceania, except on this map, where all the Pacific island nations figure more prominently than usual.

Unfortunately, ‘Globehead! Journal of Extreme Cartography’ was a rather short-lived grad school magazine at Penn State (only 2 issues), otherwise we might have seen some more strange maps like this one.

“The equinational projection was invented by my friend Catherine Reeves for Globehead! in 1994,” writes Jeremy W. Crampton, professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky, who sent this map in. He kindly explains the cryptic acronym IASBS: International Association for the Study of Big Science.

Strange Maps #201

Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people