African advocacy groups launched a campaign to replace the Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection. The African Union endorsed the effort, saying the distorted map minimizes Africa’s global ...

Most African countries lack accurate local base maps, stalling all sorts of government and business decisions. A new project ...

In 1569, Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator synthesized existing ideas in navigation and cartography to create a new type of world map. It has stood the test of time: Billions of people would ...

The Mercator world map, long a fixture in classrooms globally, makes the European Union appear almost as large as Africa. In reality, Africa is more than seven times bigger. It is a distortion that ...

For generations, schools, media outlets and decision-makers have relied on a familiar world map. It has become a global standard, seen everywhere from classroom posters to government buildings. But ...

We often think of a map as a realistic representation of the world, but it is actually quite the opposite: a neat and idealistic drawing of borders in what are often messy places with no visible ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. The Historic Maps of Africa collection includes 78 maps and dates from circa 1631 to 1973. Geographic content of individual maps varies from ...

The Mercator map, first created in the 16th century, has long been the standard map used for navigation and education, but it stretches land masses farther from the equator. For example, Greenland ...