If you’re not a geography or trivia buff, you may not realize that the maps used in schools are the Mercator maps created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569. For over 400 years, you may have believed Greenland was larger than Africa and not realized that Africa was larger than the entire United States.
Last weekend, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to promote the use of new world maps that more accurately show the size of each continent and country. The Equal Earth map, produced in 2018, is more accurate in its actual size and has been used by the African Union since February of this year. For example, Greenland is now clearly 14 times smaller than the African continent.
The resolution was led by Togo and supported by the African Union with 164 countries in favor, 6 other countries abstaining (Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine) and only the United States against it.
The resolution merely encourages the use of Flat Earth Maps and does not mandate that users of Mercator maps stop using them. Mercator maps are still more useful for navigational purposes because they show accurate straight lines with travel distances consistent with the purpose for which they were produced in 1569. The map of the world on the UN logo, for example, uses a planar projection with the North Pole as the focal point in the center of the map.
