Why would this shock Americans? Basically Americans have been lied to through maps. It's difficult to display the surface of the globe (sphere-ish) on a two dimensional surface. In fact, the way they do it is by basically shining light through a 3D representation of Earth and recording what gets projected onto some other surface be it a flat sheet, curved, etc. The projections all differ according to how they are set up. And they all distort...they distort at least one of six to varying degrees....bearing, distance, direction, area, shape, and scale. You have to pick which inaccurate portrayal of the Earth you want. America picked one that showed our land mass prominently and that is what we are used to. One problem....is distorts badly as you near the poles, so equatorial Africa looks relatively smaller than it actually is. Think the really stretched out looking Canada. Doesn't exist in reality. Compare what you are used to, the Mercator Projection, to a globe. You aren't crazy....something is askew!
I think it's important to take things into perspective. Africa may not have the population of Asia or the wealth of Europe, but it's a huge place. Some say the future of the world lies in Africa. It is being decimated by HIV/AIDS and still suffers from diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. China is buying land rights to huge chunks of agricultural lands. Global climate change may hit Africa hard. We may see huge internal migration that causes strife, civil war, and, yes, even genocide. The world owes Africa.....we have stripped wealth from it for centuries.
7 comments:
I gotta take issue, not with you, but with the caption on the graph you found. "People commonly underestimate quite how large Africa is, so we figured we'd put it into perspective by transposing as many as the world's other countries over it as we could."
What's this, "OTHER COUNTRIES." People *also* commonly mistake Africa for a country. Africa is not a country, so how could you transpose "OTHER" countries over it? It is a continent. It is more than 50 countries.
Good catch Ginna! I didn't even read the caption because I was lost in the graphic. But yes, despite people like Sarah Palin and Ms. South Carolina, Africa is a continent, not a country.
And Europe is continent...and an idea :-)
How does the U.S. compare with the African nation's (not continents) in size? And please include Alaska, HI, and our other territories in the comparison. Maybe you can give me the lesson over a game of Risk.
There is much to critique about the cartographic aspects of the map. They say "countries" yet don't include the full USA visually (contiguous USA is about 8M km square not 9.3) and they lump multiple countries into Western Europe. They say "other countries" when comparing to a continent.
However the purpose of the map is not about one country in Africa being smaller or bigger than any other individual country elsewhere. The purpose is to illustrate that people often underestimate the size of Africa. They do this by overlaying some recognizable land masses (AT PROPER SCALE). I describe how the maps we view are often to blame for misperceptions.
Some people think Canada is HUGE...well..it's by no means tiny, but it ain't as huge as most think.
This is all very true... Those flat maps make Greenland look bigger than the entire continent of South America!
I guess the question that would be interesting to ask Americans is "How big is Africa compared to the USA? About the same, slightly bigger, slightly smaller, twice as big, twice as small, three times as big or three times as small?"
I would love to see if there is a relation to when they learned their basic world geography....during the Mercator days, during the Robinson days, during the Winkel Tripel days, or during what GoogleMaps currently uses.
You're right, more than three USAs (Alaska and Territories included) fit within the full boundaries of the African Continent. The US represents 30.3% of the African landmass. When anyone states that maps are 'objective', they having ever been involved in real cartography or mapmaking - it's aways a lost argument.
Well done Casey, TRP
Post a Comment