We ’ve ascertain this comparison made before , albeit never as lucidly as this . Behold : major state of the world , overlay atop an scheme of the positively giant African continent .
If this is your first time seeing this comparison ( tick here to see it in hi - ray ) , you might be surprised by Africa ’s immensity . If that ’s the case , there ’s a nice hazard you’re able to delineate your warped view ofgeographic scaleback to a “ compromiseprojection ” – map projections so - named for their tendency to give things like exact geographic size of it and form in exchange for , say , nice , straight tune ( as is the casewith the Mercator - projection ) . As the graphic snarks :
And now for a horse sense of scale : a map of the U.S. overlay on the Moon
Here ’s what Pangea looks like mapped with modern political borders
Buckminster Fuller ’s Dymaxion mapping reveals the near - contiguity of Earth ’s continents
In addition to the well known societal issues of analphabetism and innumeracy , there also should be such a construct as “ immappacy , ” meaning deficient geographic knowledge .
A peculiarly extreme example is the worldwide misjudgment of the true size of Africa . This individual image attempt to embody the massive scale leaf , which is larger than the USA , China , India , Japan , and all of Europe … coalesce !
Even if you have seen this size of it - compare made before , you ’ll appreciate the ready to hand list of countries , presented by entire area in square kilometre , that come with it .
Notably , Africa is still only the secondly - largest continent on Earth;Asia outstrips it by about 13.5 - million km2 .
ViaLee Berger
mapsScaleScience
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