14 Oct The true size of Africa? Really big.

Most of us know, intellectually, that standard Mercator projection maps grossly distort the relative sizes of countries. In particular, the world maps we most often use exaggerate the size of first world, northern-hemisphere countries like Canada, the USA, and the nations of Europe, while under-representing the size of third-world countries clustered around the equator.

But do we grasp this distortion in any visceral sense? Quite the contrary: Each time we look at a distorting world map, we are subliminally reinforced in the prejudice that we’re big, and they’re small.

GUI-designer Kai Krause strikes a blow against what he calls immappancy with this eye-opening demonstration of Africa’s capacity to swallow up the much smaller land masses of countries we normally think of as quite large.

China, the USA, India, Japan, and most of Europe would handily fit within Africa’s shores. Click here for a much larger version, together with some commentary and additional stats from Krause.

[Via Stephen Fry and various others.]