Maps Have Been Lying To You Your Entire Life

Environment





Photo credit:

Strebe / Wikimedia Commons. A Mercator projection map.

The truth is that every map tells a lie, but they don’t all lie about the same thing. For example, Mercator projection maps—one of the most common in use today—exaggerate regions far from the equator. The Goode homolosine projection (pictured below) shows continents that are sized appropriately to one another, but with many interruptions and distortions of distance.