How the world map changed over centuries, why Mercator makes Greenland look huge, why Asia is the largest continent, how map projections work and the truth behind common world map myths.

Every flat map sacrifices some geographical properties. Equal Earth preserves relative land area, while Mercator's navigational advantages come with increasingly severe area distortion towards the ...

Greenland appears much larger than it actually is on most world maps, thanks to the Mercator projection, a centuries-old map style. A recent study reveals how this distortion influences our perception ...

The Mercator map that is now most familiar distorts the size of Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania and inflates landmasses towards the poles.