1 year ago9 points(+0/-0/+9Score on mirror)2 children
It's a good point actually. This effect is inevitable, as we are dealing with a 3D sphere mapped to a 2D plane, but why isn't Europe and North America in the focus with their original sizes? I bet it's possible to create a vaguely, somewhat distorted map that depicts the countries in their original sizes.
[Here](https://www.newsweek.com/true-scale-map-world-shows-how-big-countries-really-are-1183386)'s one of those maps, but they are never shown.
1 year ago5 points(+0/-0/+5Score on mirror)1 child
The issue is that distorts the angles of countries, making it harder to navigate for setting sail. Much easier to use a protractor on a piece of paper than a globe
Thats kinda what I was taught. But thinking about it for a minute makes me wonder WHY certain places are depicted smaller or larger, as it seems totally inconsistent and unrelated to longitude.
It is done that way to make lines along the NW and NE directions lie at 45 degrees to North/South and West/East.
If you want true areas, you have to squeeze the higher latitudes somehow. Perhaps reduce the width of the map, so that it is no longer a rectangle and the shapes get weird. Or shrink the vertical dimension of higher latitudes, accepting that a North West line, high up the map, is going to be at a shallow angle, much less than 45 degrees.
Try not to drown when the weird angles make it hard to navigate your ship :-)