The most widely used global map is almost 500 years old and was designed for navigation. But landmasses near the poles look ...

The Mercator map, which most of us grew up with, makes Africa look smaller and Greenland much larger than they are-but that's ...

The UN resolution instead endorses use of the Equal Earth projection, which better shows the relative sizes of land masses.

The UN has passed a non-binding resolution to endorse the Equal Earth Projection, a map which more fairly represents the true ...

The map of Africa is much larger than most people think. However, most classroom maps and atlases still understate it – a distortion embedded in the Mercator projection that has shaped world maps for ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Think about a map of the world. The image you're picturing will most ...

However, the Mercator map comes with the trade-off of showing inaccurate sizes for continents. Landmasses become artificially ...

Africa has long been represented as smaller than its real size in maps, which are largely based on an ancient projection.

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to phase out Mercator projections and adopt Equal Earth projections, a change meant to better represent geographic size on maps. The vote came on Sept. 4, ...

Main points Africa is much bigger than it appears on many familiar world maps. At roughly 30.3 million square kilometres, the continent is almost the same size as Russia, the United States and India ...