Скачать или смотреть The Gall-Peters Projection: A Non-Eurocentric World Map?

Because the Earth is a sphere, it is virtually impossible to depict a 100% accurate map. The most common map we see is the Mercator Projection, created in 1569 for navigation along colonial trade routes. This map inflates the sizes of regions according to their distance from the equator. For instance, Greenland and Africa appear to be of the same size in the Mercator Projection. In reality, Africa is 14.5 times bigger.

A more accurate representation of the world is the Gall-Peters Projection. It is an equal-area map projection that depicts all areas as having the correct size in relation to each other. Originally developed by James Gall in 1955 and widely ignored until the journalist Arno Peters revived its popularity in the 1970s. He criticised the Mercator projection for its “cartographic imperialism” in depicting developing countries as much smaller, saying that the cartographic profession is ”based on the Eurocentric global concept, incapable of developing this egalitarian world map which alone can demonstrate the parity of all peoples of the earth”.