This blog entry falls into the category of things which we take for granted that are not so. I don't know about you, but mentally, I just tend to picture Europe as approximately (minus the Russian Federation) the size of the US. I know that it is not so, but this is just the way I picture it. I don't usually view the continents properly, affixed to a globe, but more often see them on atlas pages, one after the other. Europe is on its page, we are on our own. Run your finger along a line of latitude straight across from New York City, and you hit Europe, same as us, right?
Yeah, not so much. I found a wonderful vintage map on
StrangeMaps of the whole of Europe (again, minus the then-USSR) overlaid on South America, and able to fit entirely within Brazil. This for me has the same effect as tipping the map projection "upside-down", or correcting the often-used-but-inaccurate Mercator projection in favor of another less North-centric one. It makes me stop, and shake my head a bit, and realign my biases and accepted templates in favor of more correct and accurate views. Here it is:
 |
| Europe fitted in Brazil, click to enlarge |
No comments:
Post a Comment