The Peters World Map

Peters World Map takes some getting used to. It looks wrong, like it's been smoothed out by an iron on too high a setting. A kid's temporary tattoo misapplied. A pirate letterbox DVD squished into a 4:3 frame.

Unlike the more familiar Mercator projection, which is based on 180 degrees of division, the Peters map divides the surface of the earth into 100 longitudinal fields of equal width and 100 latitudinal fields of equal height. This means that countries are represented more accurately, according to their surface areas.

Such cartographical jiggery-pokery makes for some interesting observations. Hey, Alaska's the largest US state! Where's Switzerland? I can't find it. Man, Algeria and Sudan are huge! So is China, and Brazil!

The copy of Peters World Map hanging on my living room wall, pinned up by a roommate who probably got it "free" when coerced into a subscription of New Internationalist (most likely outside the university library, because that's where the NI dudes hang out, in bright orange tabards, trying to trick you with such questions as, "Do you care about human rights?"), bears this declaration:

Five thousand years of human history have brought us to the threshold of a new age. ... Such a moment in history demands that we look critically at our understanding of the world. This understanding is based, to a significant degree, on the work of map-makers of the age when Europe dominated and exploited the world. ...

While the Peters Map is superior in its portrayal of proportions and sizes, its importance goes far beyond questions of cartographic accuracy. No less than our world view is at stake.

As those lofty words suggest, Peters World Map has noble intentions. By showing countries in their true sizes and locations, each one is allowed its actual position in the world — meaning fairness to all peoples, and map usage free of any lingering subconscious euro-centric and colonial tendencies that come from the mean Mercator projection.

Some in the cartography community object to Peters World Map increasing the politicization of their field. They forget, of course, that mapmaking and politics have a long history. People were once tortured and executed for suggesting the world was not flat. In 1900, large chunks of the world were colored pink for the British Empire and its eternal sunshine. Sixty years later there was a large red blob spreading east from Europe.

Other detractors are quick to acknowledge Peters' drawbacks — that while showing equal area, it distorts proportion. Africa is the most obvious example. In reality it's as long north-south as it is wide east-west, but Peters World Map shows it to be twice as long as it is wide.

But then all cartography is a compromise, of putting a three-dimensional object — an irregular one, at that — onto a two-dimensional surface. Whichever projection you look at, there is only so much a two-dimensional representation of the world can do for our view of it. In a recent TV review of cinema trends, British film critic Mark Kermode said that Hollywood had been looking east to Asia for influences. People in Hollywood would, of course, look west to Asia. Kermode forgot about the Pac-Man principle — that it's easier to get from one side to the other if you go through the gate at the side.

Peters World Map won't stop people forgetting the Pac-Man principle, but it does commit fewer cartographical crimes than the current en vogue portrayal of the world — such as making Greenland as big as China. So why have only a few international aid organizations adopted it officially? Why haven't teachers torn down the biased, flawed maps on their walls and replaced them with fairer representations of the world we live in?

Well, habit. And — let's be honest — Peters World Map is a bit ugly. It's a bit too scientific and precise. In other projections countries appear rounded and full-bodied; in Peters World Map they look limp and anemic. Some countries' outlines are so far removed from the traditional idea that to force them upon a populace might have social repercussions — crises of confidence or dangerously fueled hubris.

But it probably comes down to names. Map projections have ridiculous names. If it's not Peters World Map, which sounds like a 4-year-old's portrait of the world in bright crayons, it's Winkel-Tripel (as used by National Geographic), a rare species of crustacean, or — getting less common — Goode's Homolosine, a mead of Old Albion, or Polyconic, a German techno outfit, or Bonne, a French perfume.

With those as competition, no wonder we've stuck with the Mercator projection. Let's not underestimate, after all, the appeal of wizardry-obsessed '70s prog-rock bands for the decision-makers of the world. Harry Potter is big with the kids, too, so who knows? It might be another generation at least before Peters World Map is taken seriously.

— Louis Cooke (louis@mintcake.com)