Map Monday, Africa the misunderstood continent

Africa the mysterious dark continent might be the most misunderstood region of the world.  Apart from the political, economic, and social issues afflicting many of its countries, few people truly understand the vastness of Africa.  Part of the misperception stems from the problem of projecting the spherical surface of the globe on to a flat map – be it paper or a computer screen.  The process requires you to make compromises which distort distances, shapes, and sizes of the Earth’s features.  For small scale maps these distortions are unnoticeable, but as the area increases the map becomes more twisted, stretched, and mangled.

There are scores of different projections to choose from, but the de facto standard for paper is the Mercator projection.  Developed by Geradus Mercator in 1569 the projection represents all bearings as straight lines and preserves their angles relative to the globe’s meridians.  Unfortunately, the benefits of Mercator’s projection required sailors to know their longitudinal position and their bearing relative to the geographic north pole.  The former wasn’t available until the invention of more precise sea-going clocks, while the latter required the availability of magnetic conversion data to allow for corrections between magnetic north and geographic north.  Both of these became available in the mid-nineteenth century and established the Mercator projection as the mapping standard.  The proliferation of online mapping applications led to the creation of the slightly different Web Mercator, by Google in 2005.

So what does all of this have to do with the misunderstanding of Africa?  As I mentioned above, all projections require compromises.  The Mercator projection (original & Web) become increasingly inaccurate as you approach the poles.  Once you pass 70^o, which is beyond the arctic and antarctic circles the stretching greatly exaggerates features.  This enlarges the northern land masses, e.g., Greenland, and by comparison makes equatorial Africa look much smaller.  Kenneth Field’s map debunks this size bias by showing that Africa can easily contain the entire US, China, and India with room to spare for fifteen more countries.

There’s a lot more to Africa beyond its great size (it’s the second largest continent).

Interesting facts about Africa:

1. Contains more countries (54) than any other continent
2. 1.1 Billion people live in Africa
3. ~2,000 languages are spoken
4. We all came from Africa – our species originated in East Africa ~200,000 years ago
5. The Nile river valley is one of the cradles of civilization
6. Lagos Nigeria, is bigger than Los Angeles or Moscow
7. Roughly 10,000,000 acres (4M Hectares) of African forest disappears every year
8. Is the youngest continent with ~50% of the population under 19 years old
9. The oldest existing art, shell beads from ~82,000 years ago, were found in Morocco
10. The Great Pyramid of Giza remained the tallest man-made structure until 1300

Here’s a link for more interesting facts about Africa facts

As an aside please consider signing up for my FREE author newsletter. It will contain opportunities to preview new books, announcements, and contests related to my novels. It will not overwhelm your inbox – I’m thinking once a month or less depending on news.

If you have subscribed, but haven’t received a newsletter, please check your spam folder. Moving the newsletter to your inbox should fix the issue.

As always, thanks for reading.

Armen

Note to Pay the Bills: While set in upstate New York, the award winning Misaligned series features action and flashbacks in other locations. The second book includes action in ancient Africa and proposes an alternative theory about the creation of the Sahara Desert. How does that fit into a Young Adult fantasy series about Welsh mythology? Learn more by reading a summary of the series here or find links to purchase books here.