You know, the world map we carry around in our heads isn't always as accurate as we think. It's funny, isn't it? We all have this general idea of where places are, but sometimes, those mental shortcuts can lead us astray in pretty surprising ways.
Take South America, for instance. Most of us picture it sitting squarely south of North America. And it is, of course. But here's the kicker: almost the entire continent of South America is actually farther east than Florida. It’s a geographical quirk that cartographer John Nelson points out, suggesting our names for continents might even play a role – it’s not called 'Southeast America,' after all.
Nelson's own family history is tied to this very idea. His father, a geography professor, along with colleagues and input from his mother, a high school geography teacher, published research on these common geographical misconceptions back in the 90s. Nelson recalls them discussing this very research over family dinners. Revisiting that work, he recently created a 'story map' to highlight some of these persistent errors, including that curious longitudinal relationship between the Americas.
Then there's Africa. Many of us in North America tend to place it mostly in the southern hemisphere, a mirror image across the Atlantic to South America. But the reality is quite different. Roughly two-thirds of Africa actually lies north of the equator. It extends quite far north, reaching latitudes comparable to places like Norfolk, Virginia. It’s a significant shift from the mental image many of us hold.
Europe often gets misplaced too. We tend to think of it as sitting directly across the Atlantic from the contiguous United States. But in truth, it lines up much more with Canada. Paris, for example, is further north than Montreal. Barcelona shares a latitude with Chicago, and Venice? It's at the same latitude as Portland, Oregon. Nelson speculates that the relatively mild climate of Western Europe, thanks to the Gulf Stream warming its shores, might contribute to this misconception. It feels more like the climate of the lower 48 states than Canada's, so perhaps our brains just slot it in there.
It seems we like to keep things simple, aligning our mental maps with the four cardinal directions. It’s just easier to think of Europe as 'due east' and South America as 'due south,' even if that's not quite how the globe is shaped.
But it's not just about location; our sense of size can be distorted too. This often stems from the challenge of representing our round planet on a flat surface. Map projections, like the ubiquitous Mercator projection you might remember from school, are notorious for this. They stretch and distort areas, especially near the poles.
Think about Greenland. On a Mercator map, it can look as large as South America. In reality, South America is more than eight times bigger than Greenland! And Brazil, which often appears modest on maps, is actually larger than the entire contiguous United States and nearly as big as Canada. Alaska, which looks enormous on Mercator maps, is actually smaller than Libya. It’s a powerful reminder that the maps we see, and the mental maps we form, are often just approximations, and sometimes, quite significant ones at that.
