Why a flat map fails to accurately depict Earth

Why a flat map fails to accurately depict Earth There are plenty of methods of portraying a three-dimensional shape on a two-dimensional surface, and each comes with tradeoffs depending on purpose.

Key points

• 8 min read New Delhi Sep 9, 2026 06: 06 AM IST.
• The Mercator layout was introduced by the Flemish (present-day Belgium) geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to support sailors navigate the world.
• India backs UN world map resolution, draws firm line on Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
• "In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines, " remarked Siva Kumar.
• This means Mercator projected the Earth's surface as if unwrapped from a cylinder around the globe.

No flat map can accurately portray the three-dimensional Earth. Every projection involves trade-offs, depending on its purpose. Photo: Unsplash.

For context, the United Nations has adopted a resolution to shift away from the 16th-century Mercator map of the world towards one that more accurately depicts Africa's vast size.

At a UN General Assembly session, 164 countries (including India) voted to adopt the 2018 Equal Earth design – with the US voting against the Togo-led resolution, and six countries abstaining. Since UN resolutions are not binding, it remains to be seen if or when governments, organisations and classrooms adopt it.

For context, the Mercator layout has been the world's most widely applied projection for centuries. But it has additionally long been criticised for exaggerating the size of regions towards the poles relative to those closer to the equator. The most infamous example of these distortions is its depiction of the African continent. It appears similar to Greenland – an island 14 times smaller and regarding the size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

How did the Mercator map come to be the most commonly applied depiction of the world? And why is it so tough to map the world? The Earth is not a sphere.

Though it is sometimes treated as one to create mathematical calculations easier, the first thing we need to understand is that the Earth is not a sphere.

It bulges in the middle due to its spin, the Moon's gravity warps it, and the continents and oceans distort the shape, remarked Maj Gen (Dr) Siva Kumar Rachapudi (retd), a scientist who has was central in promoting geospatial technologies throughout administration, academia and industry for decades. This means the best way to represent Earth is a spheroid. It is a three-dimensional shape created from a two-dimensional ellipse, Siva Kumar, who has additionally been a senior official at the Department for Science and Technology, informed The Indian Express.

But carrying a globe around is impractical. This brings us to projections. The term refers to the transformation of a three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional map. There are plenty of different types of projections. Some of them are. Conformal projections (which preserve angles). Equal-area projections (which preserve areas, such as the newly adopted map). Equidistant projections (which maintain distance).

Compromise projections (which balances distortions in area, shape, distance and direction rather than preserving any one of them exactly).

We shall explain what the terms area, shape, distance and direction mean in cartography further ahead. For now, suffice it to say that the Mercator layout is a conformal projection. The origins of the Mercator projection.

Notably, the Mercator layout was introduced by the Flemish (present-day Belgium) geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to support sailors navigate the world.

It is a conformal, cylindrical map. This means Mercator projected the Earth's surface as if unwrapped from a cylinder around the globe.

UN adopts Equal Earth map: Why no flat map can accurately show the globe.

So, if you drew a straight line from Mumbai to Muscat on a Mercator map, you could point your ship in the same compass direction throughout the journey and reach your destination. This was a major advantage over other map projections, where a constant-direction route would appear curved. The Mercator's colonial lens.

In practice, the Mercator projection has a grid pattern with longitudes and latitudes at 90-degree angles. The longitudes (vertical lines) are evenly spaced, but the distances between the latitudes (horizontal lines) growth as one moves away from the equator towards the poles.

This is deliberate. "To preserve shapes, the ratio of increase in the length of the parallels is kept exactly the same with respect to the increase in the length of the meridians, " remarked Dr Bimal Kumar Kar, president of the Indian National Cartographic Association and former head of Gauhati University's geography department.

Notably, the result is that Mercator projection inflates the size of lands the farther they are from the equator. "Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator, " remarked Siva Kumar. How we lost our way in a mapped world.

Mercator's projection supported Western cartographers easily mark towns, cities, and roads in their part of the world. "Its popularity also lies in its ease of construction, since all parallels and meridians are straight lines, " remarked Kar. This Western-centric view is what has come in for criticism.

".if you're a humanist well versed in European imperialism's harsh imprint on the Third World, the traditional Greenwich-anchored world map becomes a clear example of Western cultural hegemony." wrote cartography professor Mark Monmonier in his 2004 book Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection.

"The standard projection was a political tool that contributed to the scramble for Africa, also known as the partition of Africa when Western European powers colonised the continent, " Rabah Arezki, former economist at the World Bank, wrote in Le Monde. The search for a better map.

In short, why a flat map fails to accurately depict Earth is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.