This is something I've been thinking about for yonks now, ever since I had occasion to wander into our study at home and root out a World Globe that had been snoozing away at the back of a closet (see also Have you got the globes? No, I always walk this way!).
We get so used to looking at flat (2D) maps based on the Mercator Projection that we tend to forget just how much this distorts things in terms of area, scale, and shape. Take Africa, for example, which really doesn’t look all that large when presented on a regular map. "Why on earth did this take so long to explore?" we ask ourselves. It's only when you look at Africa on a 3D globe that you realize just how humongous a continent it truly is.
Sign up here with your email