• bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    How is this a “Mercator-style projection”?

    Also, people figured out the Earth was round long ago exactly because of these sorts of discrepancies. There just wasn’t a lot of value in being hyper accurate since the purpose of a map before the invention of ocean ships was just walking from one city to another along roads.

    • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I guess I mean the type of map that we grew up seeing in our schoolbooks and encyclopedias, the type that distorts the further you get from your starting point, but instead of putting Europe at the center of things, this map here starts from Asia, outwards.

      EDIT: as such, it represents the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, Sea Of Japan coastlines more accurately (as would be seen from space), while the Mercator does it for the Mediterranean and middle Atlantic.