The Power of Maps

A map looks like a simple, factual picture of the world, but it is always the result of human choices. A mapmaker must decide what to include and what to leave out, what to make large and what to shrink, and which features deserve a name at all. Because the earth is round and a map is flat, some distortion is mathematically unavoidable. Far from being neutral, then, every map （ 1 ） a particular point of view, whether or not its makers intended it to.

The most familiar world map, based on a design from the sixteenth century, is genuinely useful for navigation, but it badly distorts the relative size of land. On it, regions near the poles appear far larger than they really are, while areas near the equator look much smaller. As a result, some wealthy northern countries seem to dominate the map, while many tropical nations appear （ 2 ） than they actually are. For centuries, schoolchildren absorbed this misleading impression of the world without ever questioning it.

Maps also carry power in more direct ways. Governments use them to claim territory, mark borders, and assert ownership over disputed land, and a single line drawn on a map can determine which country a region belongs to and which people are counted as its citizens. （ 3 ） they appear to be objective and scientific, maps can therefore be powerful tools of persuasion and even of control. Learning to read them critically, experts argue, is an increasingly important skill in a world full of competing claims and rival versions of the truth.