Maps To Change Your Worldview

January 22, 2025
•11 min read
There are lots of epic maps in the world, but not all of them will change your worldview, these ones will.
Everyone loves maps. Unless you’re a man in car who prefers refusing to ask for directions. Jokes aside, maps can show us more than just where to go, and thanks to the internet there are almost no limits on what they can be used to visualize. From population indicators to historic misconceptions, let's discuss some examples of maps that will change your world view.
World Population Density
We know that there are areas of the world that are simply uninhabitable like scorching deserts, arctic tundra’s, and most of Australia. So where exactly do we fit the 8 billion people living on this planet? The map below is a world population density map representing the number of people per kilometer squared.
The lighter areas indicate 0 to 10 people per square kilometer in different states and provinces across the globe. Empty looking areas like Canada, Russia and Chinas Tibet Province come as no surprise thanks to elements like their rugged terrain and harsh weather.But the most densely populated areas such as the east coast of China, India and parts of Europe contain over 1000 people per kilometer squared. That makes Asia the most densely populated continent with 4.6 billion people living it, followed by Africa with 1.3 billion, Europe at 747 million, Latin America & the Caribbean at 653 million, then North America with a sparse 368 million, and finally Oceania with just 42 million. Suddenly it doesn’t feel so crowded in there!The US vs The Moon
It’s hard to put into perspective just how vast the United States is, so how about we use the moon for scale? The moon has a constant diameter of 3,474 km, which is only 27% of Earth’s diameter of 12,715 km pole to pole. Using this in the image below, you can get a better picture of just how big the states really is, and that’s without including Alaska or Hawaii!
US MAP overlaid on MOON: size comparison. Source: bit.ly/1sQvALR
Earth Sandwich
Ever wanted to make an earth sandwich? It’s when you place two pieces of bread on exact opposite points of the globe. I’m not making that up, that is honestly what kids get up to these days. If the inclination ever arose to try and make that, you’d need an antipode map.
Two men in New Zealand and Spain created an "Earth sandwich" by placing slices of bread on precise points, either side of the planet, it was reported on Monday. Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/ne… 📸: IANS
Wealth Distribution in America
It’s not just state lines that divide America, wealth distribution sets harsh boundaries across rural and urban populations alike. The census taken by ESRI in 2018 highlights household incomes of city regions in four categories: light blue dots on those maps show households earning over $100000 a year, in purple it shows $50000 to $100000, in pink it’s $50000 to $25000 and in orange they earn less than $25000.
A sweep over Los Angeles reveals that low earnings are centralized within the innermost part of the city around the downtown and South Los Angeles area, but the coastal regions of Santa Monica, Torrence and Orange Country are populated almost exclusively by those earning over $100’000. In contrast, New York has a distinct neighborhood wealth boundary between Manhattan and the Bronx. That isn’t exactly news, but it does show that there is very little in between, with households earning over $25000 pushed much further out into Queens, but then all surrounding areas exclusively populated by those earning $10000 or more. Zooming out gives you a look at the bigger picture, the distribution over the united states shows a clear distinction between rural and urban areas. Rural states like Mississippi, Kentucky and Georgia are home to the country’s highest concentrations of poverty, with urban cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington providing hubs for insane amounts of wealth.Mercator Projection
You might think that the map in the image below is an accurate map of the world, but you'd be wrong. That is the commonly known Mercator Projection, a map designed in 1569. It became a standard as it followed a constant linear scale, making it easier for sailors to navigate the world.
As a side effect of that, the map inflates the sizes of objects away from the equator making them seem much bigger when in reality they’re only a fraction of the size. If you want the real sizes, take a look at this animation below, made in 2018 which corrects the Mercator projection to reflect the relative size of each country.
Poles of Inaccessibility
Do you hate people? Then I have the perfect map for you. The map in the image below is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. It shows the place on earth where you would be the furthest away from any land mass. It lies in the South Pacific Ocean, about 2688 kilometers from the nearest point of land. It’s so remote that the closest human beings to it sometimes are the astronauts that pass overhead in the international space station!
On the other end of that spectrum, there’s a map for people who have an unadulterated hatred for water. Or rabies. That is the most extreme continental pole of inaccessibility, the point where you are furthest away from any ocean. It’s located in north western China, close to the Kazakhstan boarder, and is thought to be almost 2645 kilometers from the nearest coastline. It’s a Thalassophobic’s paradise!
Light Pollution
Light pollution around the world gives a clear indicator of the most populated and developed areas by kicking huge amounts of light into the atmosphere from man-made sources. The map in the image below uses a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite to measure the zenith sky brightness.
Polluted Rivers Map
Sadly, pollution comes in many forms, and it’s gotten so bad we can now accurately estimate where a lot of pollutants like plastic are being pumped into our oceans. The company OceanCleanUp have created this probabilistic map in the video below, showing hotspots of plastic pollution around the world.
Seas of Plastic
But plastic entering the sea is just the beginning. Its estimated there are over 5 trillion plastic pieces with a combined weight of 268940 tons currently washing around in our oceans, and the map in the image below from dumpark shows the current distribution of those pieces!
Just because America didn’t look like it was dumping plastic doesn’t mean it isn’t affected, the North Atlantic Ocean contains approximate 930 billion plastic pieces, many of which are gathering along the countries east coast and having a severe effect on coastal environments and the fishing industry. But countries in the North Pacific Ocean should be quaking in their boots, with 1.9 trillion pieces of plastic at a weight of 96 thousand tons clogging up their shorelines. So, when buying and disposing of plastic from now on, just think: what would Greta Thunberg do?Pollution Death Map
But pollution like that isn’t just about saving the world, its about saving people as well. In this map from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution below, data has been gathered on the human effects of modern pollution; that’s pollution stemming from industrial activities like air, chemical, and soil contamination.
The World Health Organization @WHO has launched a live data dashboard for the multi-country monkeypox outbreak. Access via: extranet.who.int/publicemergency More details on the epidemiological data can be found in the online epidemiological report here: worldhealthorg.shinyapps.io/mpx_global/
Map By Most Valuable Brands
If you were to take the top 500 Brands from around the the world, and represent each country with their top performing brand in that list, what would that look like? The results below were taken from the 2020 valuation of the Brand Directory’s top 500 Brand Valued companies.
Its obvious that Amazon would be the top dog of America, but it only rose to number one in June 2019 overtaking both Google and Apple with a huge $220 billion valuation. Other tech savvy top earners are South Koreas Samsung with a staggering $94.4 billion! In the banking sector, Chinas ICBC boasts the highest brand value with over $80.7 billion, along with Sberbank in Russia at $12.8 billion.Despite climate protests, oil & gas giants Shell are still the most valuable Netherlands brand at $47.5 billion, and Saudi Arabia’s new company Saudi Aramaco is hot on Shells heels at $47 billion. Brands synonymous with their countries such as Germanys Mercedes, Japan’s Toyota, India’s TATA, Sweden’s IKEA and even Italy’s Gucci are the top of their respective country brands.But there are several countries that you’d expect to see represented in that top 500 which aren’t on the shelves. Eastern Europe may look dark, but after it’s lengthy and costly time under Soviet Rule they’re just now entering a golden economic era; an economic flux that’s also reflected in the growing, post-soviet economies of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.Merchandise Imports and Exports Map
There are a couple of maps that might challenge what you previously thought about world trade. The World Trade Organization released its 2019 trade profile on each country earlier this year, detailing which countries conduct the most merchandise trade with one another, so trade excluding all commercial services. When we visualize that using flags to represent each country’s primary import partner, this is what the map looks like:
Where do countries import the most from?
