True Size and False Maps
By: Human Everyday
Tags: Schools, World, Education, Maps, Mercator

The next issue to address is summed up perfectly in this quote from Gutstein’s student: “Because the map maker was from Europe, he put Europe in the ‘middle of the world’ and on top of other countries.”

Even if Mercator wanted to be a Eurocentrist, the Catholic Church as the bearer of high authority in Europe during the Middle Ages surely only made it harder for him to be one. In March 1544, extremist followers of the Church held Mercator in prison under the suspicion of joining Protestantism. Seven months later, he was released due to lack of proof, which saved him from being beheaded, burned at stake or buried alive. Only after he moved to Duisburg, Germany did he escape the tumultuous religious conflict and the constant threat of persecution. Still, his treatise on world history, titled Chronology (1569), was banned by the Church for mentioning leading figures of Protestantism in his effort to be as accurate as possible. As far as Mercator’s own historical records go, there is no solid evidence on whether he left the Catholic Church or not.

We may never know exactly whether Mercator thought Europe deserved to be the single ruling power on Earth. What we can prove, however, is that he did not even put Europe in the middle of his map. On both the original 1569 projection and the modern adaptation on the top of this article, if we place our sight on the center of the map, Africa shyly greets us from the right hand side. So where is this map that is supposed to have Europe at its heart?

World map by Italian cartographer Urbano Monti (1587). Many projections by European cartographers in the Middle Ages do not portray Europe at its center. (Public domain property, via Wikimedia Commons)

On the hands of map publishers, according to Bob Abramms, founder of the map publisher and distributor ODT Maps. In his correspondence with NPR, Abramms explained that it is often the individual publisher’s choice to crop Antarctica off the map due to how enormous it appears on the Mercator projection. It does save ink and paper, but also results in the equator being on the bottom third of the map. As it turned out, this decision gave birth to a whole new argument from the same perspective, as is mentioned on a CNN article: The Mercator map lowers the equator to the bottom third in order to provide more detail on Europe. Thus, it is Eurocentric.

Here, we have to admit that the 1569 projection does have its equator placed suspiciously south from the center of the map. But this was most probably a logical decision — Mercator could not possibly put on his projection what he did not know in the first place. Based on how crudely drawn the lower ends of the map are, we could make the assumption that a large portion of the southern hemisphere had not been discovered yet. And this is true. Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica had not been sighted until 1606, 1642 and 1773, respectively.

But what about Mercator’s double heart-shaped world map? Did we not see a continent at the core of its southern hemisphere? Yes, Mercator placed a landmass there, but no, it was not Antarctica. For maps that were not strictly made for navigation such as the Mercator 1538 map, cartographers often illustrated regions merely to suggest the existence of a location. This is also apparent on, for example, a projection by Abraham Ortelius in 1570 (see below). Both maps depict a southernmost continent that clearly lacks details, signaling that not much was known about it.