For much of my life, I never gave much thought to the actual relative sizes of various continents or land masses, even though I was well schooled in the pitfalls of various types of maps (such as those seen in a Mercator projection) but it wasn’t viscerally imprinted in me until I went inside the Christian Science Mapparium located in Boston.
(I know, it is a Christian Science thing, but...it is quite impressive. Read about it at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapparium)
It is a giant earth globe, made of glass, three stories tall, lit from the outside with lights, and you walk inside to view the globe as if you were at the center of the earth.
It is a remarkable viewpoint because when you are looking at a globe...the size difference between say, Africa and North America is evident, but...it doesn’t hit you the same way because of the act of viewing it on a globe from the outside tends to...isolate what you are looking at on the globe.
You have to often rotate the globe a little to see a different part.
But from the inside of the Christian Science Mapparium, the size differential not only readily apparent, it was astonishingly apparent.
Africa seemed to take up nearly half the globe. It seemed to dwarf everything else. That really stuck with me over the years, that perspective.
Interesting post (and thanks for link).
Spent many years in Boston, and never even knew this Mapparium thing existed. Thanks for posting - I really hope I have a chance to check it out sometime in the future.
I’ve been there—it’s a must-see, and impressive.
Another way of looking at the relative sizes is in terms of arable land.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269235/arable-land-worldwide-by-region/
Or in terms of population.
https://www.worldometers.info/geography/7-continents/
i was taught that the globe projections onto paper cause distortions... i blame the teachers today, for now they are seeing a conspiracy of shrinking Africa.
Cool! I would like to go see that.
I toured the Christian Science Mapparium when I was in high school and still remember it almost 50 years later. It is worth a visit if you are ever in Boston.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mapparium