Both maps below show Aruba highlighted. At 13° Mercator inflates Aruba by only about 5%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Dominican Republic beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 13°, Aruba sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Aruba: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Aruba | 180 km² | 189 km² | 1.05× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Aruba at about 189 km². The truth is 180 km², a difference of 5% that school atlases carried for centuries.