Both maps below show Brazil highlighted. At 11° Mercator inflates Brazil by only about 4%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Bolivia beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 11°, Brazil 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.
Brazil: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Brazil | 8,510,346 km² | 8,810,761 km² | 1.04× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Brazil at about 8,810,761 km². The truth is 8,510,346 km², a difference of 4% that school atlases carried for centuries.