Both maps below show Curaçao highlighted. At 12° Mercator inflates Curaçao 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 12°, Curaçao 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.
Curaçao: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Curaçao | 444 km² | 465 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 Curaçao at about 465 km². The truth is 444 km², a difference of 5% that school atlases carried for centuries.