Both maps below show Gambia highlighted. At 14° Mercator inflates Gambia by only about 6%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Mauritania beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 14°, Gambia 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.
Gambia: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Gambia | 11,295 km² | 11,941 km² | 1.1× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Gambia at about 11,941 km². The truth is 11,295 km², a difference of 6% that school atlases carried for centuries.