Both maps below show Guam highlighted. At 13° Mercator inflates Guam by only about 6%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Taiwan beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 13°, Guam 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.
Guam: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Guam | 541 km² | 572 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 Guam at about 572 km². The truth is 541 km², a difference of 6% that school atlases carried for centuries.