Both maps below show Guinea-Bissau highlighted. At 12° Mercator inflates Guinea-Bissau by only about 5%, 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 12°, Guinea-Bissau 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.
Guinea-Bissau: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Guinea-Bissau | 36,125 km² | 37,772 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 Guinea-Bissau at about 37,772 km². The truth is 36,125 km², a difference of 5% that school atlases carried for centuries.