Both maps below show Indonesia highlighted. At 2° Mercator inflates Indonesia by only about 0.16%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Vietnam beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 2°, Indonesia 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.
Indonesia: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Indonesia | 1,904,569 km² | 1,907,616 km² | 1.00× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Indonesia at about 1,907,616 km². The truth is 1,904,569 km², a difference of 0.16% that school atlases carried for centuries.