Both maps below show Maldives highlighted. At 4° Mercator inflates Maldives by only about 0.43%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to India beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 4°, Maldives 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.
Maldives: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Maldives | 300 km² | 301 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 Maldives at about 301 km². The truth is 300 km², a difference of 0.43% that school atlases carried for centuries.