Both maps below show Marshall Islands highlighted. At 7° Mercator inflates Marshall Islands by only about 2%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Vanuatu beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 7°, Marshall Islands 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.
Marshall Islands: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Marshall Islands | 181 km² | 184 km² | 1.02× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Marshall Islands at about 184 km². The truth is 181 km², a difference of 2% that school atlases carried for centuries.