Both maps below show Myanmar highlighted. At 21° Mercator inflates Myanmar by only about 15%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Bhutan beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 21°, Myanmar 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.
Myanmar: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Myanmar | 676,578 km² | 777,456 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 Myanmar at about 777,456 km². The truth is 676,578 km², a difference of 15% that school atlases carried for centuries.