Both maps below show Panama highlighted. At 9° Mercator inflates Panama by only about 2%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Jamaica beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 9°, Panama 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.
Panama: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Panama | 75,320 km² | 77,007 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 Panama at about 77,007 km². The truth is 75,320 km², a difference of 2% that school atlases carried for centuries.