Papua New Guinea: old map vs new map

Both maps below show Papua New Guinea highlighted. At 6° Mercator inflates Papua New Guinea by only about 1%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Australia beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.

At 6°, Papua New Guinea 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.

Papua New Guinea: key figures

	True area	On the old Mercator map	Distortion vs truth
Papua New Guinea	462,840 km²	468,811 km²	1.01×
Greenland	2,166,086 km²	25,576,494 km²	11.8×
Africa	30,370,000 km²	n/a	n/a

Old maps drew Papua New Guinea at about 468,811 km². The truth is 462,840 km², a difference of 1% that school atlases carried for centuries.

Oceania on the old map vs the new map →Papua New Guinea country page: true area, rank and comparisons →The old world map vs the new world map →