Both maps below show Somalia highlighted. At 5° Mercator inflates Somalia by only about 1%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Yemen beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 5°, Somalia 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.
Somalia: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Somalia | 637,657 km² | 642,057 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 Somalia at about 642,057 km². The truth is 637,657 km², a difference of 1% that school atlases carried for centuries.