Both maps below show Somaliland highlighted. At 10° Mercator inflates Somaliland by only about 3%, 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 10°, Somaliland 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.
Somaliland: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Somaliland | 177,000 km² | 182,204 km² | 1.03× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Somaliland at about 182,204 km². The truth is 177,000 km², a difference of 3% that school atlases carried for centuries.