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42 Amazing Maps

2013-09-20 · Hank · watch on YouTube · History & curiosities · curiosity idea

Hank presents maps that help him understand the world, from population and preference maps to Worldmapper cartograms, and notes how projections such as Mercator distort perception.

What is said

00:00:00 — Maps as art and information; historical maps show how little was known; Game of Thrones and Westeros

  • ★★ In the description Hank says the map is an extremely important innovation that vastly increased humankind's capabilities. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says maps are an amazing kind of art that tend to represent reality but need not, and can be extremely information-dense. — 00:00:07
  • ★★ Hank says historical maps show how little people knew about the world, and finds it amazing and terrifying that most people who ever lived did not know what the whole world looked like. — 00:00:18
  • ★ Hank says reading Game of Thrones frustrates him because its world has not been fully mapped: what is west of Westeros? (playful) — 00:00:28

00:00:57 — Population and geography maps: seven regions of a billion people, empty Australia, the crowded circle, longest straight sailing line, Earth sandwiches

  • ★★ Hank shows a map splitting the world into seven regions of about one billion people each, with North America, South America and Australia together making up one. — 00:00:57 · Australia
  • ★★ Hank says Australia is mostly empty: only 2% of people live in the highlighted area of the map. — 00:01:09 · Australia
  • ★★ Hank says more people live inside a circle drawn on the map than outside it, and that the circle looks different once the flat map's distortion is corrected. — 00:01:13
  • ★★ Hank says a curvy line on the flat map is the longest straight line you can sail without hitting land, possible because the Earth is mostly water. — 00:01:24
  • ★★ Hank says the Earth being mostly water shows in how few places you could make an "Earth sandwich", with land on both sides of the planet. — 00:01:33

00:01:45 — Maps of preferences; the US lagging on the metric system, maternity leave and executing juveniles

  • ★★ Hank says maps can show preferences: alcoholic drinks, sides of the road, pronouncing caramel, what to call soda, and systems of measurement. — 00:01:45
  • ★★ Hank says such maps show the US lagging behind on the metric system, maternity leave and executing juveniles, which he calls a little embarrassing. — 00:01:54 · United States

00:02:02 — Worldmapper cartograms and maps of internet use and flights over time

  • ★★ Hank calls Worldmapper an amazing website and software tool that distorts the world based on data, since land area is not the most important thing about a country; he shows land morphing into population. — 00:02:02
  • ★ Hank shows a Worldmapper map of the number of internet users swelling from 2000 to 2007. — 00:02:18
  • ★ Hank says moving maps that stretch into time, such as internet usage or global flights over 24 hours, are some of his favourites. — 00:02:22

00:02:33 — How maps distort: Mercator projection and the true size of Africa; north-up is arbitrary; Ptolemy, east-up and the Orient

  • ★★★ Hank says the Mercator projection, often used, stretches the world at the poles so that Africa looks about the size of Greenland. — 00:02:38
  • ★★★ Hank says Africa is very big: bigger than the United States, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, all of Eastern Europe, China and India. — 00:02:46 · United States, France, United Kingdom, China
  • ★★ Hank says north being up is completely arbitrary, though convenient because most people live in the Northern Hemisphere. — 00:03:00
  • ★★ Hank says Western maps began north-up with Ptolemy, switched to east-up (so to orient a map pointed it toward the Orient), and returned to north-up in the Renaissance out of obsession with the Greeks. — 00:03:07

00:03:22 — Closing: a complicated world, and mapmakers as heroes of the modern age; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says the world is big, complicated and impossible to understand completely, and that the people who use data and tools to build these constructions of reality are heroes of the modern age. — 00:03:22

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