“minimal” deliveries

Developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1599, the projection was one of the first ever to represent arched, imaginary sailing courses as visible, straight lines. Its simplicity for sea navigation cemented its popularity at the time, but its huge errors soon became hard to ignore.“It preserves shapes and angles, and that’s good for navigation, but it’s terrible for scale,” geography professor Lindsay Frederick Braun of the University of Oregon said of the Mercator map. The map is most suitable for local area mapping and is used by digital platforms like Google Maps.

When enlarged into a world map, though, Mercator becomes problematic, Braun said. The map’s mistakes were not likely to be a conspiracy against Africa or the Global South, but its continued use, he added, is inherently political.“Part of the reason Mercator got wide use is because it was widely available for nautical charts, but also because it rings true as a vision of the world to the people who were looking at it, the people whose countries are a little bigger.”Several map projections over time have tried to fill Mercator’s gaps, but all of them compromise on one or more factors. That has made it hard for social justice crusaders looking to support a projection that better represents the Global South.

One cartographer’s claims, though, shook the cartography world in 1973, causing an outpouring of condemnation on the one hand, and on the other, a loyal cult following.German activist Arno Peters declared his Peters Projection as the “only” precise map, and the true alternative to the Mercator model.

Peters, whose parents had been imprisoned by Nazis and who focused on social inequalities as a journalist and academic criticised the Mercator projection as “Euro-centred”.

The fervour with which he and his supporters promoted the projection as a scientific feat and a social justice breakthrough bordered on what some called propaganda. It caused concerned groups like the United States National Council of Churches to take notice and immediately adopt the map.“I’m not afraid of being a refugee. I have lived all my life. I’m happy with what I have lived,” he recalls her telling him. “I’m afraid that my grandkids will be refugees for all their life.”

When he tried to reassure her that they would find a place to start anew, she protested: “No, no, I’m worried, because when my grandkids grow [up] and they ask themselves, ‘Where do I come from?’ they won’t be able to answer that question.”The woman told him how, during the family’s journey to Greece, all but one of their photo albums were lost.

Now, she said, all the memories of their lives in Syria existed only in her and her husband’s minds, unrecorded and unrecoverable for the next generation.Connecting generations