(breath whooshing)
- This is a globe.
And this is the only way to have a true representation
of the size and locations of the countries of the world.
Any map or 2D representation is gonna be off in some way,
whether it's the size or the location
or something else that's really strange.
Now, the Mercator projection
is one of the most famous maps out there.
And what it does it it distorts the map in size
the further away from the equator you get.
That leads us to things like mega Greenland
and infinity Antarctica.
And Europe's a place that's unusual.
Yes, it's exaggerated on maps like this,
but it's also become a weird point of reference
and something that I think should change.
(bright electronic music)
And I grew up down here
in a small town at the bottom of Australia,
and I had to move to university.
And the closest major university,
well, as according to Google Maps, 778 kilometers away.
So about an eight-hour drive or 148-hour walk.
And this might seem far, 778 Ks as the crow flies
is about the same distance as London to Denmark
or Rome to Munich or Budapest to Greece.
Australia can feel like a big place.
And most Australians will have heard a story
about someone coming from overseas
and arriving in a place like Sidney
and then asking how much a taxi would be to get Perth,
a journey that would takes days and days and days and days
from people who just don't understand
the size of the country.
So I guess to cash in on this phenomenon,
we've started to sell postcards like this and this
that show the size of the country compared to Europe.
This isn't a new phenomenon.
Maps like this go back to the 1930s.
I actually remember planning my first trip to Europe,
looking at maps and thinking,
"Vienna is just so close to Berlin,
"which is so close to Paris, which is so close to London,"
and just thinking the whole place felt small.
And Australia isn't the only country
to get this compared to Europe treatment.
Brazil's had them for decades, old maps like this
just showing how many European countries you can jam in.
In 2019, this tweet from a former New Zealand prime minister
got a lot of attention showing
that small old New Zealand could reach all the way
from Copenhagen down the south of France.
But who knows, maybe the New Zealanders
were just excited that their country
was being shown on a map for a change.
- New Zealand is disappearing off world maps.
(tense orchestral music)
Disappearing?
It's all over the internet.
What?
- The excellent website Brilliant Maps put out an article
called "Chile Is a Ridiculously Long Country."
And how did they show that?
Well, you guessed it, overlaid across Europe.
At that was their choice.
There's lots of ways you could show
that Chile is a long country,
by comparing it, for example,
to 1 million back-to-back Volkswagen Beetles.
Or covering an election campaign
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the BBC put out this map to show the size of the country.
And that's just a few examples.
There's heaps more out there.
In fact, it's become so common
that it's actually become a meme.
And something which I kinda love.
- Hello, people.
Welcome to "What Fits into Russia."
Yesterday, the last country we put in place was Angola.
And look! (audience laughs)
Ha!
With these other countries,
not even half filling Mother Russia
because of its enormous size.
- So what's happening here?
Well, part of it is about communication.
If you're European, it probably
makes more sense to think of something
from the distance from Portugal to Denmark
than it is to think about 1 million VWs lined up in a row.
And this kinda gets to a core question.
How big is Europe?
And this is where things get a little bit complicated.
Europe is a continent, and continents,
as far as geographic phenomena go,
is a little bit arbitrary.
It's defined as "a large, discrete continuous mass of land
"ideally separated by an expanse of water."
Now, this isn't the case with Europe
where the boundary isn't necessarily clear.
But not everyone considers Europe a continent at all.
Yes, it makes the cut in the seven-continent model,
but a lot of people, particularly in Russia and Japan,
consider a six-continent model
where Europe is part of broader Eurasia.
If we go with the standard definition,
then Europe runs to the Ural Mountains
and has a total area of around 10 million square kilometers.
This definition does mean that some countries
which you may not think of as European
are part of that area, including Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and notably
that 40% of the European land mass is actually in Russia.
So if you see a map of Europe
that doesn't include a significant chunk of Russia,
then it's even smaller again.
And there's a great website called True Size Of
where you can drag around different countries
to see how big they are if they were on different locations
on the Mercator projection.
And what most people do is pick up countries
and take them over Europe to see how big they compare.
So here's my theory.
What happens if rather than being shocked
that all of these countries are so big,
what if Europe is just small?
And this has come about because historically
the world's had a very Europe-centric approach,
from timezones to directions and yes, the size of countries.
So my thought is why don't we turn this on the head,
have the same feeling that I had
when I was researching my trip to Europe,
to think that, "Europe, it's diverse, it's beautiful,
"it's interesting, but yes, it's small."
Thanks for watching.
I'm Julian O'Shea.
Feel free to comment about how big your country is
in units of Liechtensteins or Spains.
And if you see people on the internet
just blow away by how big your country is,
feel free to send this video their way.
Take care.