World Maps

World Maps That Will Change Your Perspective on Where You Live.

Maps are an essential part of any traveler’s toolkit. They provide a way to visualize the world around you, whether it be the neighborhood you live in or a country you want to visit one day.

Our world is very big. If you think about it, you have never even heard of many cities and countries. It is hard to imagine how our world looks from space, let alone get an accurate picture of how different cities would fit into the global map if they were located next to each other.

Thanks to cartographer and designers who created maps, we can now see what the world would look like if all cities were placed on a single map.

Here are some maps that will change your perspective on where you live.

Maps Which Show Our Perspective about the World |Types Of Maps

In the past, maps were mainly used for navigation and trade. However, as we’ve learned more about our planet, universe, and even other planets in our galaxy, how we perceive the world has changed drastically. These maps show how much things had changed since the 1500s when people started making them.

Many types of maps show different perspectives on where you live or where you’re visiting:

World Political Maps

Such maps show which country controls what piece of land by using colors and shapes to indicate which areas belong to each nation.

The World Political Map is a valuable tool that shows the various political regions of the world. It consists of different colors, shapes, and lengths to depict the countries in this region. The colors are dark blue for the ocean, light blue for cold water, brown for landmasses, green for temperate grasslands and forests, yellowish brown for tropical savannas and shrub lands, and red for deserts.

The USA Political Map shows all 50 states in the United States of America with their geographical location on a map. The different states are depicted using their respective state flag and its name printed beneath them on top of their corresponding geographical location on a map.

World Relief Maps

Such maps use shading techniques, so you can see how high or low each part is relative to sea level at any given location—great for understanding mountain ranges or valleys in hilly terrain like Colorado!

Geologic Maps

They give insight into subsurface features like faults (cracks), rock layers, or minerals below ground level.

World Historical Maps

The world is a prominent place. To understand it, you must know as much about its history as possible. It is where maps come in.

Mapping has been around for centuries and only continues to grow in popularity today. People are always looking for new ways to make sense of the world around them, whether through scientific studies or art projects like this one! Check our category of historical maps.

Thematic Maps of the World

Thematic maps are those that show data for a particular theme. They can be used to show relationships between data or the location of something.

A thematic map is better than a choropleth map when the audience does not need to know the exact values or percentages associated with the data on the map but rather just needs an idea of where certain areas are located relative to one another.

World Physical Map

The world’s physical map shows the geographic features of our planet. Landmasses, separated by water, are the most prominent feature on this printable world map. A physical map is a useful tool for learning about the physical geography and weather conditions of a particular area and its natural resources.

The world’s oceans can be seen clearly on this map, with large bodies of water separating all continents except Antarctica from each other. The Atlantic Ocean separates Africa from North America, South America from Europe; Asia from Australia; and Australia from New Zealand.

While you may know that there are four major oceans in total (the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and the Arctic), you may not realize that there are also many smaller seas between these major bodies of water—for example, the Mediterranean Sea between Europe/Africa/Asia and the Black Sea between Europe/Asia.

World Population Density Map

Population density is measured in people per square kilometer. The map above shows the world’s most densely populated areas, with South Korea leading the pack at 649 people per square kilometer.

The least densely populated countries are spread across Africa and Oceania; however, it’s worth noting that these low-density areas also contain some of our planet’s largest countries (particularly Russia), which means they have an overall higher total population compared to their land size.

The most densely populated areas tend to be clustered around major cities or hubs of industrial activity—which makes sense because more people mean more housing needs and other infrastructures like schools and hospitals. This is true even in places where urbanization isn’t as widespread as you might think: take Australia, for example—it may not have any truly dense cities like New York City or Tokyo, but it still has one of the highest population densities on earth thanks largely due to its large townships around its capital city (Canberra).

World Railways Map

The World Railways Map shows the world’s railway infrastructure. It highlights where railways are and how they connect within each country. The map also shows railways currently under construction, proposed and abandoned.

This map can be used for many things, such as planning a trip or finding out about your favorite railway station in another country!

World Rivers Map

This world rivers map is an excellent tool for learning about the global water system.

The World Rivers Map is an interactive platform that allows you to explore the world’s river basins and how they interact with each other and their environment.

This map shows all of the major drainage basins around the globe. It also includes information about individual rivers within those systems, such as their length and location.

History of the World Maps

First World Map

The first world map was drawn by Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It was designed to help with navigation, particularly for sailors who wanted to know where they were going and how far they had to travel.

Because sailing ships couldn’t sail into the wind, it would take them much longer to reach their destination if they kept trying to sail directly north or south against the wind (that’s why you hear the expression so often). So instead of using a compass, which points north regardless of where you are standing on Earth and shows how many degrees above or below the equator you are standing at that moment; sailors used maps like this one that showed them how far off course they would be if they tried sailing directly north or south.

The first world map was drawn from the perspective of someone looking down on Earth from space—or at least what people thought they knew about space back then—and it had a lot more detail than any previous maps did because Mercator used better measurement techniques than his predecessors did. It is known as the Mercator projection.

When looking at a map of the world, you might think that you are seeing the world as it is. After all, maps show us our home and where we live on Earth. But in reality, they are just representations of the world — a way to display information about places and locations on Earth.

What Is the Purpose of Mercator projection?

It presented a distorted view of the Earth’s surface, being off-centered and having too many tops and left sides.

Briefly, the Mercator map is not centered on the equator, it is not centered on the prime meridian (which runs through Greenwich), and it is not centered on either pole. It’s also off-centered, making Greenland appear about three times larger than Australia.

The distortion becomes even more pronounced when you look at maps of smaller regions: for example, India appears to be about half as wide as Africa in reality but takes up almost three-quarters of its space on this map!

Simplify Navigation

The Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator created the Mercator projection in the 16th century. It was designed to be used on a flat surface, like a map made of paper or parchment. It meant that it had to be distorted to fit properly onto a curved surface like the Earth’s sphere.

Second World Map

Ortelius constructed the second world map, which follows a different convention, in 1595. It uses an equal area projection and is referred to as the “Ortelius-Mercator” projection.

It is the standard projection used worldwide, referring to its use on most maps you see today. It has the advantage of preserving relative distances between places but sacrifices shapes and areas.

“Ortelius-Mercator” projection

The Ortelius-Mercator map projection is a modified version of the Mercator projection. It retains all of the advantages of its predecessor, such as equal area and conformity, but it also corrects some problems that existed with the original.

• It is cylindrical rather than conical (as with the Mercator), so you can see more area along your horizon line.* It has less distortion near the poles.* It is self-intersecting at 180 degrees (the equator). Unlike the Mercator, which was self-intersecting everywhere except at 90 degrees latitude.* Colors on this map appear brighter and more distinct than those on other projections.

Standardized Projection 

The Gall-Peters projection is a modified cylindrical projection. It uses a cylinder to project the world onto a flat surface. It was created by Arno Peters in 1974 and conforms to the standardized projection used worldwide today.

The scale of this map can be adjusted so that it perfectly represents the relative size of countries and continents. This particular map uses a standard scale which makes it easy for you to compare different landmass areas on Earth—like Africa, Australia, Europe, etc.—and see how they compare in size!

The Gall-Peters projection is also known as “A New Mappemonde” since it was designed with modern geographic knowledge. Its main objective was ensuring that countries were equal sized and that they appeared accurate within their borders according to modern geographical knowledge – i.e., no more chopping off big chunks from Russia because “that’s how we’ve always seen them.”

Conclusion

We have a lot to learn from the history of cartography and its evolution over time. These maps show how our perspective about the world has changed over centuries and that we still have a long way to go before we can agree on what “the world” really looks like.