Maps reflect our worldview—literally. Far from purely scientific instruments, they are almost always bound with history, mythology, and religion. A study of ancient maps reveals the shifting attitudes human have had toward themselves and their place in the universe.

10Home Sweet Home

Archaeologists at Spain’s Moli del Salt site discovered what may be a 13,800-year-old map. The schist slab features seven semi-circular etchings, which experts believed to be huts. The shape coincides with modern hunter-gatherer dwellings of the Kalahari Bushmen and Aboriginals of the Australian Outback. The number seven reflects a typical population size. If true, this would be the earliest image of a human habitation ever discovered.

Anthropologists are thrilled by the idea that these huts are a spatial representation of social structure. All of the lines were carved with the same tool at the same time—suggesting one individual captured what was in front of him at one moment.

9Forma Urbis Romae

The world’s oldest and largest unsolved jigsaw puzzle is a 2,200-year-old map of Rome. Carved during the reign of SeptimIus Severus between 203 and 211, the Forma Urbis Romae originally hung of a wall in the Temple of Piece. It contained every building, temple, shop, bath, and staircase in ancient Rome. It is composed of 150 marble tiles built to a scale of 1 to 240. The Forma Urbis Romae was ripped down—most likely to be used to make lime cement.

Today, only 10 percent of the original map remains. The first pieces were rediscovered in 1562. A section recently discovered in Palazzo Maffei Marescotti allowed researchers to connect three chunks of the ancient puzzle. The newfound piece has shed new light on the present-day ghetto, an area which once dominated by the Circus Flaminius.

8Danish Map Stones

Archaeologists unearthed a set of what they believe are 5,000-year-old maps in Denmark. Covered with etchings of squares and lines, these 10 broken stones may be some of the oldest maps ever discovered. Researchers theorize that these symbolic representations of the terrain were used in Stone Age farmers’ fertility rituals. These “map stones” were discovered in an earthen wall enclosure on the Danish island of Bornholm.

Experts have connected these “solar stones” with the Neolithic sun-worshiping religion. These newfound map stones are different. Their squares and lines evoke geographic elements—both man-made and natural. Many believe that these are “stylized maps” rather than navigational charts in the current sense.

7Turin Papyrus

A 3,000-year-old papyrus contains a map to vast mineral wealth in Egypt’s desolate eastern desert. The Turin Papyus contains such detail of Wadi Hammamat valley that it is considered the world’s first geological map. Fragments of the work were discovered and slowly pieced together between 1814 and 1821. Initially believed to be three separate scrolls, the ancient map was found in a tomb in Deir-el-Medina. The most modern reconstruction of the map comes from the 1990s.

Experts date the scroll to the mid-12th century BC, around the reign of Ramsesses IV. Earlier maps have been discovered, but they are crude compared to the Turin Papyrus. The map contains no set scale but does contain text that acts like a modern map legend. It contains bekhen-stone quarries and gold mines The papyrus is so accurate that modern mineral hunters, like Aton Resources Inc. have relied on it to find fortune

6Star Map From A Distant Land

A star map carved into Japan’s Kitora Tomb may be the world’s oldest astronomic chart. 68 constellations with gold leaf stars cloaks the ceiling. Three circles track the movement of celestial bodies—including the Sun. The pole star dominates the center. The detailed map depicts the horizon, equator, and star courses. This is not the first depiction of the night sky. Lascaux Cave contains a 17,300-year-old image of the subject. However, it lacks astronomical observations.

Researchers noted that the sky depicted would have been observed hundreds of years before Kitora Tomb’s construction. However, estimates of the exact date vary between 120 BC and AD 520. Some believe that the knowledge came from Korea, despite depicting China.

5Earliest Map Of New York

The first map of New York was drawn on goatskin and is now worth $10 million. Created by a Genoese cartographer Vesconte Maggiolo in 1531, the map is one of the first to show the eastern coast of America. It depicts New York harbor, which Henry Hudson would not explore beyond until 80 years later. The ancient chart even follows Magellan’s circumnavigation, making it a true world map.

6.7 feet wide and 3 feet tall, the map is made of nearly indestructible goatskin. For most of its existence, the chart remained rolled. As a result, the hues are still vivid. The only discoloration is that silver has become black. The map is filled with fantastic beasts like dragons and unicorns and is often very inaccurate.

4Buache Map

The Buache Map is a mysterious 18th-century chart that depicts Antarctica without ice. Many have used this as proof of ancient knowledge from a civilization that mapped Antarctica before it was cloaked with glaciers. Drawn by French cartographer Phillippe Buache de la Neuville in 1739, the work’s original title was “Map of Southern Lands Contained Between the Tropic of Cancer and the Antarctic Pole.”

Bauche popularized theoretical geography. This technique of deducing geography from explorers’ journals, astronomical observation, and scholarly research was considered defective in many instances. However, one assumption that proved correct was the existence of the Bering Strait. Another observation that was patently wrong was the existence of a sea in the middle of Antarctica. Some insist that the accuracy of the topography of Antarctica is proof of ancient, divine, or even alien mapping technology. Unfortunately, no one knows what the topography of sub-glacial Antarctica looks like.

3Columbus’s Cheat Sheet

Christopher Columbus may have consulted a mysterious map from 1491 before setting sail across the Atlantic Ocean one year later. Made by Florence-based cartographer Henricus Martellus, the map synthesizes Claudius Ptolemy’s observations about the circumference of the world with Marco Polo’s observations and Portuguese Africa explorations. The map does not show the Americas. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas he believed he had reached Japan, which is where Martellus’s map had him located.

Analysis revealed hidden messages on the map. The secret notes contain place names and 60 written passages. The 6-by-4-foot map was photographed under 12 light frequencies—including several beyond human visibility. Latin descriptions reveal facts about far-flung peoples like the “Balor” of Northern Asia who live without wine or wheat and subsist on deer meat. The detail of southern Africa is extremely accurate, suggesting it was derived from native sources rather than Europeans.

2Ancient Babylonian Conservative Map

Archaeologists discovered the oldest undisputed map on the bottom of an unbaked clay tablet from the sixth century BC. Dated to the Neo-Babylonian period, the chart contains an inscription revealing that it is a copy of an even earlier work. The map was uncovered in 1899, at the site of Sippar located 30 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. Much more sophisticated and accurate maps were available in Greece centuries after this chart. The construction reflects an intentionally conservative blend of geography, cosmology, and mythology.

The map depicts the world as a disc surrounded by water. Seven mythical islands lie beyond and connect the earth to the heavens. Cuneiform text explains the mysterious beasts and heroes that inhabit these islands. Seven dots represent seven cities of the ancient world. A “Great Wall” symbolizes winter. The back of the tablet describes mythic beasts that inhabit the heavenly ocean. Experts believe these are constellations.

1Hereford Mappa Mundi

The Hereford Mappa Mundi lay hidden under a church floor for centuries. Dated to 1285, this is the largest medieval map. This grand chart of the world on calfskin is filled with observations of religion, history, and mythology. Because of its Christian origin, Jerusalem sits at the center of the circular map. In an archaic style, the east is oriented toward the top. The map contains a total of 420 cities and settlements, along with large bodies of water and important landmarks.

The map contains a supernatural world filled with bestiaries brimming with mythic monsters and curious cultures. The work was not intended for navigation but rather to serve as a compendium for knowledge. The map contains over 500 drawings of exotic animals and plants, biblical scenes, and classic myths. While the Mappa Mundi was made locally in Hereford, a copy has recently been brought to an international space station.

Abraham Rinquist is the executive director of the Winooski, Vermont, branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the coauthor of Codex Exotica and Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.

We may not realize it, but Google Maps has revolutionized our lives in more ways than one. Most of the apps we use wouldn’t be possible without their tech. We no longer have to rely on bystanders for navigation, and for the first time, we can actually see all the travel destinations we’d never be able to visit in high detail.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Ways Google Does Evil

That being said, there have been times when Google Maps has managed to give us quite the creeps too. People have found some bizarre and mysterious stuff just looking through Google Maps and its Street View feature, ranging from harmlessly creepy to downright horrifying.

10 A Possible Scientology Base

Scientology is a weird mix of science and religion—with quite a bit of aliens thrown in—that we really don’t have the space to get into right now. We often hear bout it when a Hollywood celebrity gets associated with it, which is probably for the best as it’s all too complicated to understand.

What’s weird, however, is that there several sites around the U.S.A. and the world suspected to be Scientology bases. One of them is the Trementina Base in New Mexico, which is visible from Google maps. It’s just two overlapping circles with diamond shapes in their centers, and someone has clearly gone to great lengths to make it.

While most people thought that it was a facility meant to flag aliens making their way to Earth (or something), an ex-Scientologist denied the claim as that would be ridiculous. No, according to him, the facility actually has a sensible purpose, which is to guide other members towards L. Ron Hubbard’s works that have apparently been written on gold sheets and kept in titanium boxes.

9 Bodies in a Dumpster

Catching just a quick glimpse of this Google Maps image might be a bit disturbing. Have you stumbled across a town of murderers or cannibals? The moment seems to have occurred on trash collection day, with garbage cans lining the pavement at the side of the road. Among the bins, boxes, and generic rubbish, however, there are some rather creepy additions to the pile of unwanted goods. Stuffed into the cans or scattered at the side of the road is a collection of what has been described as “dead bodies.”

The user who came across this image described the scene, writing: “Google Street View captures a dumpster full of dead bodies in Chile!” Indeed, around six human-like figures can be seen among the rest of the trash. One is face down in front of the cans, and another stuffed upside down into a can with its legs flailing in the air. Slumped beside the third bin, one of the figures almost looks like it is sitting on the curb. Another body can be seen wedged into a can so that just its head and arms pop out. While the scene may have left users aghast—at first—on closer inspection, it seems these human forms might not be actual people. The color and fabric-like material they appear to be made from suggests they are actually mannequins.

8 Giant Disfigured Bunny

Imagine just browsing through Google Maps and accidentally running into a giant, disfigured pink bunny out of nowhere. Located in Northern Italy, its face is all out of shape and visibly screaming, giving the whole thing an even more unsettling vibe. If you stumble upon it, you may assume that your app is glitching or that someone actually went to great lengths to build a giant creepy bunny for people looking from above. Fortunately, it’s the latter, and it doesn’t involve the occult.

In reality, the bunny is a part of an art installation by a Viennese collective and is meant to serve as a hangout spot for visitors. One of the members says that it’s supposed to be a huge thing that makes you feel small, which it probably does if you see it up close. From afar, though, it has that look of an abandoned, mangled bunny that so many horror movies begin with.

7 Nogoro, Japan

If you’re ever exploring the Japanese countryside on Maps, the chances are that you’ll stumble upon the sparsely-populated village of Nogoro. From a distance, it may look like it’s full of people casually chilling around all over town. Zoom in a bit, and you’ll realize they’re actually lifeless dolls. We hope you didn’t do this when you were all alone at night.

The village is actually on its way to being completely abandoned, as its residents keep leaving it for better opportunities in the cities. The dolls are made by a woman named Ayano Tsukimi as a tribute to its departed, which is inexplicably the only way she could come up with to do that. We don’t know about you, but knowing that all of those dolls represent someone who is now dead does raise the creepy factor of the whole thing for us.

6 Underwater Pyramids

While we’re strictly against conspiracy theories (unless they’re creepy or awesome), mysterious locations found on Google Maps have done their part in giving credence to many of them. One of them is the underwater pyramid found on Google Maps in the Bahamas.

Many tabloids and conspiracy-lovers hailed the discovery as proof of aliens, Atlantis, and a wide variety of other things that probably aren’t real. It was found by a conspiracy theorist, too, though that doesn’t mean that the structure doesn’t actually exist. Some experts believe that it may have been something built by an ancient civilization, though they also admit that there’s no way to disprove that it’s not a secret alien base.

5 Pigeon People

If you explore the streets of West Tokyo on Maps, you may run into a row of people just standing and looking at you. They may come across as people just staring at the Google’s Street View crew out of curiosity, except all of them have their pigeon masks on. Aside from the legitimate question of “where did they even get so many pigeon masks to begin with”—it’s all rather inexplicable and unsettling.

As it turns out, the pigeon people were locals who knew about the Google crew and wanted to appear in the final photo of the street. It’s all rather harmless and fun, provided you know the explanation.

4 Abandoned Gas Masks

Exploring Pripyat in Ukraine—the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history—is a horrifying experience in general. It is now a ghost town with abandoned buildings that won’t be inhabited again for a long, long time to come. And it has that dilapidated look we here at thoroughly love.

However, the creepiest sight in the whole town has to be the room full of abandoned masks, which is saying a lot in a town full of creepy sights. We don’t know if it’s so disturbing because there are so many of them or that they’re child-sized and located inside an abandoned school.

3 El Bronx , Colombia

El Bronx in Bogota, Colombia, had managed to earn the reputation of one of the most dangerous places in the city before it was demolished. One of the most crime-riddled regions in the country, it certainly didn’t make for a nice walk at night, or any time of the day, really.

While the area doesn’t exist anymore, Google’s Street View Crew managed to capture it at the peak of its glory. Unfortunately, what may look like normal streets of a slum are made multiple times more horrifying if you knew that the neighborhood was known for child prostitution and murder. Some of those buildings also housed murder victims at times, who were then fed to starving dogs as a message to rival gangs.

2Ariel Castro’s Blurred-Out House

When it comes to highly-publicized, gruesome acts of crime, very few cases manage to grip national conscience like that of Ariel Castro. He kidnapped three women and kept them hostage for over nine years and was only arrested when one of them escaped with her six-year-old child (whom she conceived and gave birth to while in captivity). Castro was charged with multiple counts of rape, aggravated murder, kidnapping, and attempted murder, among others.

So, how is it related to map locations? The house Castro kept the women in could be seen on Google Street View. Except now, it’s completely blurred out. We’d say that it’d have been equally creepy if the house was just there, but seeing it blurred out because of the seriousness of the crime somehow makes it even more disturbing.

1 Murder Victim

For those who’ve always wondered if Google Maps has ever accidentally recorded a serious crime, we’re here to tell you that—yes, it has. The case in question was of a 14-year-old boy in Richmond, California, whose dead body showed up on Google Maps. It was seen with police cars and a bunch of detectives standing around, suggesting that it was taken after the body was found.

Understandably, the images brought back some emotions for the victim’s father, who immediately requested Google to remove the image. It was gone from their maps within days, though it does make us wonder if Google Maps still has accidental images of other serious crimes around the world.

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

During much of history, maps were designed as much for beauty and display as for accuracy. When maps were hand-drawn, they were difficult and expensive to produce, and ones designed for personal libraries were appropriately lavish to reflect their status as luxury items. Even in modern times, some map makers design their works to make a point. Others designed them for beauty, and sometimes a map designed for entirely practical purposes is also beautiful.

10Planisphaerium Arateum Sive Compages Orbium Mundanorum Ex Hypothesi Aratea In Plano Expressa

The planisphere of Aratus, or the composition of the heavenly orbits following the hypothesis of Aratus expressed in a planar view, was designed by Andreas Cellarius and published in 1660 as part of his Harmonia Macrocosmica (harmony of the macrocosm). It shows a model of the universe according to the Greek astronomer and poet Aratus. It shows the Earth at the center of the universe, with the Sun, Moon, and other planets orbiting around it, and the signs of the zodiac orbiting around those.

The orbits are particularly graceful, and all the details are clear and precise. Every map in the Harmonia is stunningly beautiful, but this one combines some of the virtues of each.

9The Cedid Atlas Tercumesi

Selim III, then Sultan of the Ottoman empire, engaged in many reforms and modernizations during his reign, and this 1803 atlas was the first known complete printed atlas in the Muslim world to use European-style cartography. Only 50 copies were printed, and many of these were burned in a warehouse fire during a Janissary uprising of those opposed to Selim’s reforms, so it is also one of the rarest printed atlases.

The lettering is remarkably well done, even by the high standards of the day. Each page was mounted on cloth, rather than paper, to make it more durable.

8This Fantasy Map Of Sarkamand

This map of a mighty capital in the desert, seat of the Padisha, was created in Photoshop and Illustrator by Robert Altbauer. The lettering style suggests Arabic, and the name references the extraordinarily beautiful city Samarkand, located in today’s Uzbekistan.

The design of overlapping circles almost looks like photographs of cellular structures. Altbauer has designed maps for games, television, and fantasy novels.

7An Ancient Mappe Of Fairyland

This map, created in 1918, depicts an island that shows the locations of dozens of myths, fairy tales, and folklore. The sources are mostly British, but there are also inspirations from Greek and German myths. You can see Oberon’s kingdom from Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Arthur’s tomb, a mountain where rocs build their nests, Red Riding hood’s cottage, Tom Thumb, Monsalvat (the land where the Holy Grail is guarded by the Grail Knights), and Ulysses’s ship.

Sleigh was inspired by many of the artists of the Arts and Crafts movement, especially William Morris, and this shows in not just the subject matter but the delicacy of the colors. 1918 marked the end of World War I, so it’s quite possible that for Sleigh and those who admired the map, this fantasy land in which even the more dangerous creatures, such as dragons, looked peaceful was a welcome escape.

6Duke’s Plan Of New York

1664 was the year the English captured New York from the Dutch. This map shows several of the original spellings from that time, including Hudson’s River, Longe Isleland, and Mannados. The map was presented to James, the Duke of York, with the expectation that he would name the city after himself.

The design, copied from an earlier Dutch map, blends ornate elements, such as the decorative border and legend, with plenty of empty space depicting land and much of the water. The British ships, added to reinforce that the city became British territory, are drawn so delicately that they emphasize the empty space.

5Cheonhado

This map, created in Korea around 1800, is known as a Cheonhado. The term means “complete map of all under Heaven” and shows the mystical Mount Meru in the center. In Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu beliefs, Mount Meru is not just the physical but the spiritual center of the universe.

Other countries, with little regard for their relative sizes or geographical location, orbit China and Mount Meru.

4Yongying County In China

This map was created in China sometime between 1734 and 1779 and shows the river systems of Yongying County in China. Unlike most Western maps, the south is at the top and the north at the bottom.

It was painted on silk, and the labels were pasted on. The gentle curves and muted colors give the map a rather tranquil appearance.

3Leo Belgicus

In 1583, Michael Aitzinger drew a map that depicted the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium in the shape of a lion, inspired by the lions that were so common in the region’s heraldry. He called it the Leo Belgicus, and it started a trend for mapmakers. The most famous version is by Claes Janszoon Visscher, from 1611.

2Geological Investigation Of The Alluvial Valley Of The Lower Mississippi River

In 1944, Harold Norman Fisk, a geology professor, published this as part of a report for the Army Corps of Engineers. These maps of the changes of the Mississippi River over time look a bit like the undulations of muscle tissue, a bit like ribbon candy, and a bit like abstract art.

The research behind these maps is just as impressive as the maps themselves. Fisk and his team used approximately 16,000 soil samples from various locations around the river and compared them to aerial photographs to establish the old flow patterns.

1Book Of Navigation

The Ottoman admiral Piri Reis designed many gorgeous maps, including the collection in his Book of Navigation, published in 1521. The maps show the delicate precision of Ottoman illuminated manuscripts, and the coloring of the land masses (which were far less important to Reis) has an almost playful note.

His first world map, published in 1513, includes both North and South America. Some people believe the section that shows the southern part of South America and the coast of Antarctica are so accurate that it proves humans explored Antarctica long before the historical record indicates. However, the map has enough mistakes (including an annotation that says the region is warm) to make it clear that the points that are accurate are far more likely due to good informed guesses based on Reis’s topography skills.

+A Humorous Diplomatic Atlas Of Europe And Asia

In March, 1904, at the beginning of the Russian-Japanese war, student Kisabur Ohara, published this atlas that showed Russia as an octopus trying to strangle all of Asia and much of Europe. Finland, Poland, Crimea, and the Balkans are already dead and represented by skulls, while Turkey, Persia, and Tibet are caught firmly. Each living country is depicted as a person in the country’s typical costume. One of the octopus’s arms is reaching toward Korea and Port Arthur, ready to throttle those, as well.

Previous maps had shown Russia as an octopus reaching greedily across Asia, but this is the first known one to show Europe at risk as well. Even without the text, the map does a remarkable job of portraying Russia as a bestial menace and other countries at risk.

Ann is a researcher, writer, and currently a job hunter. Learn more or see more of her writing.

Regardless of where you are in the world, chances are that your mental image of the world is largely the same as everyone else’s (unless your high school geography curriculum was wildly different from others’). Of course, we know much more about our immediate surroundings – like our own country, its neighboring states etc. – than other places, though our overall perception of the world is similar to each other’s.

See Also: 10 Ways You’re Picturing The World Incorrectly

As it turns out, there are many inaccuracies in that perception we simply never bother to correct, mostly because they don’t directly affect us. Inaccuracies like:

8Brazil Is Bigger Than The Entire Contiguous USA

Brazil may come across as a relatively big country by global standards, though we don’t really consider it to be anywhere near as big as the absolute behemoth that is the USA. Anyone who has driven from one American coast to the other knows that it has to be one of the biggest countries in the world (and it is!). Brazil, on the other hand, looks no bigger than any of its neighbors, let alone the USA. Just look at the map.

In reality, though, Brazil’s size isn’t just comparable to the USA, it’s also the fifth largest country in the world. If we compare it to the American mainland without its offshore territories, Brazil is actually 11% bigger. We can’t really do an east-west comparison like USA, as Brazil’s road network is far from being as extensive. Additionally, a huge chunk of the country is occupied by the Amazon, making the terrain largely inaccessible by road.^[1]

7South America Is Almost Entirely East Of North America

While this one may sound more America-centric than we intend, it’s not just a misconception held by Americans. Most of us – in our heads at least – place the continent of North America at a similar longitudinal position as South America. It makes sense, too, as SA looks to be almost directly below NA on most maps we see, even if it really isn’t.

The problem is the popular map we all visualize whenever we think of the world map. It’s called the Mercator’s Projection, and is only one of the many projections we have. It’s the most widely accepted, too, as almost every single country uses it for official purposes.

The problem is that the Mercator Projection isn’t just inaccurate, it also propagates outright misinformation as fact (Greenland isn’t almost as big as Africa by a HUGE margin). It’s a very Eurocentric projection of the Earth, as it massively exaggerates the size of countries in the northern hemisphere over its southern counterparts. In reality, continents in the global south are much bigger than we think they are.

That’s also the reason South America comes across to be much more compact and towards the east than it is. Apart from being much bigger than we think it is, almost the entirety of it lies east of USA – and in turn North America. Yet, maps around the world still place it more or less directly below for some reason.^[2]

6 The Third Route Around The World

If you’re, say, in the USA and want to fly to some country on the other side of the world, chances are you’d take one of two routes. Depending on which part of the USA you’re in, it could either be across the Atlantic, or the other side via the Pacific. The latter is almost always a longer option, as the Pacific Ocean is ludicrously huge (we’ll get to that one in a bit).

If we were to ask you if there’s another, faster way to travel, the definite answer would be ‘no’. After all, if you look at the map, those two seem to be the only options, as any other possible route couldn’t possibly be shorter than these two. Right?

You see, the reason we think that is because the map is in 2D, as our brains aren’t exactly designed to intuitively convert things from 3D to a plane. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to experience it, you’d know that there’s another way around the world that may even be – depending on where you’re going—shorter than the two we know of; the one over the Arctic.

Think of the Earth as a sphere instead of a piece of paper folded in a cylinder, which is how we really perceive it. Many flights – like Cathay Pacific’s non-stop route from New York to Hong Kong – go over the Arctic, as it ends up being two hours faster than other routes. It’s also one of the most scenic routes we know of, as it gives us a rare glimpse into what the vast, unexplored wilderness of the Arctic looks like.^[3]

5 Everything About Africa

In popular imagination, the Equator is seen as a neat divider between the southern and northern continents. While that’s largely true for South America and Australia – with some irregularities here and there—it couldn’t be further from the truth in the case of Africa.

If you look at the map, you’d see that most of Africa isn’t in the southern hemisphere at all, as the equator almost perfectly divides it into two parts. The northern part is still slightly bigger, though, because of the bulge on the western side of the continent.

That’s hardly the only way we’re picturing Africa wrong, though, as we tend to massively underestimate its size as well. We don’t know if it’s because of the Mercator Projection or the fact that Africa simply doesn’t figure into the regular global discourse. In reality, though, Africa is humungous. It’s bigger than China, India, the contiguous U.S. and almost all of Europe…combined. For some reason, though we still imagine it to be somewhere around the same size as the USA (or Greenland, if the maps are to be believed).^[4]

4 Only A Small Part Of Iran Is A Dry, Arid Desert

Misconceptions about the Middle East could fill up a whole list. We still perceive the vast region—with countless ethnicities, types of cuisines and ways of living—as a monolithic entity with more or less the same culture throughout. While most of us could be forgiven for that – as going there and seeing how things are for ourselves isn’t really the best course of action right now – it’s misconceptions around countries that we’ve been consistently in contact with that bother us.

Take Iran, which is still – for some reason – seen as a desert nation in popular imagination. Most of us imagine unending views of sand dunes and camel safaris to distant oases whenever we think of the country, as that’s how it’s still portrayed in the popular western media.

We’re not saying that Iran doesn’t have a desert – it does, and two of them, too – though they aren’t anywhere near as big as we think. Only about 22% of Iran could be classified as a desert. To put that in perspective, the desert makes up around 28% of China, though no one has ever referred to China as a desert nation.

The rest of Iran is actually made up of a diverse array of terrain types, like rangelands, wetlands, glaciers and tropical beaches, among others. Mountain peaks perpetually covered by snow – things we don’t expect to exist anywhere near Iran, or the Middle East—form the backdrop of daily life in Tehran, which may as well be one of the most scenic cities in the world.^[5]

3 Europe Is A Lot Closer To The Arctic Than USA

Ask anyone if New York is closer to the Arctic than London, and the answer would probably be a definite yes. It stands to reason that it is, too, as its average temperature in the winters is around 10C lower than London, which must be because of its proximity to the Arctic. It’d be absolutely ridiculous to think that its counterpart in Europe would be, say, a country so much further south that a part of it lies in Asia, like Azerbaijan.

It’s not that ridiculous, though, once you actually see the map. New York is on almost the same latitude as Azerbaijan, which – as you’d have noticed – is quite far from London. Miami’s European (or more accurately, African) counterpart is somewhere in Egypt. If you horizontally fold the map, you’d find that America’s northernmost tip falls somewhere near the southernmost point in Europe.

The misconception likely arises from the abovementioned Mercator map, which distorts the size of some parts of the world to make them look bigger than the others, resulting in irregularities in the overall positions of the places.^[6]

2 We Just Don’t Understand How Big The Pacific Ocean Is

Back when cartographers were first mapping the world, a lot of them took liberties in their calculations depending on various thing, like cultural prejudices, lack of better equipment, or simply not being the best at their job. Even if most of those inaccuracies have been cleared up, we still exaggerate the size of Earth’s landmass compared to its oceans.

This discrepancy is the most acute in the case of the Pacific Ocean, which is perhaps the least explored ocean in the world. Even if we know it’s the biggest ocean on paper, we’re unable to grasp just how big that translates to in practice. Consider this; the Pacific Ocean covers more than a whooping one third of the Earth’s surface. Yup, around 33% of the 70% of the Earth covered by water (that’s all water, including freshwater) is just the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific’s size isn’t just for show, as it creates real problems for exploration and mapping for us. It’s so huge that we still find things we never knew existed there (they recently found a 3 million old volcano near Minamitorishima Island, Japan). It’s also the deepest ocean, and its deepest point has only been visited – not even explored – four times. For perspective, we’ve been to space over five hundred times.^[7]

1 Australia Is Quite Empty

Australia is like that cool brother who moved out of the house on his own for a job pretty early on and we don’t hear from him much. It’s one of the five majority English-speaking countries (not including autonomous overseas colonies), and a relatively prosperous nation by all measures.

What we don’t realize, though, is that it has managed to do all of that by being so sparsely populated that it could be compared to some of the emptiest and most inhospitable regions around the world, like Mongolia and Namibia. Despite being as developed and huge as the contiguous USA (it’s the sixth largest country) Australia only has a population density of 5 people per square mile. That’s because the entire population of Australia actually lives on the coasts, as most of the inner part of the country is too inhospitable for human life. Even on the coasts, the population is concentrated around the biggest urban centers on the eastern side.

The government acknowledges that the low population density is a problem, as there are still many regions of the country that could be turned into thriving towns and cities with more focused development efforts.^[8]

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