Another Way to See the World
Five thousand years of human history have brought us to the threshold of a new age. It is an age typified by science and technology, by the end of colonial domination, by a growing awareness of the interdependence of all nations and all peoples.
Such a moment in history demands that we look critically at our understanding of the world. This understanding is based, to a significant degree, on the work of mapmakers of the age when Europe dominated and exploited the world.
Surprisingly, maps still reflect that bygone era (e.g. the Mercator projection, which has two-thirds of the map representing the Northern hemisphere, one-third the Southern hemisphere).
First introduced by German historian Arno Peters in 1974, this new map provides a helpful corrective to the distortions of traditional maps… No less than our worldview is at stake…
In this complex and interdependent world in which nations now live, the peoples of the world deserve the most accurate possible portrayal of their world. The Peters Map is that map for our day.
Since 2005, Nicola has been sharing the Peters projection map – first through her bookshop, where she sold hundreds of copies, and later through her website. She encouraged parents, teachers and readers to move away from the traditional Mercator map and to share the Peters projection with their children, students, colleagues and friends.
For Nicola, this was about much more than choosing a different map. She strongly believed that the way we see our world influences the way we live in it.
In September 2026, Nicola was over the moon to hear that the UN had finally adopted a resolution addressing the distortions of the Mercator projection and promoting the Equal Earth projection instead. Created in 2018, Equal Earth offers a visually appealing alternative to the Peters projection while maintaining accurate relative sizes of the world’s continents.
Nicola feels that the time has now come for this new projection. She hopes – and believes – that its adoption around the world will happen quickly, helping more people to see our world in a way that better reflects its true proportions.
