A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of the Earth. While this is true of any map, these distortions reach extremes in a world map. Many techniques have been developed to present world maps that address diverse technical and aesthetic goals. Charting a world map requires global knowledge of the Earth, its oceans, and its continents. From prehistory through the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, creating an accurate world map would have been impossible because less than half of Earth's coastlines and only a small fraction of its continental interiors were known to any culture. With exploration that began during the European

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

, knowledge of the Earth's surface accumulated rapidly, such that most of the world's coastlines had been mapped, at least roughly, by the mid-1700s and the continental interiors by the twentieth century. Maps of the world generally focus either on political features or on physical features. Political maps emphasize territorial boundaries and human settlement. Physical maps show geographical features such as mountains, soil type, or

land use Land use is an umbrella term to describe what happens on a parcel of land. It concerns the benefits derived from using the land, and also the land management actions that humans carry out there. The following categories are used for land use: fo ...

Geological map A geological map or geologic map is a special-purpose map made to show various geological features. Rock (geology), Rock units or stratum, geologic strata are shown by color or symbols. Bed (geology), Bedding planes and structural features such ...

s show not only the surface, but characteristics of the underlying rock, fault lines, and subsurface structures.

Choropleth map A choropleth map () is a type of statistical thematic map that uses pseudocolor, meaning color corresponding with an aggregate summary of a geographic characteristic within spatial enumeration units, such as population density or per-capita inco ...

s use color hue and intensity to contrast differences between regions, such as demographic or economic statistics.

Map projections

All world maps are based on one of several map projections, or methods of representing a

globe A globe is a spherical Earth, spherical Model#Physical model, model of Earth, of some other astronomical object, celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface ...

on a plane. All projections distort geographic features, distances, and directions in some way. The various map projections that have been developed provide different ways of balancing accuracy and the unavoidable distortion inherent in making world maps. Perhaps the best-known projection is the Mercator Projection, originally designed as a

nautical chart A nautical chart or hydrographic chart is a graphic representation of a sea region or water body and adjacent coasts or river bank, banks. Depending on the scale (map), scale of the chart, it may show depths of water (bathymetry) and heights of ...

. File:Mercator projection SW.jpg, Mercator projection
(showing between 82°S and 82°N) File:Mollweide projection SW.jpg, Mollweide projection Image:Cahill Butterfly Map.jpg, B.J.S. Cahill Butterfly Map, 1909, from 1919 pamphlet File:Azimuthal equidistant projection SW.jpg, Polar azimuthal equidistant projection Image:Blank-map-world-south-up.png, A south-up map Image:BlankMap-World-162E.svg,

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

-centric map
(more commonly used in

East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

n and

Oceania Oceania ( , ) is a region, geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its co ...

countries) File:Gall–Peters projection SW.jpg,

Gall–Peters projection The Gall–Peters projection is a rectangular, Equal-area projection, equal-area map projection. Like all equal-area projections, it distorts most shapes. It is a cylindrical equal-area projection with latitudes 45° north and south as the regions ...

, an equal-area map projection File:Robinson projection SW.jpg, Robinson projection, formerly used by

National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, natural sc ...

Thematic maps

thematic map A thematic map is a type of map that portrays the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter (theme) in a geographic area. This usually involves the use of map symbols to Geovisualization, visualize selected properties of geographic fe ...

shows geographical information about one or a few focused subjects. These maps "can portray physical, social, political, cultural, economic, sociological, agricultural, or any other aspects of a city, state, region, nation, or continent". Image:Köppen-vereinfacht.svg, Clickable world map
(with climate classification) Image:World Map (political).svg, A simple political map of the world File:Physical World Map.svg, A simple physical map of the world Image:World map.png, Topographical map of the world File:GNI per capita growth 2024 World.svg, Countries by GNI per capita growth File:2016 UN Human Development Report.svg, United Nations

Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, Education Index, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income i ...

by country as of 2016 File:Life Expectancy 2008 Estimates CIA World Factbook.png, World map showing

life expectancy Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is ''life expectancy at birth'' (LEB, or in demographic notation ''e''0, where '' ...

File:Population density map of the world.svg, Population density
(people per km²) by country Image:Volcano Map.png, Volcano map File:Laurasia-Gondwana.svg, World map showing the continents circa 200 million years ago ( Triassic period) File:BlackMarble20161km.jpg, Satellite image of Earth at night

Historical maps

Early world maps cover depictions of the

world The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

from the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

to the

Age of Discovery The Age of Discovery (), also known as the Age of Exploration, was part of the early modern period and overlapped with the Age of Sail. It was a period from approximately the 15th to the 17th century, during which Seamanship, seafarers fro ...

and the emergence of modern

geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

during the

early modern period The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...

. Old maps provide information about places that were known in past times, as well as the philosophical and cultural basis of the map, which were often much different from modern cartography. Maps are one means by which scientists distribute their ideas and pass them on to

future generations Future generations are Cohort (statistics), cohorts of hypothetical people not yet born. Future generations are contrasted with current and past generations and evoked in order to encourage thinking about intergenerational equity. The Moral agenc ...

. File:Anaximander world map (mul).svg, Hypothetical reconstruction of the world map of

Anaximander Anaximander ( ; ''Anaximandros''; ) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. ...

(610–546 BC) File:Sphendoné,_hoc_est,_Funda_Posidonii.jpg, World map according to Posidonius (150–130 BC),
drawn in 1628 File:Radkarte MKL1888.png, Ideal reconstruction of medieval T-and-O maps (from ''Meyers Konversationslexikon'', 1895)
(Asia shown on the right) File:TabulaRogeriana.jpg, world map by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154
north is to the bottom File:Cantino planisphere (1502).jpg, '' Cantino planisphere'': Portuguese world map from 1502 File:Leonardo da Vinci’s Mappamundi.jpg, World map in Octant projection (1514), from Leonardo da Vinci's Windsor papers File:Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, by Abraham Ortelius, World, 1572.jpg, The world,

Abraham Ortelius Abraham Ortelius (; also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 152728 June 1598) was a cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer from Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands. He is recognized as the creator of the list of atlases, first modern ...

's '' Typus Orbis Terrarum'', first published in 1564 File:Mercator 1569.png, World map by

Gerardus Mercator Gerardus Mercator (; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a Flemish people, Flemish geographer, cosmographer and Cartography, cartographer. He is most renowned for creating the Mercator 1569 world map, 1569 world map based on a new Mercator pr ...

(1569), first map in the well-known Mercator projection File:Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (坤輿萬國全圖).jpg, alt=, '' Kunyu Wanguo Quantu'' (

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

, 1602) File:Claes Janszoon Visscher - Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Ac Hydrographica Tabula Autore'.jpg, 1652 world map
by Claes Janszoon Visscher File:World Map 1689.JPG, A historical map of the world by Gerard van Schagen, 1689

Map projections

Thematic maps

Historical maps

See also

References

Further reading