Each country has its own veiw of the world. There is a term for it but I'm on my mobile. Most countries wouldn't show the map that we are used to in the west which shows England as top center both geologically and timewise but they would show their country as central, the rest of the world spanning around them. The Americans sometimes show the US in this way, the Chinese also have China central to their map of the world.

The european colonialists as we all know went around messing things up trying to bring about some new world based on their, "culture". A major part of that involved changing the date and time in countries they took over, countries not ruled by the europeans will have their own date and time completely different to what we are used to, not B.C/A.D. One of those countries is Ethiopia.

So... should we be using an Afro-centric map of the world with Ethiopia as the center geologically as well as timewise with the rest of the world spanning around Africa?

So far Africas' size isn't on scale, its shown as considerably smaller than it is in comparison to the other continents (the big 5) and England is shown in disproportion to europe being smaller than France and Spain in reality. Which says a lot really.

Its obvious what effect this has on a persons thinking, the Chinese think of China when they see the world, the Americans of America and so on. If I could use photoshop I'd try it but where is our Afro-centric map/veiw of the world?

P.s; Might edit cause I'm on a mobile.

HTP

RL

Since GMT runs through Africa anyway this wouldn't make much of a change dude lol

Most maps center Europe in the middle which also means centering Africa since the longitude isn't that different. confused3

Its a bit more than that.

Its about scale andhaving your country shown as central to your thinking and veiw of the world.Not sure how the time and date differs thoughout the continent but Ethiopia has always had its own calander so prehaps it would be an idea to use the Ethiopian calander rather than the given european one.

http://www.ethiopic.com/calendar/ethiopic.htm

http://ethio.com/calendar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_calendar

Was thinking Cairo as Kemit is said to be the geographical center of the world but considering the Ethiopian calander is based on the one the Kamu (Imhotep - ancient egyptians) invented and itsthe birthplace of humanity it suits. The central line of longitude would run through Addis Ababarather than Grenwich.

Info about Ethiopia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia

maps are actually pictographs, they are actually representative of what whites want you to believe....

The map would look upside-down to the popular map of today.We know that our earliest civilizations in the Nile Valley (Ethiopia/Kush, Egypt, Nubia, Punt) saw the world with their origin on the top of the map, just as Europeans have put themselves on the top of the present map

Exactly.

People don't see how powerful a 'pictograph' the map of the world is.

Actually want to make it but I'm not clued up enough to use Photoshop, or any other editing program for that matter.

Thing is it'sdifficult as you have to take the curvature of the globe into account... obviously they've taken a 3D object and mapped it/taken a satelite picture of it so its disproportunate in their favor which is worth raising an eyebrow over.

To shift Africa mid center with the rest of the continents and countries surrounding would mean having to get the land masses right... Africa is probably twice the size as its shown on the standardised map of the world and is really quite an odd shape.


[align=left]Probably the most famous of the various map projections, the Mercator projection takes its name from Mercator who presented it in 1569. It is a cylindrical, conformal projection with no distortion along the equator. A major navigational feature of the projection is that a line of constant azimuth is straight. Such line is called a rhumb line or loxodrome. Thus, to sail from one point to another one only had to connect the points with a straight line, and keep this constant course for the entire voyage. The Mercator projection has been used extensively for world maps im which the distortion towards the polar regions grows rather large, thus incorrectly giving the impression that, for example, Greenland is larger than South America. Also, the former Soviet Union looks much bigger than Africa or South America. [...][/i]
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On the Mercator projection, directions are true but distances, shapes, and areas are not. In particular, the distortion of areas increases as one moves away from the equator. For example, Greenland and Africa appear to be the same size, where in fact, Africa is fourteen times larger than Greenland.

Yesterday's world voyagers and colonizers have become today's industrialized nations. Coincidentally, these regions - North America and Europe - look much larger than they actually are.

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[align=left]Read the following paragraph on the Peters Map controversy and discuss whether or not you think this projection should be used more often. [/align]

Arno Peters, German map maker, historian and journalist, developed an equal area map projection in the early 1970’s in order to counter the commonly used "Eurocentric" Mercator map projection. He stated, "In our epoch, relatively young nations of the world have cast off the colonial dependencies and now fight for equal rights. It seems important to me that developed nations are no longer at the center of the world, but are plotted according to their true size." He points out that on the Mercator map Europe’s 3.8 million square miles are made to appear larger than South America’s 6.9 million square miles. Peters initially wrote a controversial world history text and found that "the quest for the causes of arrogance and xenophobia has led me repeatedly back to the global map as being primarily responsible for forming people’s impression of the world." It is important to note that the Mercator projection is rarely used today except for the purpose it was originally designed for - navigation. Of course, many Mercator maps can still be found in use by graphic designers, in older classroom materials, and as inexpensive wall maps.

Cartographers have criticized the Peters map in part due to its distortion of the shapes of continents - one cartographer went so far as to describe the effect as being "the resulting land masses are somewhat reminiscent of wet, ragged, long winter underwear hung out to dry on the Arctic Circle." While each continent is reflected accurately in terms of area proportion, the overall effect of the maps is not a realistic portrayal of the earth. Cartographers argue that numerous projections developed since the Mercator projection (such as the Robinson and the Goode) succeed in achieving a more realistic image without a Europe centered focus. In fact, equal area projections had existed since 1772, but the press, the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches heralded the Peters map as a way for the "Third World" to break away from colonial constructs.

Thus, timing was everything; many nations of the world had just achieved independence from colonial powers within the previous decade. Peters, as an accomplished journalist, knew the art of generating publicity. There ensued an on-going debate over the use of this map between cartographers on the one hand, and people who believed the map would change people’s perceptions about the Third World on the other.


[align=center]http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/ma...ts/howbig.html[/align]

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In 1973, Arno Peters, a German historian, released his map of the world. He challenged the dominance of the Mercator projection with the charge that the popularity of the Mercator view stems largely from the fact that it exaggerates the sizes of white-dominated regions and thus reflects a racist attitude. A serious charge, if actually true, and one that precipitated a debate that is still alive and well today.
In his projection, Peters chose to make areas accurate. Direction, distance, and shape are sacrificed but the resulting map does provide a much more realistic view of the actual relative sizes of the various regions of the planet.

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[align=left]The Peters map is currently the only map that comes close to showing the continents in their true size but as mentioned it is at the sacrifice of shape. To this day we are still using the european given map that he and many others refuted. Love it when I hit a nail on the head should have researched all this beforehand. [/align]

[align=left]Going to look more into it and see if I can click with some people who canhelp come up with one in its true proportion, shape and size with Ciaro central. [/align]

[align=left]As Mike said maps are pictographs and the effect an Afro-Centric one would have would be much more than people first expect. Glad to read that it was even a debate at one point.[/align]

[align=left]If anyone has seen a map with Africa central and in the right proportion please post it up, I have yet to see one. Otherwise it looks like I'm going to have to head down to the local college and talk to some people studying Geography or something. For real, I hope I'm making sence here.[/align]
[align=left]*Patent pending*[/align]

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many people do not simply know thatafrica is something like four or five times the size of the u.s. .....if the west can fool people into thinking that, what else can they fool you into thinking

http://www.bnvillage.co.uk/forum37/16366.html

I started a thread on Peter's projection about 18 months ago. To see the difference between Mercator's map and Peter's projection is quite startling. Until I'd seen the Peter's map, it never really occurred to me that the size of Africa compared to other continents/land areas in the world was so vast and had been so grossly misrepresented with this eurocentric bias.

***Ed***

The Peters map still dosen't show the shape he mis-shaped it tokeepthe size.

Am talking to some people and trying to make a map that is both the right shape and proportionin regards to allthe continents but with Africa in the middle.

if the west can fool people into thinking that, what else can they fool you into thinking

That the earth travels around the sun? .lol. Some of us give them way too much power my favorite conspirisory it the theory that the world is run by a lizard race of people, apparently they have razor sharp teeth, drink blood and feed on peoples fear... wasn't afriad of them beforehand, not so sure now.Can more or less strip down european ''culture'' and find out where they got their ideas from;

Anyone intrested in late vicotrian fasion?


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