Caspian Sea over Western Europe, western Canada

The Caspian is probably the biggest reason why some countries that are technically landlocked still aren't in the sense that they have a thriving maritime culture. Azerbaijan in particular, which has 800 km of coastline and a navy with 5000 personnel.

Feel free to superimpose the Caspian on another part of the world using this link:

http://mapfrappe.com/?show=20498

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How best to show that the surface of the Earth is mostly water?

The average world map makes it pretty clear that the surface of the Earth is composed more of water than of land:

but I find there is an even better map out there that shows this, namely an antipode map. What this map shows is which parts of the world lie on the opposite side of where one is standing, that is, where you would end up if you could dig through the centre of the Earth and out the other side.

So the first thing to do with an antipode map is to find where you are, and then see what is on the other side.

What is on the other side of where you live? If in North America, pretty much water. Africa? All water. Europe? All water, unless you're in Spain. India? Water. Australia? Water. Japan, Korea? Water. China? Mostly land by population, mostly water by geography. Middle East? Water. The parts where you could stick a giant skewer into a dry side and have it emerge dry on the other side are almost nonexistent.

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Greenland vs. Africa on Mapfrappe

This is my new favourite site, one where one draws an outline on one world map in order to compare the size of a country or whatever else with another. The usual test to see whether the projection is accurate is comparing Greenland with Africa, and it works. Greenland starts out like this:

and then as we move south it becomes progressively smaller, until we reach the equator and it shows its true size.

The reverse is also fun to do too, like outlining Colombia and bringing it north to watch it grow.

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Link roundup for 25 March 2012

Some interesting things to mention this weekend:

--- This article on Germany's massive project to shift to renewable energy. This is without a doubt one of the most interesting things going on in the world right now, and largely because it is Germany that is doing it: I see no reason for countries in non-earthquake-prone areas to do away with nuclear power, and would see this project as a big mistake for many countries, but if Germany is going to use Fukushima as an impetus to try to recreate its energy grid then I want to see them try, and hope it succeeds. Mistaken or not, some countries simply may have too much anti-nuclear sentiment to bother trying to convince them of its beneficial nature. Fortunately there was not much nuclear power in Germany in the first place - 17% or so. Now if France (78.8% nuclear power) were to try something like this, it would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions.

--- Not news yet, but the Estonian Wikipedia will be at 100,000 articles in perhaps a month or so. The number of articles per capita is about the same as Icelandic, which is quite impressive.

--- James Cameron has now reached the Mariana Trench.

--- Some nice pictures from the Large Binocular Telescope, still taken with just one of its two mirrors. The image on the right is the star HR 8799 and four of its planets.

--- Mountaintop blasting for the Giant Magellan Telescope has begun. This is one of the three massive earth-bound telescopes scheduled to go into operation in 2018.

--- An article on Vesta, and how those studying it have a hard time not calling it a planet, because it simply acts like one. Studying Vesta and Ceres (and flying by Pluto in 2015) will be most interesting in the debate over exactly what a planet is. I have no problem with the term dwarf in front of a planet, as long as the planet part is emphasized. In other words, Ceres and Earth and Jupiter are planets...and if we want to be more precise, Ceres is a dwarf, Earth is a medium-sized terrestrial, and Jupiter is a gas giant. The idea that a planet needs to 'clear its orbit' to be a full planet though is a silly one, because not only is it vague but nearly impossible to prove or disprove in other solar systems.

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The Fragmented States of North America

What would the North American economy look like if every single state and province in the US, Canada and Mexico suddenly declared independence and turned into its own country? Most know that California would become the largest economic powerhouse in the region, but besides that it's not always obvious which state or province would stack up with another. To give some idea of how it would look I've put them all in a single chart below. The map on the right is also lacking colours and has been turned around in order to make the national borders we are otherwise used to as invisible as possible.

The list includes parts of the three countries that aren't officially provinces or states, since 1) if every province and state became independent they would have to govern themselves too, and 2) the largest part of Mexico (by GDP) is the Federal District, which is technically not a state either.

"Equivalent country" on the right is measured by GDP, and is very rough, obtained simply by selecting the nearest country below the state's GDP on this list, or the nearest country just above if they happen to be extremely close.

Rank	"Country" name	GDP ($million)	Population	Equivalent country
1	California	1,891,363	37,253,956	Canada
2	Texas	1,144,695	25,145,561	Mexico
3	New York	1,093,219	19,378,102	"
4	Florida	737,038	18,801,310	Turkey
5	Illinois	630,398	12,910,409	Switzerland
6	Pennsylvania	554,774	12,604,767	"
7	Ontario	513,052	13,210,667	Belgium
8	New Jersey	482,967	8,707,739	"
9	Ohio	471,264	11,536,504	"
10	Virginia	408,443	8,001,024	Austria
11	North Carolina	398,042	9,535,483	"
12	Georgia	395,194	9,687,653	"
13	Michigan	368,401	9,883,640	"
14	Massachusetts	365,182	6,547,629	South Africa
15	Washington	338,334	6,724,540	Iran
16	Maryland	286,797	5,773,552	Venezuela
17	Indiana	262,647	6,483,802	United Arab Emirates
18	Minnesota	260,692	5,303,925	"
19	Quebec	259,958	7,886,108	"
20	Arizona	256,364	6,392,017	"
21	Colorado	252,657	5,029,196	"
22	Tennessee	244,508	6,214,888	"
23	Wisconsin	244,370	5,686,986	"
24	Missouri	239,752	5,988,927	"
25	Connecticut	227,405	3,574,097	Hong Kong
26	Louisiana	208,377	4,533,372	Nigeria
27	Federal District	192,073	8,720,700	Philippines
28	Alberta	179,113	3,724,832	Pakistan
29	Alabama	169,856	4,779,736	Algeria
30	Oregon	165,648	3,831,074	"
31	South Carolina	159,647	4,625,364	"
32	British Columbia	158,616	4,383,800	Romania
33	Kentucky	156,553	4,339,367	Peru
34	Oklahoma	153,778	3,751,351	"
35	Iowa	142,282	3,046,355	New Zealand
36	Nevada	126,503	2,700,551	Qatar
37	Kansas	124,921	2,853,118	Kuwait
38	Utah	112,941	2,763,885	Bangladesh
39	Arkansas	101,818	2,915,918	Vietnam
40	District of Columbia	99,129	601,723	Morocco
41	Mississippi	95,905	2,967,297	"
42	Mexico State	86,656	14,349,700	Slovakia
43	Nebraska	86,439	1,826,341	"
44	New Mexico	74,801	2,059,179	Sudan
45	Nuevo León	67,002	4,041,300	"
46	Hawaii	66,431	1,360,301	"
47	Jalisco	66,260	6,540,700	"
48	West Virginia	63,344	1,852,994	Ecuador
49	Delaware	60,588	897,934	Croatia
50	New Hampshire	59,400	1,316,470	Oman
51	Idaho	54,005	1,567,582	"
52	Maine	51,293	1,328,361	Dominican Republic
53	Rhode Island	47,837	1,052,567	Slovenia
54	Alaska	45,709	710,231	Bulgaria
55	Chihuahua	41,095	3,274,700	Guatemala
56	Manitoba	40,892	1,232,654	"
57	Saskatchewan	40,080	1,049,701	Lebanon
58	Veracruz	38,415	6,980,900	Uzbekistan
59	South Dakota	38,308	814,180	"
60	Wyoming	37,544	563,626	Lithuania
61	Montana	35,954	989,415	"
62	Puebla	33,054	5,480,200	Kenya
63	Baja California	32,161	2,846,500	Ethiopia
64	North Dakota	31,872	672,591	"
65	Guanajuato	31,268	4,919,000	"
66	Coahuila	29,481	2,395,100	Panama
67	Tamaulipas	28,588	2,927,300	"
68	Nova Scotia	28,159	944,251	"
69	Sonora	25,908	2,262,700	Latvia
70	Vermont	25,438	625,741	"
71	New Brunswick	22,507	1098109	Tanzania
72	Newfoundland	19,226	1098109	Estonia
73	Michoacán	18,761	4,066,900	Ghana
74	San Luis Potosí	16,974	2,370,400	Afghanistan
75	Sinaloa	16,974	2,574,300	"
76	Querétaro	16,081	1,558,500	Zambia
77	Chiapas	14,294	4,329,700	Jamaica
78	Guerrero	14,294	3,196,100	"
79	Quintana Roo	14,294	1,023,500	"
80	Oaxaca	13,400	3,651,100	Iceland
81	Yucatán	12,507	1,714,100	Botswana
82	Morelos	11,614	1,637,400	Albania
83	Durango	11,614	1,449,100	"
84	Hidalgo	11,614	2,330,900	"
85	Aguascalientes	11,614	1,023,800	"
86	Tabasco	11,614	1,994,700	"
87	Campeche	10,720	720,900	Mozambique
88	Zacatecas	7,147	1,381,900	Haiti
89	Baja California Sur	5,360	477,200	Moldova
90	Nayarit	5,360	942,200	"
91	Colima	4,467	581,100	Kyrgyzstan
92	Tlaxcala	4,467	1,034,600	"
93	Prince Edward Island	3,996	1098109	Barbados
94	Northwest Territories	3,458	1098109	Suriname
95	Yukon Territory	1,445	1098109	Maldives
96	Nunavut	1,188	1098109	Djibouti

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Google maps now extends to (a tiny part of) Antarctica

Check it out, people and penguins:


View Larger Map

Google Maps now officially extends to all seven continents.

I've always felt a certain attachment to Antarctica considering where it used to be located a few hundred million years ago:

Antarctica's over there in the far east, extending even a bit into the northern hemisphere. So Antarctica used to be where all the action was but now it's isolated, cold and covered with snow. Too bad melting the ice caps would cause massive flooding because if there were no consequences to it it would be a ton of fun to terraform. Well, warm up (it's already technically terraformed since it's part of Terra).

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Comparing country and continent sizes with Google Maps

Here's an easy way to gauge the relative size of one or more areas with another. First decide on the areas to compare, then go to Google Maps and start with the largest. Scale the map until you can see the entire area within a single screen or page. You can then embed it within a site if you like. If we are to compare continents then, we would start with Asia. Here it is:

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All right, that's Asia at 500px width at 400px height. Now we use the same scale and simply change the size of the map to fit other continents. Let's go to Africa next:


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Africa comes in at a width of about 300px and height of 250px. Europe will be last as it's the smallest...off to North America.


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North America = width 350px, height 375px. South America feels like it should be similar but it's not:


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Width: 150px, height 250px. And finally off to Europe:


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200 x 200px including Turkey and the Caucasus, and if we go with just the EU:


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now the width is just 125px and height is 190px.

To tell whether this is accurate though we'd be best off comparing countries and regions with fairly simple borders and little to no water, and the closer their latitude the more accurate it would be. Poland vs. France vs. Botswana vs. Sudan vs. Saskatchewan vs. Wyoming...I'll do a test with those in a day or two or three to compare to their actual surface area to see how accurate these comparisons turn out to be. As a rough estimate, however, this is one of the easiest ways to show the relative size of one place with another.

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Giant chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan breaks off Greenland

You can read the article here. The reason why I'm writing about it though is not because I felt the urgency to report the news, but because it's a pet peeve of mine when articles mention the size of X compared to Y or Z but fail to actually provide an accurate map. So here is Greenland with the area of the iceberg in comparison. Total area = 350 km², thus almost 20 km in both length and width.

Also keep in mind that Greenland is MASSIVE, so pretty much everything looks small in comparison to Greenland. Countries with a surface area about four times that of Manhattan are Grenada and Malta.


View Glacier on Greenland in a larger map

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Places that should revert to their previous name, places that might want to consider it

I'd like to create a big list of 1) places that should definitely change their name back to their previous one, and 2) places that might want to consider it, or perhaps adopt a second name as well. Hopefully others out there have some ideas to fill out this list, and if you do write it in the comments section below. Here are a few to get started:


Places that should definitely change their name back

Iran - change back to Persia. This one is a no-brainer: the area has been called Persia since antiquity, the name still commands respect, there are Persian rugs and Persian cats but no Iranian rugs and Iranian cats, Iran even now argues that the Persian Gulf should not be called the Arabian Gulf as many Arab nations nearby prefer (and it's a bit easier to make the argument when Persia is your actual name, not your previous one), and the name Iran was chosen partly to form a bond with Hitler as Iran = Aryan - we're Aryans too!

Kentucky - change back to Transylvania. While the Transylvania colony did not encompass the whole state of Kentucky, the name is obviously a bazillion times cooler than Kentucky. Nobody knows exactly what Kentucky means, but it might mean field. Bleh. The name Kentucky right now generally conjures up the image of fried chicken; compare that with Transylvania, which is something like this:



Uranus - change to the original Greek Oranos. See here for details. Uranus/Oranos is the only planet to use a Greek god instead of a Roman one, so why use a Latinized version of the name, especially when it results in it being the brunt of jokes whenever the name comes up?


Kaliningrad - change back to Königsberg. The name Kaliningrad is a recent one; the renaming happened in 1946 to commemorate Mikhail Kalinin, an ally of Stalin and a person with no real connection to the city (born in Tver Oblast, studied in St. Petersburg, married to an Estonian, etc.). Pretty much all other Russian cities have lost their silly Soviet-era names (Petrograd, Stalingrad, Leningrad, etc.), and changing back to Königsberg may help Kaliningrad emphasize its shared heritage with the rest of Europe, a must for a city in an exclave that barely exists in the minds of European citizens in spite of being located fairly near the centre. See it's right here next to Poland and Lithuania, close to Sweden, Germany and Denmark.


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Places that might want to think about changing their name back, or adopting a second

Istanbul - consider restoring Constantinople as a second name. - Istanbul's a fine name so this wouldn't be a necessity, but having Istanbul as the Turkish name and Constantinople for other languages (Western European ones in particular) could be a nice reminder of the city's European heritage, and could be a plus in public perception of the country as an EU candidate.

Kitchener, Ontario (Canada) - change back to Berlin. The city used to be called Berlin and was changed to Kitchener due to anti-German sentiment. Not the best reason for a name change, and "Canada's Berlin" could help the city stand out whereas Kitchener means very little now.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan - consider the -ia suffix in English and other Western European languages instead of -istan. -ia means 'place of' and -istan also means 'place of' (and not just countries too, a flower bed in Persian is gol-estân / گلستان, a 'place of flower'). -istan tends to sound quite harsh compared to -ia though, and Kazakia, Kyrgyzia, Turkmenia and Uzbekia seem a lot friendlier. Languages that are used to -stan can keep the suffix. In fact, they use the suffix for nations that don't use it in English too - Bulgaria is Bulgaristan in Turkish, Greece is Yunanistan. Pakistan probably shouldn't consider this as it's fairly well-known under its current name already, and Pakia just doesn't seem right. The other nations haven't been independent for very long though and might want to consider it.

Iraq - consider the English name Mesopotamia again. Iraq would remain the name in Arabic and whichever countries prefer the name Iraq. Similar to the reasons above for Iran to Persia, except that Iraq is less unified than Iran and we might not want to rock the boat with a name change, plus the name Iraq wasn't chosen for reasons as silly as those for Iran. An alternative to this would be changing from Iraq to Uruk, the source of the name used now and the name of the ancient Sumerian city from which the name comes. But Mesopotamia would be ideal - think of the two countries Persia and Mesopotamia next to each other instead of the current Iran and Iraq.


Places that are doing a good job so keep up the good work:

Damascus - called Shâm/Şam/etc. in most Islamic countries, Damascus sounds waaay cooler in English. A great example of a city that maintains name coolness and recognition in more than one language. Change the city's official name in English to Sham and recognition would disappear overnight.

Alexandria - while the Arabic name is derived from Alexander (al-Iskandariyya), changing the name to Iskandariya in English would remove the obvious connection to Alexander the Great and the Library of Alexandria, and turn it into nothing more than Egypt's second-largest city.

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Another demonstration of the surface area of the Moon compared to Earth

In yesterday's post about Moon Zoo and the surface area of the Moon I wrote that the surface area is equivalent to Russia plus Canada plus the US plus South Africa; in other words, the Moon is huge and to pretend that we've done any serious exploring there over some thirteen days on the surface is a joke. The size of Russia and Canada is a bit difficult to visualize though, as the two are quite massive and have a large area concentrated in the north. Thus it might be interesting to find another list of countries to put together to equal the surface area of the Moon. Wikipedia has a list of countries by total area here, so starting from the smallest let's see how many countries we can fit before we reach 37,000,000 km². I've put the countries on a spreadsheet here, but the simple list of countries is as follows:

Vatican City
Monaco
Nauru
Tuvalu
San Marino
Liechtenstein
Marshall Islands
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Maldives
Malta
Grenada
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Barbados
Antigua and Barbuda
Seychelles
Palau
Andorra
Saint Lucia
Federated States of Micronesia
Singapore
Kiribati
Tonga
Bahrain
Dominica
São Tomé and Príncipe
Mauritius
Comoros
Luxembourg
Samoa
Cape Verde
Trinidad and Tobago
Brunei
Cyprus
Lebanon
Jamaica
The Gambia
Qatar
Vanuatu
Montenegro
The Bahamas
East Timor
Swaziland
Kuwait
Fiji
Slovenia
El Salvador
Israel
Belize
Djibouti
Republic of Macedonia
Rwanda
Haiti
Burundi
Equatorial Guinea
Albania
Solomon Islands
Armenia
Lesotho
Belgium
Moldova
Guinea-Bissau
Taiwan
Netherlands
Bhutan
Switzerland
Denmark
Estonia
Dominican Republic
Slovakia
Costa Rica
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Togo
Latvia
Lithuania
Sri Lanka
Georgia
Ireland
Sierra Leone
Panama
Czech Republic
United Arab Emirates
Austria
Azerbaijan
Serbia
Jordan
Portugal
Hungary
South Korea
Iceland
Guatemala
Cuba
Bulgaria
Liberia
Honduras
Benin
Eritrea
Malawi
North Korea
Nicaragua
Greece
Tajikistan
Bangladesh
Nepal
Tunisia
Suriname
Uruguay
Cambodia
Syria
Senegal
Kyrgyzstan
Belarus
Guyana
Laos
Romania
Ghana
Uganda
United Kingdom
Guinea
Ecuador
Gabon
New Zealand
Burkina Faso
Philippines
Italy
Oman
Poland
Côte d'Ivoire
Norway
Malaysia
Vietnam
Finland
Republic of the Congo
Germany
Japan
Zimbabwe
Paraguay
Iraq
Sweden
Morocco
Uzbekistan
Papua New Guinea
Cameroon
Turkmenistan
Spain
Thailand
Yemen
Kenya
Botswana
Madagascar
Ukraine
Central African Republic
France
Somalia
Afghanistan
Myanmar
Zambia
Chile
Turkey
Pakistan
Mozambique
Namibia
Venezuela
Nigeria
Tanzania
Egypt
Mauritania
Bolivia
Ethiopia
Colombia
South Africa

Put all those together and you have 37 million square kilometres.

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How going to space changes you

I like the quote near the end of this article about how going to space has changed Gregory Olsen, who visited the ISS in 2005 and intends to find a way to visit space again.

On that note, here's my idea of the day: right now Google Maps has the option to display maps in this way:


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or this way:


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Why not add a minimalist option as well? No borders, no info. And maybe even turn it over for good measure since that helps to remove some of the borders locked in one's mind as well. Views on that map would look something like this:



and this:



and this:



and this:



and this.



Shouldn't be too difficult to identify those places, but quite different from your average north-is-up-and-obvious-borders map.

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Los Angeles minus all the people

Check it out, a site devoted to pictures of LA without people à la I Am Legend or some other post-apocalyptic film. Click on the photo to keep seeing new ones. Not sure how many there are but I haven't seen a repeat yet.

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How big is the Gaza Strip compared to other parts of the world?

Gaza (the city, Gazze in Turkish) is on the front page of the Turkish Wikipedia this week, and what better time to show the geographic extent of this tiny part of the world that makes headlines so often. Here is the approximate size of the Gaza Strip (about 41 km in length, 8-12 km in width) compared to a few places throughout the world.

First is Gaza Strip vs. New York.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

After that we have Vancouver.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

Now off to Europe. Here it is compared to Paris.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

Compare it to Luxembourg though and it doesn't look quite so tiny.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

And the Vatican (the smallest country in the world) is a tiny grey blip compared to Gaza.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

Off to Asia for a second. Here's Seoul.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

And back to Europe for the last comparison. Andorra is probably the country in Europe that is most comparable to the Gaza Strip in size - just about 30% bigger.


View Gaza Strip vs. US and other locations in a larger map

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Practice your geography and German at the same time

Die Welt has a German edition of that geography game that one can see on Facebook and elsewhere where the point is to click on the map and get as close as possible to the location specified in as quick a time as possible.

The game isn't nearly as good as the one on TravelPod though (and especially the other version I can't find at the moment complete with background music and applause when one gets a good score), because this one only has five levels, and the fifth level is all about where famous people live, not the most important subject (and the answer is usually Hollywood). It does ask questions in a variety of ways though (wo steht, finden Sie, wo liegt...) and so it's worth a try or two.

I got 70040 points.

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Globetrotter XL test tests your knowledge of geography

Here's a test that's a lot of fun for those interesting in geography. It's actually pretty much exactly the same as a similar test that can be played on Facebook, except that this one is a bit bigger and has nice music as well. One problem with a test like this is that you always get top marks for the smallest countries since simply knowing where the country is located is enough to get almost a perfect score, whereas larger countries (Canada/United States/RUSSIA *argh*) are much harder. Long and thin countries too.

My score on the third try was 19578. I bet quite a few readers here can beat that..

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What Russia really looks like

The Canadian historian Pierre Burton always used to describe Canada not as the world's second-largest country, but rather a long and thin country located right next to the border with the United States, shaped kind of like Chile but running east and west instead of north and south. And in terms of the Canada that most Canadians know, this is very true. Take a look at this population density map from Stats Canada.

Canada is basically a densely populated area in the east, a fairly populated area in the west, and a bit of space in between them when you hit western Ontario. Very few have actually been to the north. When you look at the map in this way it makes sense that Canada has a population so much smaller than that of the US, which has large populated centres in every corner of the country in spite of its slightly smaller size.

Russia is the same way, except that it lines up against the eastern border of Europe to the north and south instead of east and west. It's important to have an idea of how population in Russia works, because without it it tends to look like this:

Europe before reaching Russia is generally quite easy to understand, as each country is fairly small and they all fit together quite nicely like pieces of a puzzle. The only part where there is some confusion would be in the former Yugoslavia where new countries have been emerging left and right with varying degrees of international acceptance, and these new shapes have yet to make a strong impression. But overall it's quite easy.

Once you get to Russia though, everything gets thrown out the window. All of a sudden the borders are gone and you have now reached a country that is larger than the continent it borders upon, and everything goes out the window. When you take a look at Russia as a whole it can be easy to remember as it looks a bit like some sort of mythical auroch-like creature lying on top of Central Asia, with its head stretching out towards Alaska, front paws hanging over northeastern China and rear legs standing on Georgia and Azerbaijan.

But like the somewhat inaccurate image of Canada, this isn't really the Russia people usually mean when they think of the country - most visit major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, and its this heavily populated area in the west that Europe interacts with the most as well. So if Canada is to be compared to Chile, Russia would also end up looking something like this (very rough approximation):

That still doesn't look like any other country, but it's still easier to picture compared to Europe than the monstrous mythical auroch over Central Asia.

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Understanding countries through maps

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. - Sherlock Holmes to Watson

Active or deep interpretation of maps is a subject that isn't taught nearly enough in schools, which is a bit of a pity as recognizing maps as clues to a country's character can give students an interest in geography they've never had before. Simply taking a good look at a map of a country compared to the other areas nearby is often enough to give one a good idea of what sort of geopolitical situation it happens to be in, and in many cases a good enough understanding of this can aid in even predicting the future between two or more countries.

Here are a few examples of some simple ways to read maps.

First of all, a perfectly straight border between countries. Sometimes that can denote friendship between two countries, where a certain latitude or longitude is set as a common border, after which there is no fighting over it.

It can also mean that the land between two countries simply isn't worth fighting over or too hard to manage. Here are a few examples from countries that border each other right in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Compare those borders to the much less straight ones up north - Tunisia, and Morocco. And after the Sahara ends in the south the borders become curvy again.

A generally straight border that nevertheless keeps twisting back and forth will usually mean a mountain range:


or a river (border of Mexico and Guatemala):

You can also tell quite a bit about a country's situation by geographical oddities. Take a look at this map:

Democratic Republic of the Congo is located mostly in the centre of the continent, but for some reason suddenly juts out to the west all the way to the ocean. Nations with access to the sea generally have it in a way not all that different from their other borders (a natural result of a nation's position), but when a large nation has a particularly tiny piece of access to the sea it usually means some sort of diplomatic resolution, without which it could have been landlocked. In Dem Rep Congo's case it was given this strip of land in 1885 by the Berlin Conference.

Exclaves are also oddities. Kaliningrad is an obvious example.

Kaliningrad is part of Russia, but since the fall of the Soviet Union it has been an exclave completely surrounded by other countries, now the European Union. Supplies sent to Kaliningrad from Russia have to cross two borders - Latvia and Lithuania, Belarus and Lithuania, or Belarus and Poland.

The existence of an exclave can sometimes mean political instability if the host country is lacking in influence, as the geographic isolation alone can lead those living there to conclude that it would be better to separate.

The area enclosed by the red circle is an exclave of Angola called Cabinda, where there was a conflict between the government and a secessionist movement there until a ceasefire was signed in 2006.

The same can be seen in areas of land that aren't technically exclaves but still a bit odd compared to the rest of the geography of a country. Looking a bit south you can see a strip of land stretching eastward from Namibia where you wouldn't normally expect its borders to extend.

That place is called Caprivi and unsurprisingly there's a conflict there too between the country and a secessionist group.

The presence of a landlocked country where you wouldn't expect one will usually imply resentment or bad blood between one country and another. Take a look at Ethiopia:

You'll notice that Ethiopia one of the only countries in the area without access to the sea. Somalia has it, Kenya has it, Sudan has it...Ethiopia doesn't. The reason for that is the country located just to the north: Eritrea, which used to be a part of Ethiopia until it became independent in 1993 after 31 years of war with each other. Not surprisingly, the two countries do not get along with each other.

Bolivia has a bit of a similar situation, though the conflict that caused it was much less recent (19th century). Nevertheless, access to the sea is still blamed for a lot of problems in Bolivia and there is a Day of the Sea celebrated each year in the country to remember the former coastline the country had.



There are dozens and dozens more ways to guess the geopolitical situation of a country through maps alone, but the above should suffice for now since the post has gotten a bit long (feel free to add your own in the comments below though). I'll end off with one more interesting one. Here's Indonesia:

Then Vanuatu:

And the Philippines.


What do they all have in common? They are all island countries, with a huge number of regional languages, but with one language that more or less unifies the country. Well, with the Philippines it's two (Tagalog and English). The reason for this is that it's simply impossible to manage a country of this type without a unifying language. Countries like Spain are usually able to get by with a number of languages with regional autonomy, but Vanuatu has 200 languages over a population of only a bit over 200,000, and administering this in the same manner would simply be impossible.

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