🌍 The True Sizes of Countries on the World Map The world map you usually see is distorted because of the Mercator projection, which enlarges areas near the poles and shrinks those near the equator. In reality: Africa is the largest true landmass, but on most maps, it looks smaller than North America — when it’s actually about 14 times larger than Greenland. Greenland looks huge on maps, almost like a continent, but it’s actually smaller than India. Russia and Canada appear enormous, yet both ar