Type “Map of the world” into a search engine. Click images, then hit return. Most results will have Europe slap-bang in the center—they’re out of date.
Sure, there’s no geographic center on the outside of a planet, and you can’t accurately depict a globe on a flat surface, so you must choose somewhere to be in the middle. But why Europe?
Historians know of the great Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, and it’s his 1569 cylindrical projection, designed for nautical navigation, which dominates how we see the world. In the 21st century the problem with the Mercator map is not just that it overinflates the sizes of North America and Europe, and that Greenland is way smaller than shown, but also that it depicts the world view of those who first circumnavigated the planet and perpetuates the subconscious idea of a dominant Europe even though the economic and political center is now the Indo-Pacific region.
