Mercator vs Ptolemy: how should we flatten the round Earth?
MERCATOR vs PTOLEMY go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.
I gave sailors straight lines of true bearing—set your compass, hold your course, and my grid delivers you to harbor.
And you swelled Greenland into a giant while shrinking the equator; I fixed the world by latitude and longitude, honestly, without such vanity of scale.
Your coordinates were guesses stacked on rumor—you placed the world's edge where no ship had ever sailed, yet I made a map a captain could trust.
Better an honest guess corrected by centuries than a beautiful lie that teaches every schoolchild the north is larger than the truth.
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