A map of the world
I remember being very proud of a great Christmas present I received when I was a boy. A world map poster with countries coloured in pink, yellow, blue and green.
It was stuck to the wall above my bed, and I spent the next few months late at night trying to memorize as many of the capital cities as I could to impress my dad the next day.
I went on to read for a degree in international studies, so thank you to my parents for getting me started in that field early on.
If you have an old map of nation states somewhere in your cupboard you can refer to, it is amazing how different the latest edition looks compared with say thirty years ago. The fall of communism during the 1990s led to a massive upheaval in the geopolitical landscape and the birth or re-birth of a large number of countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.
That change would look relatively slight if you were to pick up and compare an antique world map poster with one of today. Consider the world during what was really an ever changing colonial era followed by the dawn of the true concept of nation states now firmly supported by international law.
Or are nations now drawing more closely back together. Take federalism in Europe, Hong Kong’s envelopment within China. Who knows, perhaps one day a united Korean Peninsula?
World map posters don’t necessarily have to represent political regions like these or the one from my youth.
A physical world map poster would typically represent the topography of the world, depicting mountains and oceans and their respective heights and depths, and would generally include major rivers and areas of aridity, vegetation and ice. This is the closest you get to the view of the world from the window of a plane, on a clear day of course.
The distribution of the world’s mineral wealth is extremely uneven. Maps are available to highlight the key concentrations across the globe. The purpose of the map will determine which minerals are recorded. One option would be to focus on minerals that have an associated economic worth. Examples would include iron, uranium, copper, gold, aluminium and diamonds.
In fact, pretty much everything that you can plot for globally has been converted in to a global map. World food patterns for example, precipitation or the abundance of energy resources.
To return to the days of our youth, you can also get some great presents for children. A huge puzzle of the world or a childrens world map poster with some of the best sights and features in each country to get them interested. They will be demanding their first atlas before you know it.
Please look through some of the other articles on this site for more information before you decide on buying a world map poster, especially how different maps will depict different features.