This has been bugging me for ages now, so today I do something about it. New Zealand is not an edge case!
Every time we see a map of the world it looks rather like this. I’ve circled New Zealand so you can find us, down there at the bottom right.
This common view of the world puts the big continents in the middle. Then you can track more or less through Asia to Australia, and then there we are pretty much hanging off the edge of Australia, in danger of slipping right off the edge of the world.
In that view we may be at the ‘end of the rope’ but we’re well attached. Now consider this version of the same map. I’ve rearranged it to put New Zealand in the centre (horizontally, anyway):
I would have put New Zealand more in the centre vertically too, but my source map doesn’t show the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
This map gives a whole different feeling to New Zealand. This time you can easily see that apart from Australia we’re surrounded by a whole lot of ocean. If we go North and swerve past a few smaller islands there’s nothing but ocean. If we go East there’s nothing but ocean. We’re a long way from anywhere, really.
This map shows us also in relation to the Antarctic. Again I’ve circled New Zealand. If we go South there’s nothing but ocean.
That’s all I wanted to say: we’re not on the edge of the world; we’re in the middle of the ocean.
Original world maps courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: BlankMap-World-Borders.png and Map projection-Eckert VI.png.
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Maps for a long time have been a source of debate, just look at the different projection methods and how they can distort the shapes of land masses.
I hope no one thinks New Zealand is on the edge and remote, it’s a fantastic country. I loved it so much when I visited a couple of years ago that I’m going back in August and I can’t wait. Now if only I could find a way to live down there I think I would probably move for good.
I always thought the first map was popular, not because the major continents were in the middle, but because it is the only view where a north-south break doesn’t split land. Lots of maps are the way they are for aesthetic reasons, rather than cartographic reasons. Isn’t it funny how that such decisions can affect perceptions.
It would be interesting to get your re-arranged picture with the proper perspective so that the distance to Australia isn’t minimised (it is distorted as if it were unwrapped from the edge of the globe and consequently appears smaller) and that the “proper” shapes of NZ and Australia are revealed.
New Zealand has the unfortunate providence to be situated next to a very large body of water, the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific’s considerable lack of land jutting into it makes the International Date Line a natural place to split the world to make the edges of the map. Compare to the Atlantic, the only other ocean fully extended between the poles, which has very few longitudes south of Greenland that do not include some large mass of land.
Furthermore, if New Zealand is an edge case, Hawaii and many of the islands to its north are not even in the developer spec, especially not on the tiny maps you have at the top of this page. In this small context, New Zealand and most of the islands of the world hardly register a presence, and geographically can’t “compete” (as such) with the rest of the continents.
According to Wikipedia, New Zealand has 4 million people and shy over 100,000 square miles. I don’t mean to be insulting, but it’s definitely not the center of the world, geographically or in other senses. While you can center the map however you like horizontally, vertically the Earth has a definite orientation along its axis of spin, with north being “up” and south being “down.” It follows these lines environmentally as well, as the poles are some of the coldest and most inhospitable areas of the planet. And New Zealand is quite close to the South Pole.
Now, I’m not trying to argue that New Zealand IS an edge case. I’m sure it’s a wonderful place to live, and I would love to be able to visit someday. The Lord of the Rings series was filmed almost exclusively in New Zealand, with fantastic results. It is also a great country politically and economically, from what I gather on Wikipedia, and it shares no land borders with other countries, so there are no immigration problems like here in the US. However, while I understand the sentiment, it seems like it would be fallacious to center the map of the world on New Zealand. That would produce some ugly divisions of the continents, as well as portraying an inaccurate orientation of the earth, with the South Pole (arguably the bottom of the world) almost in the middle and the North Pole split into so many tiny chunks. It’s bad enough that many maps represent Greenland and Antarctica so disproportionately, much less destroying the rest of the world’s continuity.
I know what it feels like to be left out, believe me. But if New Zealand is an edge case in the world, so too must I be an edge case in the United States, here in California. That doesn’t mean I think the United States should be split down the middle so that California is in the middle of the map.
Oh, and New Zealand isn’t exactly in the middle of the ocean… surrounded by it, sure, but Hawaii is far closer to the middle.
Please god no, if i hear the word “Lord of the Rings” associated with my country once more im gonna cry a lil. The fact that a 3 part movie has so ruined peoples perspective of New Zealand sadens me deaply, you want a real perspective on NZ? Watch Once Were Warriors.
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