countries with similar population

Nigeria has more population than Brazil.

Nigeria: 223.000.000 - Brazil: 203.000.000

Bangladesh has more population than Russia

Bangladesh: 170.000.000 - Russia: 146.000.000

South Korea has more population than Sudan

South Korea: 51.000.000 - Sudan: 50.000.000

Spain has more population than Argentina

Spain: 48.000.000 - Argentina: 47.000.000

Iraq has more population than Canada

Iraq: 44.000.000 - Canada: 41.000.000

Venezuela has more population than Australia

Venezuela: 28.000.000 - Australia: 27.000.000

Sri Lanka has more population than Kazakhstan

Sri Lanka: 22.000.000 - Kazakhstan: 20.000.000

Georgia has more population than Mongolia

Georgia: 3.700.000 - Mongolia: 3.500.000

Andorra has more population than Greenland

Andorra: 85.000 - Greenland: 57.000

political himalaya

When someone speaks about Himalayan mountains which country do you think about? Probably India or Nepal, but actually if we consider the himalayani range region things are really different: India and Nepal are just a small part of all the mountain surface.

Even if the highest peaks are in these countries (and also the "easiest" ways to access to them) the biggest area is taken by China (with the Tibetan plateau) and several other countries are involved: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bhutan, Myanmar and also Bangladesh.

Have a look to this map:

 

political map of the sahara

 

POLITICAL MAP OF ALPS

 

A modern Roman Empire

In order to recover all the territories that were once part of the Roman Empire, Rome should now wage war to more than fifty different countries!

Part of them should be fully conquered and others partially invaded and occupied.

Here you have the list of the modern countries that now a day control some of the regions there were once controlled by the Roman Empire:

1-      Italy (100% of its territory was part of the Roman Empire)

2-      Portugal (99%)

3-      Spain (99%)

4-      UK (80%)

5-      France (80%)

6-      Germany (65%)

7-      Netherlands (98%)

8-      Belgium (100%)

9-      Luxembourg (100%)

10-  Switzerland (100%)

11-  Austria (90%)

12-  Slovenia (100%)

13-  Hungary (45%)

14-  Slovakia (1%)

15-  Croatia (100%)

16-  Bosnia Herzegovina (100%)

17-  Serbia (90%)

18-  Montenegro (100%)

19-  Albania (100%)

20-  North Macedonia (100%)

21-  Greece (100%)

22-  Malta (100%)

23-  Morocco (20%)

24-  Algeria (15%)

25-  Tunisia (98%)

26-  Libya (25%)

27-  Egypt (50%)

28-  Israel (100%)

29-  Jordan (50%)

30-  Saudi Arabia (3%)

31-  Lebanon (100%)

32-  Syria (75%)

33-  Iraq (55%)

34-  Kuwait (5%)

35-  Iran (5%)

36-  Azerbaijan (70%)

37-  Armenia (99%)

38-  Georgia (90%)

39-  Russia (0,2%)

40-  Ukraine (10%)

41-  Romania (90%)

42-  Moldova (15%)

43-  Bulgaria (100%)

44-  Turkey (100%)

45-  Cyprus (100%)

46-  Andorra (100%)

47-  Monaco (100%)

48-  Liechtenstein (100%)

49-  San Marino (100%)

50-  Vatican (100%)

But there are also other countries besides this list! They are countries that are not fully recognized by the international community, but they are there, part of the territory of the ancient Roman Empire:

 

51-  North Cyprus (100%)

52-  Kosovo (100%)

53-  Palestine (100%)

54-  South Ossetia (50%)

55-  Abkhazia (100%)

56-  Artsakh (100%)

In order to recreate a now-a-day Roman Empire, Rome should invade 56 different countries!!

A modern Roman Empire would possess more states than the USA!!

if rome was the capital of...

Che succederebbe se Roma fosse la capitale di... ...qualche altro stato del mondo?

Ecco la risposta:

Una cosa interessante: sapevi che solo due stati al mondo riescono a coprire interamente la superficie dell'Italia?

Trova quali.

stranieri più vicini al veneto

in un'area così piccola c'è una buona verietà di paesi diversi a cui avvicinarsi...

afro-europa

África y Europa son tan diferentes?
Claro hay cosas que sí, otras que no... pero yo creo en la gran hermandad humana y por eso os quiero demonstrar como Europa puede transformarse en África y África en Europa!
En el fondo... son la misma cosa!

Así que miren: Esta es África...

...y a través de unos pocos pasos, os transformo África en Europa! Et voilà!

Sabéis que podéis aumentar el tamaño de la imagen si le dais encima con el botón, no? Pero si no lo habéis visto bien, os lo pongo también en vertical...

Podríamos decir que al fin y al cabo Europa es una África un poco deshinchada... jeje
Y para los que aprecien esta transformación mágica, os voy a mostrar el mapa final: la Afro-Europa.
Algunos Africanos se enfadarán de haber pasado a lugares tan fríos, de repente, pero bueno, siempre se puede pasar de la Afro-Europa a la Euro-África cuando se quiera.
Aquí tenéis el mapa final. Interesante... yo vengo de Tanzania y vivo en Mozambique, ya casi tocando con Sudáfrica.

countries without sea access

densely populated americas

What is a political map? It's a map that shows the "imaginary" human limits on the surfaces of the lands of our planet.

A political map is essentially a human related point of view of the world.

That is obvious, of course, but this concept implies another conclusion, and that's it: where no human beings dwell a territory, borders are practically insignificant.

Of course there are strong economical and geo-political interests in desert areas of the planet, but this is only a strategical purpose: assuring power to a community by means of expanding control over potentially useful zones.

But if we come back to a "human point of view" it's interesting to notice how deserts, as well as oceans and seas or wide extensions of forests and ices, they all represent only a great distance to overcome in order to get connected to other human beings' communities.

They are only "territories to cross" let's say and they present for sure some difficulty for humans to live in.

What I'm trying to say it's that a conventional "political map of the world" is somehow mostly a "strategical map of the world", and by human point of view it's more interesting associating borders and countries only to the areas that are dwelled by humans. This gives a better idea of how human beings are connected, divided and organized.

For this reason I'm developing a "political map of the world" that considers only the regions with a medium-high density of population and that makes disappear the desert areas.

Here below you have a sample: the Americas, by counties; but only the populated regions. 

Someone could say that's not correct to do this because even if sparsely populated regions are almost desert, there are still people living there, and they are also citizens of their respective countries.
That's true, for sure, but it's also true that the "presence" of the central government of a nation is more loose in areas in which nature is still the real power.
In these terms, human organizations count less in almost desert lands, it's for this reason that I just overlapped a map of population density of the Americas, with a conventional political map of the same continents.

The result is really interesting to me. It makes also clearer some population proportions and some internal human dynamics of several countries.
For example the presence of Canada is really small. Indeed the population of this country is much smaller than others (this is something that is difficult to notice in a typical political map of the world).
It's also interesting to notice how some regions of Mexico or Brazil are like "far islands" for the main core of the nation, but they are very near to the border of some other country (the USA or Peru, for instance) and this makes clear that for the inhabitants of these areas the influence of the nearer human community is stronger than the feeling of union with the rest of their own nation, in some case.

These analysis are really interesting, and I strongly suggest you to watch carefully any detail of this map in order to notice new surprising connections and disconnections that a conventional map never shows.

Further on I will finish my world map with the same concept.
I hope you liked it

beyond the south

If you just have a look to the previous post "looking south" you can find interesting geographic notions about the countries that have direct connection to Antarctica through the oceans, just going southward.
That's already quite interesting for someone interested in geo-stuffs, but what about the connections between countries beyond the south pole, that is, crossing Antarctica?

That's even more interesting!
And it's also something that captain Shackleton studied very well, for sure!
I mean, that's something that's generally difficult to visualise in an intuitive way when you look at a conventional two-dimensional map of the world: in almost all the typical world map representations the north-pole and the south-pole are open and deformed into the top edge and the bottom edge of the map.
But in reality these edges are just two points that you can cross when you follow a north (or south) perfect line. And what's beyond this point? Back to the world map! A anti-intuitive connection is now linking two countries that appear very far in the world map!

The south-pointing-line that we drew starting from an aleatory shore point in a casual country of the world, is going down in the map until it touches the bottom edge of the map, and it pops up again from another point of the map, this time going northward, and finally touching another shore line of another country.

And which country is in connection with which other country?
That can be quite interesting, indeed: for example, did you know that starting from almost every Indian shore and going south, crossing the south-pole and going straight forward you'll reach Mexico?
Here you have the southern-connection map of the world! Have a look it's interesting!

Sometimes the connections are so anti-intuitive that maybe it could be better using another map to better understand how these connections are possible.
If you look at the following map (that's simply a deformation of the previous one) you'll easily understand how these countries are connected beyond the south pole.
Enjoy the trip!

looking south

Poor Antarctica continent!
Always forgotten, sometimes it even doesn't appear in the conventional maps of the world...
And when it's there, below all the other continents... it's such a strange shape... a broken white stripe crossing all the bottom of the image.
We all know that Antarctica is not a stripe: it's instead a sort of circle with a long tentacle almost reaching South America.
But when we look at a map of Antarctica, with its real shape, we generally lose all the references with the rest of the world! where's Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania? We generally have just the reference of South America, due to its proximity to the Antarctic Peninsula.

So... which lands face Antarctica's shores?
That's an interesting question, that can be turned upside down in this way: which coasts look directly to Antarctica when they point southwards? ...and of which countries?

Here you have the answer finally!
It's an answer that helps us to better understand the relative position of Antarctica inside our planets!

So, did you noticed that Mexico is one of the countries that faces the most to Antarctica when someone looks southwards from its west shores?
Also Denmark (Greenland, indeed) and Iceland have their own shores directly connected to the most-southern-continent on Earth.
And also France, but this is just thanks to its colonies around the world.

Here you have a more global map showing the world connections of Antarctica:

Or if you prefer a more conventional way to represent our planet, we can say the same thing this way:

Italy's regional populations