Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
The map above shows one history’s forgotten economic geography facts. Today we tend to think of South Korea as a economic miracle and North Korea as an economic basket case.
However, from the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948 up until the early 1970s, the North was actually richer than the South in per capita terms.
The maps below compare GDP growth of various countries between 2000 and 2025. The GDP data comes from the IMF via Wikipedia which states that:
“Figures are based on official exchange rates, not on the purchasing power parity (PPP) methodology. Values are given in millions of United States dollars (USD) and have not been adjusted for inflation.”
In total World GDP increased from $34 Trillion USD to $116 Trillion USD during this period a 240% increase!
The map above shows the huge difference in the size of the UK vs Japan’s highspeed rail networks in 1963 compared to 2025.
Given the UK’s invented passenger railways it seems even more strange. So why is the UK network’s so small compared to Japan’s?
This is shown alongside the approximate lifetime of Philo of Byzantium, who documented them and was alive when they all existed simultaneously.
And at the bottom you can see the relative height of each of them.
Dates in bold green indicate construction, while dates in dark red indicate destruction.
Here’s more about them:
You can see each map in more detail below, followed by an explanation.
Here’s a full explanation from Milos:
In many areas Germans made up to 95% of the population. So what happened?
To start in 1914 there was not Polish state and the Polish people were split between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.
For more on that process see:
The map was made by Helen McKenzie who has her own website here and has an online shop here.
Now if you aren’t from the UK, what is Nando’s?
The map above shows the wealthiest person on each continent, or at least those who disclose their wealth.
It’s a little crazy to me that the wealthiest person in Australia (population: 27 million; $1.88T GDP) is worth 3x more than the wealthiest person in Africa (1.5 billion; $2.82T GDP).
Here’s a list I compiled awhile ago of the top 200 billionaires in the world from the Forbes World Billionaires List for 2024. (note as share prices move so do net worth numbers, which is why they differ from the above)
