Topologist's Map of the World | Hacker News Reader

Topologist's Map of the World

futilitycloset.com

134 pointsbeardyw42 comments

It is remarkable how much it resembles the medieval T&O maps, including putting Jerusalem and the Mediterranean at the center of the world. (Which is what Mediterranean means.) And the East at the top (where we get "orient" from).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_and_O_map

I am sure they knew that and the allusion is deliberate.

The obvious link between the two maps is neither has much concept of landmass size.The Americas are unknown in the first and unsatisfying imbalanced in the later map (Belize & El Salvadore, something must be done!). With all that in mind, it seems possible it could be a coincidence driven by similar constraints on both maps.

The only choice here seems to be whether the containing shape is a circle, a triangle or a square.

"Orient" does not have anything to do with the top of the map. It refers to the rising of the sun ("oriens" in Latin means "rising", from orior, and "occidens" means "setting" when referring to the sun). Fun fact, the Greek word for orior is ἀνατέλλω and is where we ultimately get the word "Anatolia" from, since for the Greeks that's where the sun rises.

This is moderately popular misconception which seems to be prevalent in English-speaking sources. Latin "mediterraneus" means simply between-lands.

And "orient" is not "top" as other commenter already noticed.

Since the creation of that map Canada and Denmark have gained a border (Hans Island). That barely registers on any traditional map but would dramatically rearrange this.

EDIT: Or maybe it wouldn’t? I don’t see Russia’s border with Lithuania and Poland reflected (due to Kaliningrad) so maybe only the “main” part of a country is considered?

Looking at the author’s Reddit post apparently things like exclaves were intentionally omitted for simplicity’s sake.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/gxwn5r/oc_the_topo...

Still doesn’t explain some things, like, why is Singapore (an island) shown on the map as having a border with Malaysia? Other countries connected by bridge or causeway (Denmark and Sweden, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain) aren’t shown as sharing a border.

You just opened my mind. I was absolutely convinced that Singapore did share a land border somewhere.

> apparently things like exclaves were intentionally omitted for simplicity’s sake.

That may not be just for simplicity’s sake. If you include “things like enclaves”, the graph may not be planar.

For example, Belgium, France, Germany and the Kingdom of the Netherlands all border each other (France and the Netherlands on Saint Martin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin_(island)), so if you take ”the Kingdom of the Netherlands” as a node, you can’t draw the graph on a plane.

An alternative is to see the countries of the Netherlands and St. Maarten as separate; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands). That would remove this counterexample, but others may exist.

Love that list of the internet's favourite exclaves. (Ignoring French Guyana counts as a crime, though.)

There's some simplification. I was initially puzzled about why it was United Kingdom and not Great Britain, as part of UK is on the island of Ireland. Also absent are countries that aren't fully independent, the largest being Greenland. Singapore is plain wrong. It doesn't share a land border with Malaysia.

The map also disregards the Dutch/French border on Sint Maarten/Saint Martin, or the UK/Spain one at Gibraltar. In fact, I can't find the Dutch Caribbean anywhere. So I guess a lot of those small islands and borders were just ignored.

If you like this, you may like "Guess the countries just from what borders what" https://wilf.live/worldgraph/ (HN submission by the author wolfred: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44604511 sadly without too much traction 3 points | July 2025 | 2 comments)

[spoiler alert] Try finding Canada

Canada was my first guess, and I was able to get the rest of the Western hemisphere after that. I'm looking now for Portugal which i think should be pretty obvious, but I must be missing something.

Edit. Also, I was wondering why there was no French Guyana, but being part of France means it's not a separate country. However, in that case France should share a border with Brazil. I wonder what other such quirks are in this map.

In addition to sharing a land border with Brazil and Suriname (via French Guiana), France also shares a land border with the Netherlands… on the island of St Martin/Sint Maarten.

Also, there's a new land border between Canada and Denmark, and not depicted on this map, since the border did not formally come into existence until 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island#Resolution

I had a different strategy, starting with lots of connections, so I found Russia and China first. Albeit playing with a lot of mistakes.

I just did my first second-hand inference and it was satisfying. Turkey borders Bulgaria and Greece, don't know which is which, but those two both border North Macedonia, which was a correct guess.

I can't find Portugal. I expect

  Portugal----Spain-+-----------+-France----[Many ¿7?]≡≡≡≡[Whatever, I give up]
                     \-Andorra-/

but I can't find it.

I think the map in the main article and the graph in the game ignore exclaves and other weird topological parts of countries, but they may be ignoring or counting them in different ways.

Spain has another land border.

Oh! They included Morocco but not the United Kingdom. an interesting editorial decision.

Anecdote time: A few years ago we made a math exposition and we wanted to show something about the Four Color Theorem. We were advice to not use a real map, because each country has their own claims and somebody somewhere may complain.

>They included Morocco but not the United Kingdom

Yes that confused me too. If they included Morocco, then France should border Brazil and Suriname.

I was wondering a few days ago, if for teaching geography, one might collect compelling images/stories, which combined, might weave a familiarity with the layout of the planet?

Commonplace, is Earth having a water hemisphere, and landed one. Or the now-distant but coupled shapes of South America and Africa. The rumpled bedsheets of the Indian plate collision. Then there's a green crescent of green China, SE Asia, and India, curved around a contrasting desert China and the Stans. Maybe China/Mongolia as a wedge inserted between Russian and SE Asia plus India, poking the Stans, injecting Silk Roads towards the Seas. The Blue Banana of Europe. Ring of Fire. Great Plains topographic funneling and tornados. Africa now desert and green, was khaki/green and less green, and Last Glacial Maximum was desert and dry.

TFA map is another.

Thoughts?

The Netherlands and France share a border on the island of Saint Martin

France also borders Suriname and Brazil at French Guiana, Spain borders the UK at Gibraltar (and Morocco at Ceuta and Melilla)… there’s lots of pub-quiz-winning ones sprinkled about!

The map clearly says that it ignores exclaves.

If the map ignores exclaves why does the UK border Ireland?

Northern Ireland isn't an exclave.

By the “connected via territorial waters” rule, neither is Ceuta.

Probably would have made the diagram a lot messier, though.

Curiously, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is capitalized eSwatini, as if it is an e-commerce site.

In siSwati it is known as eSwatini

Thanks for helping me discover subreddit mapporn :) https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/1IhrEkVXn7

Notably Oman, and Iran border seperate bodies of water.

That would make things a lot simpler.

[Edit, I stand corrected, there's a little bit that goes up to Iran and nips off a corner)]

I really like this and may have to try to make a poster.

Reminds me of some custom Diplomacy maps

This is super cool. I'd love to see it in a vintage style like that of old T-O maps!

Seems incomplete? Like several island nations are missing (e.g. Bahrain).

Albania and Bosnia share a small border

I don't think that's true and Googling for it didn't come up with anything. Croatia and Montenegro do share a border but that must run afoul of the map creator's "no exclaves" rule as that bit of Croatia isn't contiguous with the rest of Croatia.

Yourube search for strange borders. The number of enclaves is staggering. Upon further inspection... fail.

The map explicitly says that it ignores exclaves.

There's another version of this where the islands are placed in a more natural way nearer to their continental neighbours:

https://kottke.org/22/12/the-topologists-map-of-the-world

To be fair, in topology there’s no concept of distance.

A zionist map is one where Israel is in the center.

The Middle East really is in the center of the Europe-Asia-Africa land mass though. Also Egypt is more centered.

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