We don’t feature maps all that often, because a map is a map is a map, but this effort deserves a closer look.

You can thank Sukhmani Mantel of Rhodes University and Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley of Swansea University for this gem. Sure, some of you have already tuned out, but I’m forging ahead.

Created after seeing a similar effort mapping out America’s river system, Sukhmani created a South African version, with Quartz reporting that it “went viral” on Facebook.

There’s no exact metric for what is considered going viral, but in terms of maps, this was a smash hit.

The map was shared thousands of times in the months after it was posted on Facebook. A high-resolution version was accessed more than 2000 times in five months by people from 48 countries, many of them outside southern Africa.

These figures may not sound high in a world of viral online content. But, as researchers who are not necessarily used to such abundant public engagement, we were so surprised by the response that we asked those interested in downloading the map to complete a surveyso that we could begin to better understand what it was about the map that sparked their interest.

According to the survey, people found the map helpful and aesthetically pleasing, which led to the relative virality of the post.

You can see that high-res version here, and if you click on the image below, a larger version will open:

Come on, that is a pretty cool map.

Surely that beats another story about Harry, Meghan or some other member of the Royal Family?

[source:quartz]