The Great Divide - Fantasy Version

[Jalyha]

It's the size of the mountains compared to both the size of the islands AND the waves at the shoreline.

Your mind automatically finds the largest and smallest readily visible image in an object and compares them - part of how we perceive distances in the big wide world

EDIT: And it seems like a continent due to the range of ginormous mountains swathed across the center ^.^

[Llannagh]

It's the size of the mountains compared to both the size of the islands AND the waves at the shoreline.

Your mind automatically finds the largest and smallest readily visible image in an object and compares them - part of how we perceive distances in the big wide world

Aaaaand I've learned something again. The logic of it is so obvious it almost punches you, but I never really thought of it like that.

Those wave lines, as you call them, in my head are shelf lines. To me the represent the continental shelves, gradually descending into the ocean. That sentence made no geograpgical sense whatsoever, I'm afraid, but you know what I mean! ...You know what I mean, right?

As to the mountains: Smaller looks better to me too. And as you said, that way you can add more detail, like valleys and passes and such.

[ravells]

It's the size of the mountains compared to both the size of the islands AND the waves at the shoreline.

Your mind automatically finds the largest and smallest readily visible image in an object and compares them - part of how we perceive distances in the big wide world

EDIT: And it seems like a continent due to the range of ginormous mountains swathed across the center ^.^

Great observation, Jalyha, but without an obvious scale the differences of size between the smallest and largest remain relative which takes us no further?

One possibility sort of along the same track, may be that it might have more to do us building up an internal framework of expectation from looking at lots of other maps in the past and (subconsciously) applying those to Diamond's map. So maybe it's a case of our minds saying something like 'In other maps I've seen where the waterlines are that big and the islands are that big and the coast is that fractalised, the mountains are usually smaller than the ones you have drawn.

I'm still not sure.