What is the size of Yemen? (2024)
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Yemen's official land area is 100,000 sq km too large due to a 100-year-old data error.
An author traced Yemen's borders on Google Maps and got 456,000 sq km, versus the commonly cited 555,000. The discrepancy stems from two compounded errors: North Yemen's 195,000 sq km figure originated from a 1904 encyclopedia entry for the Ottoman Yemen Vilayet, which was much larger than the independent state. South Yemen's 332,968 sq km figure came from a 1976 World Bank report that double-counted the Thamud district. When these inflated numbers were summed after unification in 1990, the erroneous total propagated to Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook, and the UN.
What commenters are saying
Commenters were fascinated by the persistence of this error, calling it 'an AI hallucination in slow motion' and noting that 'human civilisation is built on such lies'. Several pointed out that undefined borders in the Rub al-Khali desert likely contributed to early mismeasurements. One commenter noted that a Yemeni government document from 2005 with a correct area was found days after the article posted, and Wikipedia was updated. Others drew parallels to similar errors in budgets, projections, and scientific literature, with one citing Deming's principle that there is no single correct measurement, only outcomes of chosen methods.