They might be bigger in terms of land but have an equal or smaller population than us. The Equestrians did not know about Canterbury despite sharing a border. That makes me think that most of their population might be along rivers and the coast which would leave the eastern side of their country either sparsely populated or completely empty wilderness. They might consider uninhabited lands they've explored theirs even if they never settled them.
I'm pretty sure it's been said that they never met Canterbury because of a lot of mountains and monster infested woods in the way and it would be rather weird for their territory to leave a blank spot on their map if that's what they were doing and for them to have never met whoever lives in that blank spot
I'm not talking about the blank spot but the Equestrian territory near it. There's a good chance that most of that land is wilderness and the Equestrians don't know what is beyond that. Kinda like Louisiana Territory when the U.S. first purchased it. We would tell other countries that it's ours and that's what the maps would say even though we wouldn't have any people living there and had not completely explored it. I suspect that Equestrian territory only covers as much land as it does because Equestrian explorers would survey a patch of land, not find anyone, and claim it for Equestria because they got there first. I think they just went south along the coast calling dibs on everything until they found the buffalo. Then they turned their attention north to Storm Country.
The issue is if that was the case then there wouldn't be a blank spot because it would be theit territory on the map and they couldn't know what it looked like without sending people to scout it
Again I'm not talking about the blank spot but the Equestrian territory near it. I doubt they have any idea what's in the blank spot and Equestria's borders on the map are just how far their own explorers went.
Exactly! So Equestria being big on the map doesn't neccessarily mean that their country is actually 'bigger' than ours since we have no idea if they are even using most of that land much in the same way that the protectorate looks big on the map but is really just one city and maybe a few small villages.
You're missing my point, if Equestria is just filling in any space on the map that they know about and there aren't any other inhabitants as belonging to them even if they're not really inhabited then there should not be a blank spot to begin with
There would be a blank spot because they don't know what is there or if it is inhabited. I'm not saying that they are just randomly filling in the map. I'm saying that they might have been redrawing their borders as they survey new land, so much of their territory might be sparsely populated or uninhabited. If they didn't encounter the yetis then they'd probably consider Storm Country part of Equestria too even if no one wanted to live there.
But in order for it to be on the map they have to have been there at least somewhat and if they found this big empty space with nobody living in it then they definitely would have taken advantage of it
these are our maps were looking at. as far as we can tell, they didn't know about it until we came along. It was probably marked "unknown / unexplored". they know where their borders are rn, and that there is more land out past it, but they haven't explored it yet. Here be dragons kind of thing, y'know?
Except it's not our maps, those are the maps we got from Equestria when we met them showing their and the Buffaloes territory
Ponies are lazy?
my bad in that case. still, could be a we know theres something there, but we don't know what is there
But it's too clearly designated an area to just be random and if they knew that something was there then they would have mentioned it
Small seeds and insects versus larger prey. It's a diet thing.
