HAMBURG: More Europeans can pinpoint Iraq on the map, while only a fraction of Americans can find it, according to a new international geography assessment.

Swedes, followed by Germans and Italians, are best in geography while Americans rank next-to-last in the survey by RoperASW for the National Geographic Society, the society’s German branch announced on Wednesday.

The survey of 3,000 people between ages 18 and 24, revealed that only 13 per cent of Americans can find Iraq on a map. And just 12 per cent know where Afghanistan is located.

In contrast, 36 per cent of Germans in the survey know where Iraq is and nearly half — 49 per cent — can locate Afghanistan.

The rankings go as follows, with Sweden at the top, followed by Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Britain and Canada, with the US and Mexico at the bottom of the list.

However, even Europeans are weak when it comes to their Eastern European neighbours. Swedes and Germans are better acquainted with the location of Iraq and Iran than with Romania or Croatia.

Just 26 per cent of German respondents could find Bulgaria on a map of Europe. But they can take solace in the fact that only 19 per cent of US respondents could find Germany on the same map.

National Geographic Deutschland attributed the discrepancies to foreign-language proficiency.

In contrast, only 54 per cent of the French speak anything but French and only a little over a third of Britons or Americans speak anything but English.

The Japanese rank last, with just 19 per cent fluent in a foreign language, despite the fact that they, along with the Swedes and the Germans, travel more than anyone else.

The society said the globe-trotting of Swedes and Germans clearly boosts their skills in geography. In the past three years 92 per cent of Swedes and 77 per cent Germans travelled abroad. In the same period, only about one-third of Americans went abroad.—dpa