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North is up because most of human's civilizations especially the Western ones have occurred in the Northern hemisphere, where water generally flows south "down"

North is up because most of human's civilizations especially the Western ones have occurred in the Northern hemisphere, where water generally flows south "down" towards the equator. So in Egypt where the Nile Flows North, the Upper Nile is in Southern Africa, while the Lower Nile is in the North.

dalke 11y ago
That doesn't explain why many Northern hemisphere civilizations had south or east at the top of the map. For examples: Arab map from 1154 with south at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana Anglo-Saxon map from c. 1040 with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Anglo-Saxon_Cotton_world_map_.28c._1040.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Anglo-Saxon_C... Map from Spain, ca. 1050 with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map Another Middle Ages European map with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalter_world_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalter_world_map Turkish map from 1072 with east, or perhaps midsummer sunrise, at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mahmud_al-Kashgari.27s_map_.281072.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mahmud_al-Kas... . Chinese map from the 2nd century BC with south at the top - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdui_Silk_Map.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdu...
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  Did you simply google maps with south at top and post the links, as with anything throughout history there are outliers, but for the most part Western Civilizations above the Equator View North as Up and South as Down because that is the way the water generally Flows towards the equator, because of gravity. Do you find it at all odd the maps you provided are almost all of cities and regions and not a worldview? Also those maps especially your Chinese, Spanish and Anglo Saxon Maps are oriented to the flow of the water source they are representing....
  - dalke 11y ago
    Did you do simply believe that I was cherry picking my data or did you try to confirm my statements first? Why do you believe I used outliers, other than that it disagrees with your personal beliefs? In my parallel comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143709 you'll see the link I gave to http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartograph... . Quoting from it: > There is nothing inevitable or intrinsically correct — not in geographic, cartographic or even philosophical terms — about the north being represented as up, because up on a map is a human construction, not a natural one. Some of the very earliest Egyptian maps show the south as up, presumably equating the Nile’s northward flow with the force of gravity. And there was a long stretch in the medieval era when most European maps were drawn with the east on the top. If there was any doubt about this move’s religious significance, they illuminated it with their maps’ pious illustrations, whether of Adam and Eve or Christ enthroned. In the same period, Arab map makers often drew maps with the south facing up, possibly because this was how the Chinese did it. You asked "Do you find it at all odd the maps you provided are almost all of cities and regions and not a worldview? " No. As you can see from the dates, all of them are pre-Columbus, so can at best be the known world, excluding Australia and the Americas. To you it's a region, to them it was the world. As that link further explains: > Things changed with the age of exploration. Like the Renaissance, this era didn’t start in Northern Europe. It began in the Mediterranean, somewhere between Europe and the Arab world. In the 14th and 15th centuries, increasingly precise navigational maps of the Mediterranean Sea and its many ports called Portolan charts appeared. They were designed for use by mariners navigating the sea’s trade routes with the help of a recently adopted technology, the compass. These maps had no real up or down — pictures and words faced in all sorts of directions, generally pointing inward from the edge of the map — but they all included a compass rose with north clearly distinguished from the other directions. I chose pre-age-of-exploration maps to demonstrate that there isn't an obvious preference for "top is north". The introduction of the compass helped increase cross-culture diffusion, which helps standardize on a direction. Even then, and continuing to quote: > But this is only part of the explanation. The arrow of the compass can just as easily point south, since the magnetized metal needle simply aligns with the earth’s magnetic field, with a pole at each end. Indeed, the Chinese supposedly referred to their first compass magnets as south-pointing stones. Crucially, the Chinese developed this convention before they began to use compasses for navigation at sea. While on the other hand Europeans had sea travel first, with the North Star for guidance. "Many mariners saw the compass as an artificial replacement for the star on cloudy nights and even assumed it was the pull of the star itself that drew the needle north." However, it wasn't until "men like Gerardus Mercator, Henricus Martellus Germanus and Martin Waldseemuller" in the 1500s, who "were obsessed with Ptolemy", that maps started to be aligned with the north, and based on latitude and longitude. P.S. Do you really think the ancient Greeks like Ptolemy and Eratosthenes believed that the Nile flowed to the equator when they knew the mouth of the Nile was north of the Equator? Do you have any evidence that "rivers flow down and down is south" was in people's heads before the convention that up = north? Did the Russians on the Ob and the Germans on the Rhine have an inverted convention? P.P.S. Regarding "your Chinese, Spanish and Anglo Saxon Maps are oriented to the flow of the water source they are representing" - which water sources are you referring to? The biggest water in the Anglo Saxon map and the Beatus Map (from Spain) is the Mediterranean.

dalke 11y ago

That doesn't explain why many Northern hemisphere civilizations had south or east at the top of the map. For examples: Arab map from 1154 with south at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana Anglo-Saxon map from c. 1040 with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Anglo-Saxon_Cotton_world_map_.28c._1040.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Anglo-Saxon_C... Map from Spain, ca. 1050 with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_map Another Middle Ages European map with east at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalter_world_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalter_world_map Turkish map from 1072 with east, or perhaps midsummer sunrise, at the top - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mahmud_al-Kashgari.27s_map_.281072.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mahmud_al-Kas... . Chinese map from the 2nd century BC with south at the top - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdui_Silk_Map.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdu...

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
Did you simply google maps with south at top and post the links, as with anything throughout history there are outliers, but for the most part Western Civilizations above the Equator View North as Up and South as Down because that is the way the water generally Flows towards the equator, because of gravity. Do you find it at all odd the maps you provided are almost all of cities and regions and not a worldview? Also those maps especially your Chinese, Spanish and Anglo Saxon Maps are oriented to the flow of the water source they are representing....
- dalke 11y ago
  Did you do simply believe that I was cherry picking my data or did you try to confirm my statements first? Why do you believe I used outliers, other than that it disagrees with your personal beliefs? In my parallel comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143709 you'll see the link I gave to http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartograph... . Quoting from it: > There is nothing inevitable or intrinsically correct — not in geographic, cartographic or even philosophical terms — about the north being represented as up, because up on a map is a human construction, not a natural one. Some of the very earliest Egyptian maps show the south as up, presumably equating the Nile’s northward flow with the force of gravity. And there was a long stretch in the medieval era when most European maps were drawn with the east on the top. If there was any doubt about this move’s religious significance, they illuminated it with their maps’ pious illustrations, whether of Adam and Eve or Christ enthroned. In the same period, Arab map makers often drew maps with the south facing up, possibly because this was how the Chinese did it. You asked "Do you find it at all odd the maps you provided are almost all of cities and regions and not a worldview? " No. As you can see from the dates, all of them are pre-Columbus, so can at best be the known world, excluding Australia and the Americas. To you it's a region, to them it was the world. As that link further explains: > Things changed with the age of exploration. Like the Renaissance, this era didn’t start in Northern Europe. It began in the Mediterranean, somewhere between Europe and the Arab world. In the 14th and 15th centuries, increasingly precise navigational maps of the Mediterranean Sea and its many ports called Portolan charts appeared. They were designed for use by mariners navigating the sea’s trade routes with the help of a recently adopted technology, the compass. These maps had no real up or down — pictures and words faced in all sorts of directions, generally pointing inward from the edge of the map — but they all included a compass rose with north clearly distinguished from the other directions. I chose pre-age-of-exploration maps to demonstrate that there isn't an obvious preference for "top is north". The introduction of the compass helped increase cross-culture diffusion, which helps standardize on a direction. Even then, and continuing to quote: > But this is only part of the explanation. The arrow of the compass can just as easily point south, since the magnetized metal needle simply aligns with the earth’s magnetic field, with a pole at each end. Indeed, the Chinese supposedly referred to their first compass magnets as south-pointing stones. Crucially, the Chinese developed this convention before they began to use compasses for navigation at sea. While on the other hand Europeans had sea travel first, with the North Star for guidance. "Many mariners saw the compass as an artificial replacement for the star on cloudy nights and even assumed it was the pull of the star itself that drew the needle north." However, it wasn't until "men like Gerardus Mercator, Henricus Martellus Germanus and Martin Waldseemuller" in the 1500s, who "were obsessed with Ptolemy", that maps started to be aligned with the north, and based on latitude and longitude. P.S. Do you really think the ancient Greeks like Ptolemy and Eratosthenes believed that the Nile flowed to the equator when they knew the mouth of the Nile was north of the Equator? Do you have any evidence that "rivers flow down and down is south" was in people's heads before the convention that up = north? Did the Russians on the Ob and the Germans on the Rhine have an inverted convention? P.P.S. Regarding "your Chinese, Spanish and Anglo Saxon Maps are oriented to the flow of the water source they are representing" - which water sources are you referring to? The biggest water in the Anglo Saxon map and the Beatus Map (from Spain) is the Mediterranean.