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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 Civilizat

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.
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  You simply grabbed a list called "Early world maps" off of wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps and cherry picked images, without even applying a hypothesis. The flow of the water refers to the flow of the Rivers on the maps, you sure type a lot for not being able to refute anything..... The maps all generally are oriented to the flow of water. The Nile Begins its flow South of the Equator and flows towards it before emptying in the nearest large body of water, the Mediterranean. The Egyptians based their orientation on the Flow of the Nile... The ancients were quite aware of the shape of the earth and the flow of water at least Archimedes and Ptolemy were.....
  - dalke 11y ago
    Do you have any evidence to back your statements? They appear to me to be personal beliefs which are at odds with my understanding of the development of cartography. So far all you've done is repeat yourself. My hypothesis is that different northern hemisphere civilizations used different conventions to orient the map. For example, the primary convention for Middle Ages Europe was that east is at the top of the map. This is well attested. See not only the links I gave but the following links: http://www.turkeyinmaps.com/Medieval.html http://www.turkeyinmaps.com/Medieval.html shows 8 medieval maps. 1) The T-O map of Isidore, "east is towards the top of the map, 2) Beatus World Map, "The east is to the top of the map", 3) World Map of A-Idrisi, "the south is oriented to the top of the map", 4) Ebstorf Mappamundi where the map is "superimposed on a background of the figure of Christ crucified; with His head at the top (East), His feet at the bottom (West) and His hands pointing North and South, an orientation that dominated medieval European cartography" (click on the map for that description; emphasis mine), 5) Hereford Mappamundi, "As previously mentioned, East is at the top of the map", 6) Vesconte Mappamundi, "circular in format and oriented with East to the top", 7) Higden World Map, "oriented with East at the top", and 8) The Catalan Atlas (likely north; the link says it was a portolan chart, 'intended to lie on the chart-table of a ship and always was oriented to the necessities of navigation, thus there is no 'orientation of priority' of such maps. ... however, as the legends that are legible prevail in north-orientation, in the modern literature of the maps the north-orientation is now adopted.) So that one page shows 6 east-as-top maps, 1 south-as-top, and 1 north-as-top. Another link is http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/28/ten-beautiful-medieval-maps/ http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/28/ten-beautiful-medieva... : 1) Madaba Mosaic Map, which Wikipedia says is 'not oriented northwards, like modern maps, but faces east towards the altar in such a fashion that the position of places on the map coincides with the actual compass directions.' 2) The T-O Map of Isidore of Seville (east, as already mentioned), 3) Saint Beatus of Liébana (east, as already mentioned), 4) Tabula Rogeriana (which I previously commented was an Arab map with south at the top), 5) Matthew Paris’ map of Great Britain (a regional map, with north at the top), 6) Hereford Mappa Mundi (already mentioned, with east at the top), 7) The Vinland Map (perhaps a forgery; north at the top), 8) The Maps of Piri Reis (another portolan chart with no preferred direction), 9) Carta Marina (north), and 10) The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, where the image given shows Sicily oriente with south at the top. That's 3 north-at-top maps out of 10. So, am I really cherry picking or are you simply incorrect about your understanding of cartographic history? I invite you to show me a list of other medieval European maps where a majority have north at the top. P.S. Your statement that I 'simply grabbed a list called "Early world maps" off of wikipedia' is provably incorrect. I also listed two maps (the early Western Han Dynasty map and the Psalter map) which are not on the "Early World Maps" page. Feel free to count for yourself the number of pre-Mercator maps on the 'Early world maps' which use a direction other than north for the top of the map. Your hypothesis is that few if any should have anything other than north at the top, but that's easily seen to be incorrect. Observational evidence so far is more in line with my hypothesis. P.P.S. You said " The Nile Begins its flow South of the Equator and flows towards it before emptying in the nearest large body of water, the Mediterranean." However, 1) water doesn't flow to the nearest large body of water but rather it flows downhill, and 2) while the headwaters of the Nile is at 2 degree south latitude, the largest nearby body of water after crossing the equator is the Indian Ocean, approximately 1000km away instead of 5000km. And did the Greeks know where the Nile began? Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Search_for_the_source_of_the_Nile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Search_for_the_source_of_... says that "no European of antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana", which is in Kenya, in the northern hemisphere. Why do you think the Greeks thought that Nile started from below the equator?

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.

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
You simply grabbed a list called "Early world maps" off of wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps and cherry picked images, without even applying a hypothesis. The flow of the water refers to the flow of the Rivers on the maps, you sure type a lot for not being able to refute anything..... The maps all generally are oriented to the flow of water. The Nile Begins its flow South of the Equator and flows towards it before emptying in the nearest large body of water, the Mediterranean. The Egyptians based their orientation on the Flow of the Nile... The ancients were quite aware of the shape of the earth and the flow of water at least Archimedes and Ptolemy were.....
- dalke 11y ago
  Do you have any evidence to back your statements? They appear to me to be personal beliefs which are at odds with my understanding of the development of cartography. So far all you've done is repeat yourself. My hypothesis is that different northern hemisphere civilizations used different conventions to orient the map. For example, the primary convention for Middle Ages Europe was that east is at the top of the map. This is well attested. See not only the links I gave but the following links: http://www.turkeyinmaps.com/Medieval.html http://www.turkeyinmaps.com/Medieval.html shows 8 medieval maps. 1) The T-O map of Isidore, "east is towards the top of the map, 2) Beatus World Map, "The east is to the top of the map", 3) World Map of A-Idrisi, "the south is oriented to the top of the map", 4) Ebstorf Mappamundi where the map is "superimposed on a background of the figure of Christ crucified; with His head at the top (East), His feet at the bottom (West) and His hands pointing North and South, an orientation that dominated medieval European cartography" (click on the map for that description; emphasis mine), 5) Hereford Mappamundi, "As previously mentioned, East is at the top of the map", 6) Vesconte Mappamundi, "circular in format and oriented with East to the top", 7) Higden World Map, "oriented with East at the top", and 8) The Catalan Atlas (likely north; the link says it was a portolan chart, 'intended to lie on the chart-table of a ship and always was oriented to the necessities of navigation, thus there is no 'orientation of priority' of such maps. ... however, as the legends that are legible prevail in north-orientation, in the modern literature of the maps the north-orientation is now adopted.) So that one page shows 6 east-as-top maps, 1 south-as-top, and 1 north-as-top. Another link is http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/28/ten-beautiful-medieval-maps/ http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/28/ten-beautiful-medieva... : 1) Madaba Mosaic Map, which Wikipedia says is 'not oriented northwards, like modern maps, but faces east towards the altar in such a fashion that the position of places on the map coincides with the actual compass directions.' 2) The T-O Map of Isidore of Seville (east, as already mentioned), 3) Saint Beatus of Liébana (east, as already mentioned), 4) Tabula Rogeriana (which I previously commented was an Arab map with south at the top), 5) Matthew Paris’ map of Great Britain (a regional map, with north at the top), 6) Hereford Mappa Mundi (already mentioned, with east at the top), 7) The Vinland Map (perhaps a forgery; north at the top), 8) The Maps of Piri Reis (another portolan chart with no preferred direction), 9) Carta Marina (north), and 10) The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, where the image given shows Sicily oriente with south at the top. That's 3 north-at-top maps out of 10. So, am I really cherry picking or are you simply incorrect about your understanding of cartographic history? I invite you to show me a list of other medieval European maps where a majority have north at the top. P.S. Your statement that I 'simply grabbed a list called "Early world maps" off of wikipedia' is provably incorrect. I also listed two maps (the early Western Han Dynasty map and the Psalter map) which are not on the "Early World Maps" page. Feel free to count for yourself the number of pre-Mercator maps on the 'Early world maps' which use a direction other than north for the top of the map. Your hypothesis is that few if any should have anything other than north at the top, but that's easily seen to be incorrect. Observational evidence so far is more in line with my hypothesis. P.P.S. You said " The Nile Begins its flow South of the Equator and flows towards it before emptying in the nearest large body of water, the Mediterranean." However, 1) water doesn't flow to the nearest large body of water but rather it flows downhill, and 2) while the headwaters of the Nile is at 2 degree south latitude, the largest nearby body of water after crossing the equator is the Indian Ocean, approximately 1000km away instead of 5000km. And did the Greeks know where the Nile began? Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Search_for_the_source_of_the_Nile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Search_for_the_source_of_... says that "no European of antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana", which is in Kenya, in the northern hemisphere. Why do you think the Greeks thought that Nile started from below the equator?