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Top marks for Ptolemy (I think that's the more usual spelling in English?) citations. But I think the point is that the Northeren Hemisphere gets its northern-n
by igravious 13y ago
Top marks for Ptolemy (I think that's the more usual spelling in English?) citations. But I think the point is that the Northeren Hemisphere gets its northern-ness from magnetic north or the pole star, correct? But what makes north be up/top and south be down/under? Vile European hegemony I tells ya. I jest. But do I? Also, obligatory Gall-Peter's Projection reference for maximum egalitarian cred: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection . Choice quote for cartography newbs: "The Mercator projection increasingly inflates the sizes of regions according to their distance from the equator. This inflation results, for example, in a representation of Greenland that is larger than Africa, whereas in reality Africa is 14 times as large. Since much of the technologically underdeveloped world lies near the equator, these countries appear smaller on a Mercator and therefore, according to Peters, seem less significant. On Peters's projection, by contrast, areas of equal size on the globe are also equally sized on the map."
- einhverfr 13y agoProbably the pole star first, but given the various directions maps were drawn for so long, it's hard to say that was a factor in the Middle Ages or even Roman times.
- einhverfr 13y agoBTW, one interesting read regarding medieval maps and knowledge of geography is "Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages: The Physical World before Colombus" by Rudolf Simek. It's expensive, so you may want to check libraries. However it is quite an impressive work, quite accessible, and deeply interesting. One of the more interesting points is that while Europeans were generally aware that the world was round since at least the 13th century (and monks from at least the 8th century) they thought it was impossible to sale across the equator until remarkably late. And the really revolutionary part of Columbus's voyages was that it destroyed the Augustinian view of people, since the Augustinian view was that if there were other continents, they must not be inhabited (because of only three sons of Noah meant only three inhabited continents).
- igravious 13y agoThank you, I'll check that Simek tome out. Think I mentioned this here before but never mind. Another great book about the whole round/flat debate (and much much more) is Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. Basically the ancient Greeks had this one all figured out - Aristarchus[1] "who presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it" I didn't know about the crossing the equator thing, nor did I know about the Augustinian view but it doesn't surprise me :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos