

Ask HN: Why is North associated with 'Up'? - theSage

Why is the &#x27;North&#x27; associated with &#x27;Up&#x27; in maps? A world map turned upside down would be disorienting but correct. Why do we draw North in the upper part? Is there any reason other than convention?
======
dalke
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/441/on-maps-why-
is-...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/441/on-maps-why-is-north-
always-up) and [http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-
cartograph...](http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-
cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html) seem to cover the topic
pretty well. Is there anything you want that a web search on the topic fails
to resolve?

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timonoko
"Lintukoto" (Home of the birds) was a warm place where earth raises to meet
the sky. It was southwest from Finland and up. And of course "Tuonela" (Home
of the dead) was northeast and down.

------
gmuslera
Probably one of the oldest ways of orientation were the stars, in particular
the north one, that is more or less fixed in the sky, and it was up.

So probably the first maps (and the ones coming after them) followed that
idea.

~~~
dalke
That's a post hoc justification, without historical basis.

The earliest Egyptian maps show south at the top of the map.

European maps in the Middle Ages used east. Not only does the sun rise in the
east, but east was important in Christianity; eg, churches were built facing
the rising sun and people buried with their head towards the sun. We get our
term 'to orient' from the importance of knowing where east is.

At
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana)
you can see an Arab map from 1154, with north at the bottom. "It remained the
most accurate world map for the next three centuries."

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
Egyptian Maps show the South as Up as that matches the flow of the Nile, Upper
Egypt in the South, Lower Egypt in the North....

------
ZoeZoeBee
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
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_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Anglo-
Saxon_Cotton_world_map_.28c._1040.29)

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-
Kas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#Mahmud_al-
Kashgari.27s_map_.281072.29) .

Chinese map from the 2nd century BC with south at the top -
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdu...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Han_Mawangdui_Silk_Map.JPG)

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
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
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-
cartograph...](http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-
cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html) . 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
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
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-
medieva...](http://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/28/ten-beautiful-medieval-
maps/) : 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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Search_for_the_source_of_the_Nile)
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?

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
Dude You're really not worth wasting time over... As far as provably incorecct
about the wikipedia page, Anglo-Saxon map is the URL from that list.... Good
for you that you added one which was not.....

The Nile flowed from South to the North Egyptians oriented that way, most of
the maps from antiquity are oriented to the flow of water Rivers in
specific....

~~~
dalke
My apologies, in this you are correct. I confused Matthew Paris’ map of Great
Britain with the Anglo-Saxon map.

For the other things, you are not correct.

Like I said, different cultures from the northern hemisphere had different
conventions. The European ones in the Middle Ages had east at the top. The
Arabic ones had south at the top. The Greek ones based on Ptolemy, as you say,
had north at the top.

You keep mentioning the flow of rivers, but have yet to present any evidence
that that was a universal reason. All you do is repeat yourself.

Given all of the European maps with east at the top - I listed several, from
several different countries - which rivers are they aligned with?

For example, the Wikipedia page describing why a "T and O map" (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_and_O_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_and_O_map)
) is made with east at the top says nothing about the flow of any river in
explaining the layout.

