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This map is not upside down

maps.com

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Re: This map is not upside down

#121

Post by paxys »

jmkd wrote: post #102

Maps should have east at the top for a few reasons: 1. The sun (and moon and planets and many stars) rises in the east. 2. The east represents what is to come. This manifests in natural (day / night cycles) and cultural (timezones / dateline) aspects. 3. Orienting a map to such an easy to locate (day or night) direction requires no compass or other technology. 4. Orienting a map with such an impactful direction at th…

From our perspective the sun doesn't travel top to bottom, so why orient the map that way?

Re: This map is not upside down

#122

Post by zokier »

yongjik wrote: post #34

Another fun arbitrary thing is which meridian you decide to cut, because the earth is round. If you do an image search for, say, "world atlas," you'll see all the maps have cut the Pacific in half, so the West Pacific is at the right edge and the East Pacific is at the left edge of the map. Now, if you search for, say, "세계전도", then you'll see that most maps have cut the Atlantic in half, because otherwise kids (for w…

While technically choice of prime meridian is arbitrary, there is a particular cartographic reason to prefer so called Florence meridian, as it minimizes interruption of land masses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_meridian

Re: This map is not upside down

#123

Post by grues-dinner »

alberth wrote: post #77

Some trivia: the North Pole is actually the magnetic south pole. Out of convention we call it the “North Pole” because on a compass the north magnet is point toward its attract magnetic south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole

I think in this case the concept of North came first and which end of a magnet points that way came second. Compasses are old, but not as old as the sunrise/set, which are (presumably) the original vaguely universal directions and define all four cardinal directions.

Re: This map is not upside down

#124

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #85

Putting the north at the top was an artifact of the need to select a standard orientation when the printing press enabled mass production of maps. It was going to be north or south, thanks to the widespread existence of the magnetic compass at the time, and the printing press was invented by people in the north.

The word "orientation" literally means pointing towards the rising sun i.e. East.

Re: This map is not upside down

#125

Post by Martin_Silenus »

Yeah, sure, I've heard that before... master/slave, black/white lists... and now, north/south. I wonder what they'll come up with now to explain reading from left to right (don't even think about the majority of right-handed writers, that would ruin the fun).

".snoitnevnoc fo yticilpmis eht dnihneb noitnetni neddih a eb ot dnuob si erehT"

Re: This map is not upside down

#126

Post by timeon »

daedrdev wrote: post #36

This map feels confusing because Canada, Russia, Greenland and antarctica are the same color, I feel like they should not be the same and antarctica should not be a country color

Some countries do not even have same color for whole area in that map.

Re: This map is not upside down

#127

Post by dylan604 »

bluGill wrote: post #56
throw-the-towel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the address department: Europe numbers houses roughly sequentially along the whole street, while the Americas (generally) assign house numbers based on the distance to the beginning of the block. And BTW, in the old towns of Sweden and Finland blocks do have names!

Sometimes. I know of places in america where numbers are sequential. I know of other places where they a sequential but increase by five.

I haven't seen the increase by five, but by twos when the odds/evens are separated across the street from each other. 101's next door neighbor is 103 while 102 is across the street next door to 104.

Re: This map is not upside down

#128

Post by bee_rider »

I get the philosophical idea of challenging our default assumptions and remember people who are’t right in the middle of our conventional map. Good thing to do, sure.

But, the fact that Africa and South America are pointy on their southern sides makes these kind of maps look awkward and bad IMO. It is like adjusting a paragraph so that the extra white space is in the first, instead of the last, line. Or putting the shortest line of a multi line function definition at the top, instead of the bottom.

We’ve all seen ragged-right and ragged-left typesetting, but never ragged-top.

Re: This map is not upside down

#130

Post by jandrewrogers »

jmkd wrote: post #102

Maps should have east at the top for a few reasons: 1. The sun (and moon and planets and many stars) rises in the east. 2. The east represents what is to come. This manifests in natural (day / night cycles) and cultural (timezones / dateline) aspects. 3. Orienting a map to such an easy to locate (day or night) direction requires no compass or other technology. 4. Orienting a map with such an impactful direction at th…

There are many ways to accurately determine north that have been known since antiquity. A magnetic compass was but one method of many.

Also, where the sun rises and sets varies enormously over the year. Using the sun to determine north (e.g. shadow-stick method) is more reliable.

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