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I wonder how many times I missed similar things just because the perspective was different than I'm used to.
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What did maps from China look like around then? I assume they'd center their continent somehow
They still do. Took those pictures a few days ago in China: https://gist.github.com/olalonde/d293e54c46143c3dd905da4c0eb...
Since it's a globe you could also have North on the left and with on the right. Right?
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There is nothing cultural about an individual's ability to write with their right hand. Studies have been conducted on this subject: it is a physiological/neurological factor (which also applies to other parts of the human body). I know this because, well... I'm a left-handed writer and it interested me at one point (strangely enough, I find it very difficult to throw something with my left hand; and I'm right-handed…
In the past, left handed people were sometimes punished and forced to write with the other hand. Their right handed writing was an artifact of that culture.
Sure. But that does not define a person as a right-handed writer. That's precisely why I wrote "individual's ABILITY to write with their right hand".
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They link this[1] article, which I don't plan to read. I, too, rolled my eyes. 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/194855061140104...
I read it and their methodology is embarassingly bad, especially for the kind of study that can be done en masse so easily (heck, a Twitter poll would be more useful). N=28, where all were undergraduates, and 24 were women. Could easily be influenced by the college campus, location, student housing, etc. It's literally the kind of project you'd do in middle school for a science fair. Absolutely terrible study. Full p…
Studies of American college students to prove some sort of universal rule about human psychology.
There’s embarrassing papers that get published in every field but social sciences is where they always try and put a moralistic element in as well.
Sigh.
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I’m not sure it’s arbitrary. For one, starting at the top and ending at the bottom is natural progress of things because of gravity. I’m not sure if that means anything, but down-to-up seems very unnatural (of coure I can’t ignore my cultural biases). Is there any writing systems like that?
Gravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”. It’s all arbitrary.
Others have made a possibly more relevant point - in one direction, your arm/hand will block what you have already written.
My favorite is the Dymaxion projection created by Bucky Fuller. It shows all seven continents as one roughly contiguous chain of islands from Australia to Antarctica, surrounded by a giant ocean. It's no more or less correct than "north up" projections. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Dymaxion...
Honorary mention to one of the officials maps of Argentina https://www.ign.gob.ar/gallery-app/mapas-escolares-202307/me...
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(Apple Maps won't work here because it uses a globe.)
