The article does get to my base assumptions, but it takes awhile. (1) North Star was what people navigated by first, so would orient maps to that regardless of which way the words were written -- so people started writing the words to fit. (2) Compasses, pick north or south for same reason. North was picked because we were already using the North Star.
It all just makes so much better intuitive sense than a "Conspiracy of Northern European Hegemony"
I don't think it is just that. If you haven't read Ptolomy (and in particular all of Tetrabiblos, the Almagest, and his Geographia), you really should. Ptolomy was quite an incredibly observant individual and he worked through things with an attention to detail that is quite impressive.
He clearly understood he was in the Northern Hemisphere, but he placed Alexandria not in the southernmost part of the known world as the article suggests but in the center. A lot of this was pride and the sense that the center had everything good from the edges (see Tetrabiblos), but to some extent everywhere is the center, right?
He painstakingly discusses the proof that the earth is a sphere in Almagest. His geographia is worth reading and directly relevant to this.
I suspect that Ptolomy put the north at the top simply because he was in the Northern Hemisphere and knew it. He displays no great knowledge of navigation, though he does explain how the stars shift as you move north and south (again see Tetrabiblos and Almagest), and he even seemed to be aware that Mercury and Venus revolved around the sun (or so he seemed to say in Tetrabiblos).
All in all he's one of those authors one really has to read if one is interested in history, even the seemingly weird works he wrote (Tetrabiblos is an astrology manual but includes a lot of information about Ptolomy's understanding of geography not found in Geographia, and astronomy not found in Almagest).
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 . 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."
BTW, 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).
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 :)
Probably 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.
Interesting, what do you mean he "understood he was in the Northern Hemisphere"? There are an infinite number of possible ways to divide a sphere into hemispheres, so how did he define the hemispheres and how did he describe the one he was in?
Was he aware that the seasons were the result of the Earth's tilt and that they would be swapped in the other hemisphere as defined by that tilt? (I presume he didn't know that he was in the northern hemisphere because he thought he was closer to the northern magnetic pole.)
If you read Tetrabiblos, he describes Africans (presumably from Nubia) as "burned by the sun" and explains this due to the fact that the "sun is over their heads."
While the Africans are too dark, he doesn't think much of Northern Europeans either, who he says look sickly and pale because the bear is over their heads. Alexandria, being the center of the world, and neither too light nor too dark, nor too far East nor too far West, is best of course in his eyes.
In Almagest he describes two things. The first is the shape of the earth, where he points out that it must be a sphere because of the changes in inclination of the moon and stars as you head North and South, and the changes in times of lunar eclipses when you head East to West. His descriptions of the rotation of the earth and the position of the sun relative to the earth leave no doubt that he was aware of Northern and Southern hemispheres.
> Was he aware that the seasons were the result of the Earth's tilt and that they would be swapped in the other hemisphere as defined by that tilt?
It's a little hard. Alexandria's sub-tropical. He does mention the inclination of the earth relative to the equator though, iirc, in Almagest.
I agree that "conspiracy" isn't the right explanation, but only people in the Northern Hemisphere would navigate by the North Star to begin with. So we're still stuck at this being based on who made the maps.
But note that the vast majority of people (and therefore civilizations) live in the Northern Hemisphere, so this is statistics more than anything else.
As it happens, the vast majority of the people in the world live in the northern hemisphere. There's really not a lot of land in the southern hemisphere. The equator bisects Africa, South America and Indonesia. China, India, the Middle East, they're all in the northern hemisphere.
That's true, but that doesn't explain why North is at the top.
For example, the Chinese also live in the Northern hemisphere. But as the Al Jazeera article points out, the Chinese put south at the top. The Chinese discovered the compass, and they called it a "south-pointing stone."
It could easily have ended up the other way. The Chinese sent fleets on their own voyages of discovery. But the emperor died, another emperor took over, and the exploration program was cancelled.
Columbus had to shop around before he found a monarch willing to bankroll his voyage. Portugal, Genoa, Venice, and England all turned him down before Spain accepted.
Also, Spain took him on because there was intense competition between the European powers, and they didn't want Columbus working for anyone else.
On the other hand, all of China was ruled by the Ming dynasty. When the new Emperor turned down the eastern expedition, Zheng He had no one else to turn to. The Emperor had no competitors so he had no incentive to find new lands first.
Competition leads to innovation. Monopolies lead to stagnation.
(This interpretation of events is from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond.)
> The Emperor had no competitors so he had no incentive to find new lands first. Competition leads to innovation. Monopolies lead to stagnation.
From memory... The Ming around 1420-ish closed down the sea voyages to divert all military resources to defending the northern desert approaches to China. Because China had been ruled by the Mongols from 1250 to 1350, the dangers were fresh in the minds of the Chinese leadership when the tribes started raiding again, and building the Great Wall and Forbidden City for defense were more important than exploring and defending against the Great Southern Ocean.
Now only if the same emperor would have used that gunpowder invented by the Chinese to develop develop weapons better than bows to beat those Northern invaders.
Oh wait, it was those pesky competitive Europeans that developed those weapons.
Zheng He not only had bigger ships than the Columbus ships... but also had 300 ships at his command. (with over 50 of them being extremely large treasure ships). Zheng He's treasure ships had live crops and livestock growing on them. They were a fleet of ships designed to work independently, and go around the world.
Zheng He traveled west first, to India. Afterwards, he planned to travel east (potentially to America). But that is when the Emperors changed and cut his explorations short. Zheng He most certainly had enough provisions to reach the Americas in the early 1400s.
Oh man, that would make for a fascinating alternate history – China discovers California and invades it sightly before Columbus discovers the Americas. The unfortunate Amerinds, get crushed from both sides instead of just from one. At some point the Europeans and Chinese clash in the middle of the Americas. Of course, China doesn't ever seemed to have too much colonialist inclination, which reduces the plausibility.
China's Zheng He fleets generally hugged the coast through Singapore, all the way around to Tanzania. That took them a long way, but Columbus went directly into the vast unknown. If China had tried what Columbus had...
* the Pacific ocean is twice as wide as the Atlantic (I don't know anything about wind patterns here)
* the Rockies are a lot more difficult than the Appalachians to get a military force with supply lines over
* the Europeans on the East Coast can sail around Florida and up the Mississippi to attack or defend it, whereas the Panana Canal needed to be built first for the Chinese to benefit in this way
* China didn't have "military inclination" because it was surround by SW dense forests, the Tianshan mountains in the west, desert in the north, and ocean elsewhere. They certainly ruled Korea when they had they chance, took over Xinjiang through the passage, South China, and the southwest when they could.
Indeed. Some hypothesize that the purpose of Zheng He's fleet was not exploration, but more about portraying power. The size and number of the ships demonstrated China's superiority over other countries.
Very akin to how the US uses the Nimitz Class Carrier today. The official mission of the Nimitz Class Carriers is military... but as the largest warship ever built it tends to be more practically used as a diplomatic tool.
Similarly, Zheng He's fleet was the largest of its time. Its official purpose may have been exploration, but practically speaking, it probably was used more for diplomatic missions. When 300 giant ships arrive on your horizon, it is one way for China to physically prove their naval superiority over their neighbors.
> * the Pacific ocean is twice as wide as the Atlantic (I don't know anything about wind patterns here)
True, but the Pacific has a lot of islands in between, the Atlantic hardly has any. I don't know what the effective range of Chinese ships was at the time, though.
The Chinese didn't navigate by stars. They navigated by compass first. Europeans navigated by the stars, and then learned how to use a compass when it was too cloudy to see the stars.
Besides, there is no "south star", even if you live in the southern hemisphere.
> The BeiDou Navigation System is named after the Big Dipper constellation, which is known in Chinese as Běidǒu. The name literally means "Northern Dipper", the name given by ancient Chinese astronomers to the seven brightest stars of the Ursa Major constellation
Could it be just randomness? You can pick either way, and somehow one particular direction became more popular, and get over the "tipping point"?
It's the same with traffic rule, right? We could either go on the left side, or the right side of the roads. We happened to pick the right side, and everyone is driving on the right side now. Oh wait, the poor Brits are driving on the left side, and traffic must be chaotic over there :)
> As said earlier in the thread: Because of the North Star.
But that doesn't explain why north points up. It only explains why the compass rose points north.
As the article says: "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."
So now you have another step: you have to orient the map. Why north at the top? Why not "orient" the map so that east faces up? Or west? Or south? The compass rose is just a reference -- you could face it in any way.
This is why the article comes up with all sorts of explanations and then finally says that it was just a convention established by Ptolemy. Because at every step of the way between the North Star and north-up, you could ask "Why this way? Why not the other way?" And then when that is answered, you could ask "Why?" again. And so on.
But when something is arbitrary, then there is no "Why?" to be answered. It's just arbitrary.
I think that goes too far. We have a context: the convention of reading with the letters facing up, orienting pictures with words, etc.
You want to see where a hand compass is pointing, you turn until the needle points ahead or 'up'; then you read off the heading (or the other way around). Not too far from that, to writing it on paper that way.
> You want to see where a hand compass is pointing, you turn until the needle points ahead or 'up'; then you read off the heading (or the other way around). Not too far from that, to writing it on paper that way.
No, that's not how you use a compass to determine which way you're facing. (Perhaps that's what you meant by "or the other way around.")
To use a compass, you turn it until the magnetic needle points to "North" on the dial. Then you read the heading from the top of the dial, and that's the direction you're facing.
Note that the needle might point in any direction. The magnetic needle only points ahead (up) if you are facing north." What you're accomplishing by turning the compass is calibrating* the dial, so that it is aligned with the local magnetic field. In other words, so that "North" on the dial is actually magnetic north.
The only thing that your example says is that you have a strong cultural expectation that north is up. So you face north, and the compass needle points up. Circular reference.
But suppose we'd stuck with the traditional European map orientation -- with east being up. (Hence the verb "to orient," related to the adjective "oriental.") Then we'd think it perfectly natural for the compass rose to point left.
Hold a compass straight in front of you. Now walk due east without re-orienting yourself. That is in essence what you are doing if you use the N star as a guide, but insist on orienting the map with east on top.
> Hold a compass straight in front of you. Now walk due east without re-orienting yourself. That is in essence what you are doing if you use the N star as a guide, but insist on orienting the map with east on top.
Take out the compass and rotate yourself until the needle points left. You are now facing due east. Start walking.
Anyway, what does this have to do with north facing up on maps? The procedure does not change based on which direction north faces on a map. Up, down, left, or right, it's irrelevant to the task of walking due east using a compass.
And what does "without re-orienting yourself" mean? Should I face north and walk sideways? I don't get it. It's usually best to re-orient yourself to face in the direction that you're traveling.
But remember also that northern hemisphere navigators like the Portuguese also had to align their maps in a different direction as they crossed the equator and lost their main reference star on their way around Africa.
They soon discovered how to navigate by then aligning with a group of stars called "Cruzeiro do Sul", the Crux constellation[1], which means that it could be reasonable to actually start aligning the maps southwards (and the portuguese were the ones mapping the whole coast of Africa at the time).
But I guess that by that time (around the 1470s), they were already too used to aligning northwards...
One of the most interesting beliefs one runs into in the Middle Ages is the idea that although the world is round, it is impossible to travel across the equator by sea or land. This factors into medieval accounts of Alexander the Great for example.
Well, the portuguese navigators did have a lot of trouble crossing it. This was due to the fact that they mostly always sailed with the coast in sight, but when they reached the equator, there was just no winds or currents to keep pushing them, so they would just get stuck.
It took them a couple of years to find a way out of that point, by making huge turns westwards into the atlantic (which eventually led them to end up in Brazil, but that's another story...)
At least from the medieval literature I have read, it seems like there was a sense that divine retribution would prevent it. I.e. not necessarily about physical barriers but because it was hubris to attempt such a feat.
(1) North Star was what people navigated by first, so would orient maps to that regardless of which way the words were written -- so people started writing the words to fit.
This would be true only for the people that consistently navigated in Northern latitudes, where the North star is high enough above the horizon. For Arabs, who were the predominant maritime power until 1500s, esp. in the Indian Ocean, that was not the case.
Yes, but it's more complicated. The southern cross is quite a long way (like 30 degrees) from true south; we use it and a handful of other stars to find the blank part of the sky where true South is.
The other complicating factor is that Earth has a long "wobble" over the course of about 27,000 years (the technical term is "axial precession".) Right now, Polaris is within a degree of true north, but back in the fifth century it was 8 degrees away. In another 12 millennia true North will be all the way over by Vega. Likewise, the southern cross points somewhere vaguely close to true south, but how close it is varies from one millennium to the next.
Of course, in the fifth century I'm sure they neither knew nor cared that the North star was a few degrees off of actual North.
It's not really relevant if the navigation error only changes by less than a degree over the course of a lifetime. The earliest navigators in Sumer in the 4th millennium BCE wouldn't care if a particular constellation points 5 or 20 degrees away from North.
They did, actually -- Pytheas had observed that true North was "devoid of stars" way back in 320 BC. Polaris didn't begin to be recognized as the "North Star" until much later (10th century according to wikipedia), because it wasn't particularly close. Navigators learned how to find where north was from several stars; it's only been the last several centuries that Polaris has been close enough to North as to be treated as the default for navigation.
They also knew about precession (credited to Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC, but possibly an older discovery.) So they knew that north wouldn't be in exactly the same place centuries later. Differences of a few degrees were a pretty big deal to people who both navigated by, and gave religious significance to, the stars.
I don't know the details of early Sumerian astronomical navigation schemes. From what I understand, our knowledge of their astronomy comes from Babylonian sources a couple thousand years later, and is not particularly detailed or reliable.
There's also (3) True north (the cold poles) aligns with magnetic north. South works too but once the world was cicumnavigated and this was understood it reinforces north-south as an important direction over east-west as temperature changes along this axis but not the other.
It's an interesting article. I looked for references to Chinese practice. In Chinese, a (magnetic) compass is referred to as a "指南针," literally "south-indicating needle," so it does appear that south was the most important cardinal direction for the Chinese-speaking people who first used compasses. The article notes that old Arab maps showed south on the top, and attributed this to Chinese practice in map-making (which, if I remember correctly without sources at hand, was not fully uniform in this regard).
Overall, the article offers an interesting discussion of trade-offs in map-making, including the trade-off of what country to put in the middle of a flat wall map that shows the whole world. I have become quite used to Chinese wall maps of the world in Mercator or equal-area projections that display China in the middle (left-to-right) and consequently split North America along both sides of the map.
The Chinese name has a good deal to do with cultural tradition. In traditional Chinese practice, north is the direction of evil. Cities were planned with gates at the south and rulers sat facing south. Magnets were actually first used as tools in geomancy rather than navigation. [1] This is why you would not call a magnet a points-north-needle.
Of course, the association of North with evil is itself probably because of the Northern hemisphere seasons. North, cold, winter and evil and all grouped together in opposition to South, warm, summer, and good.
Not to mention the Mongols and Manchurians who were always trying to invade, as opposed to the tribute-paying Southern kingdoms. There's a reason they built the Great Wall to the north and not the south.
Weather also does play a role, as the south was able to generate three harvests a year vs. two in the north. Historically, the capital of China has been in the south, only being moved north during the Ming (aka second to last) Dynasty.
Not sure how much any of that has to do with compass points, but did want to elaborate a little on the cultural/historical context of north vs. south in China.
A pointed needle can be magnetized to point either North or South. But you definitely want some way of distinguishing between the two ends, and making one end pointed seems like the easiest way to do so. Maybe the magnetization just happened to result in the needle pointing North the first time and that set the standard.
Two explanations came to my mind:
1. East - the direction where the Sun appears - was located on the right because the right hand had a special meaning for people.
2. South was located down (behind the back of someone reading the map) to provide the maximum amount of light to the reader.
Seems to me the vast majority of habitable area lies in the Northern hemisphere, so this would likely be an issue of statistics, not subconscious superiority.
Also, magnetic north on a compass is a natural way to orient something.
Perhaps more so than magnetic west-by-northwest, etc. The point is that there are two orientations that make sense with respect to compasses, rather than a hundred. As to why it's a particular one of the two available possibilities, that doesn't seem to require a conspiracy. At some point a critical mass of cartographers simply chose north rather than south.
Indeed, and it doesn't take much data crunching to realize that the vast majority of habitable space on the planet is in the northern hemisphere. No slight to Africa, S. America, Australia and parts of India, but most of us are up here in the North. Blame plate tectonics before you blame your white European overlords
Interesting historical exploration! The medieval debate on whether North, East or South should be at the top of the map could be linked to the disagreement on the East/North coordinate system convention of the modern day: ENU vs NED.
Generally, land vehicles use the ENU (East-North-Up) convention, with East corresponding to the X axis and Z axis point up (against the gravity vector), while sea and aircraft use the NED (North-East-Down) convention, with X axis pointing North, and Z axis pointing down, aligned with the gravity vector.
Interestingly they didn't get to a real explanation. It ended with the idea that for reasons lost to history, Ptolomy appears perhaps to have originated the practice.
The thing is, I don't think that is lost to history. Ptolomy was amazingly meticulous and while he didn't spell out why, he was very clear about enough details I think this could be pieced together further.
Regardless of the east vs. north distinction, I find it very unnatural to have an increasing vertical coordinate correspond to a movement towards the earth, if for no other reason that calling sea level zero and using mainly positive numbers above seems very convenient (for any vehicle except submarines).
If you are measuring sea depth it doesn't make sense to have a minus sign when most of your values will be negative.
Also, it is important to remember that sea level is an entirely arbitrary concept that depends on your frame of reference. On nautical charts elevations are usually measured against the lowest tide level which will be different to the datum on GPS (for example).
I had heard a story once that the verb "orient" (as in finding where you are, aligning yourself/something else, etc.) was related to east being on the top of the map: you figured out which direction was "oriental" (i.e. eastern), and matched it with the top of the map.
Later I researched it though and while that may have contributed, the more likely original meaning came from people wanting to build their churches and such to face east.
Just a small almost off-topic correction: Majorca was not Spanish-ruled in 1375, hence the name of the map "Catalan Atlas" attributed to cartographer Abraham Cresques as well as the mentioned nickname of "el jueu de les bruixoles" (in Catalan language).
Interesting map; also a site with an extensive collection of old maps:
"While there is something endearing about the idea of an Indiana map maker in 1871 [ preparing an atlas http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/91721z ] with Indiana squarely in the center of the world, the unfortunate side effect was that most of the Midwest disappeared into the gaping crease between atlas pages."
For Americans, it’s easy to think that our position, at the top left of most maps, is the intrinsically preferable one.
This clearly was not written by a geek. Obviously the top right is preferable, since it's the only region where both decimal latitude and longitude are positive.
Except, of course, that they don't. Magnetic north is up to5 degrees off of our polar axis (center of rotation). "Up to" not because it moves but depending on where you're standing they may line up, as they nearly do here in Iowa.
Magnetic declination can vary by more than 5 degrees. Imagine standing between true north and magnetic north, then the compass will be 180 degrees off. Also, the location of the magnetic north pole changes over time, and moves about 35 miles per year. (Wikipedia has a cool animation of the changes over time since the year 1590).
Sure, but spatial orientation and temporal orientation are too important to leave to arbitrary tool particulars. It's really bad for the mind.
I get your point ( with correction by @JoeAltmaier ) but with GPS and the like being the `new` tool, and with them needing new thought rather than continuation of the old "because we always did it that way"... I'd definitely go East in the future... along with changing calendars away from solar orientation ( Gregorian primarily ).
But as with most things involving the masses, this all falls into the category of why most use Metric versus Imperial, and why that is such a radical change to expect. Still, great to see a post questioning "up" ...
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Metric measures have genuine practical advantages in terms of unit conversions. Switching to East-oriented maps would just be change for the sake of change. (Also a map projection distorts at the poles, so it's best if the poles are in uninhabited areas that ships don't sail through)
Having a spatial orientation relative to the universe is of practical value to conscious individuals. People with minds have a frame of reference. Updating that is important, since our reality is bounded by our mental frame as much by that, if not more by that, than by our knowledge.
I get what you mean, if this were still a boat-based world. I am saying we are not in a boat-based world now. Our consciousness can re-orient.
Since we don't live in a boat-based world for the most part, it'd be more helpful to tend toward an orientation to a place where people have minds more often than people have ships. Part of why the world is the way it is, is because we don't allow our minds and the mental framework of the masses follow forward to an overall update to what in the world is actually worth orienting to.
So it's not change for change's sake. It's updating to be true to what we know, giving our minds the benefit of advancing onto a better framework.
Digital maps don't distort for curves. They just keep going with the surface of the planet. Remaining true to a boat-based world is a disservice to mind-having individuals.
Okay, but there are also practical concerns, like those of us who use map and compass in our lives (for me, geocaching and hunting). It's very well to wave your arms and talk about being a "mind-having individual" but it won't help you navigate in the Coast Mountains.
The easiest rule would surely be based on the spin of the planet (the equator). Anyway, maps sometimes do have a Y axis that is not pointed towards north, and the north arrow is used to orient yourself (even Google maps can do this). Changing that would just confuse everyone.
BTW, GPS devices initially calculate their location in geocentric coordinates from the centre of the earth with the reference plane aligned to the equator. It is calculated from the orbital parameters of the satellites.
It all just makes so much better intuitive sense than a "Conspiracy of Northern European Hegemony"