This map is not upside down

Disagree completely.

Your map should be bottom-heavy for stability.

I do wonder if early world explorers had been from the southern hemisphere and a tradition of "south up" was already established, if it would still look better to us to have more land on top.

…why? Why is it better for it to be in the upper half of the map than the lower half?

Split it at the equator, make them north south edges and make everyone angry.

If it’s at the bottom and you put it on a table, more of the land is closer to you and therefore easier to read.

Its all arbitrary, and we can all make up random minor pro/cons all we like but it don’t change that.

But what about the 10% who are bottomies

Why?

It just needs to me moved not rotated if it's horizontal, that's kind of the beauty of it, isn't? Or do you mean it's still vertical?

Einnorden used to be quite a thing with paper maps in the field.

The term Orientation even goes back further referencing to the era of T and O maps in occidental Europe where east was up and where the sun rises and also of significance to Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_and_O_map

This is similar to the modern car GPS question → do you always have the little arrow pointing up in the middle and the map rotates, or is the map still and the car rotates?

Reminds me of guide books. They probably do it to fit the maximum useful map on the quarter page they have allocated for it.

At one point a character in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum says "archetypes don't exist, the body exists" and then gives some sexual and reproductive examples, followed by

> And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn’t stink as much, because it’s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above—you really have to be in an attic—while you often hurt yourself falling. That’s why up is angelic and down devilish.

You could also argue that because of gravity and potential energy, up is usually the result of purposive action and effort, while down is often the result of accident or neglect ("you often hurt yourself falling"). That potential energy (and wide-open space) can also be used for maneuvering, so if two people or other creatures are fighting, one who is higher is generally at an advantage compared to one who is lower or lying on the ground. The lower party has less energy available to direct toward the opponent, and usually less room to move, being more constrained by the presence of the ground.

I'd bet a lot of this behavior is heavily correlated with how we generally read top to bottom, which is in itself, probably an arbitrary decision made by ancient text writers.

Started at the bottom, now we're here.

Up-and-coming.

Top-of-the-line.

I could go on, but I don't want to get you down.

Heaven and hell, not hell and heaven. The stock market goes up as spirits rise.

Those who claim the top is viewed as good by most people would also have to defend the claim that most people are Alaskan supremacists.

I mean, and.. with the map South-up, all the stuff is crammed down at the bottom now, no?

Aren’t most of the people and land and things in the North part? A casual Google [0] suggests 88% of the humans, for example?

I don’t understand the “good” and “bad” thing, but it does make sense to me that you scan something “earlier” or “later” in casting your eye across a mass of stuff.

If we read from top to bottom… doesn't it make sense to put the part where the stuff is earlier in order than the part with mainly oceans?

It makes slightly more sense to me to argue about which continental masses should go on the left or the right of the map, e.g. [1]. Although compositionally, if you put the Eurasian continent on the left side (“first” for left-to-right readers), doesn’t the massive Pacific exaggerate the impression of a discontinuity or a vast gap between geographical clusters of humans?

[0] https://brilliantmaps.com/human-hemisphere/#:~:text=88%25%20...

[1] https://www.mapresources.com/products/world-digital-vector-r...

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...

Really? Before you read this article you never associated being on top = good and being at the bottom = bad?

For clarity, you cannot call north up:

North is not up. That would make left west. When standing in front of a building, with map in hand, and asking people to go start going to the street in the south, then left, I mean left in direction of travel, which is east.

Not left in direction of map conventions, which for people who cannot read a compass is probably west.

North was established earlier by European sailors as the north star is visible in the sky and is hugely useful for navigation, divining latitude etc. in the northern hemisphere. The coincidence of the north star and magnetic north as major navigational tools was really too hard to ignore.

Printing press and maps really started following the sailors and navigators knowledge and needs, where previously it was often religious or political (east at top facing jerusalem or 'oriented')

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

What did maps from China look like around then? I assume they'd center their continent somehow

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!

In Brasilia, Brazil only main avenues are named and all addresses are also by block, just like in Japan.

> Also, I was quite old by the time I learned that "Oriental" literally just means "direction of the sunrise".

Even more literally "of the rising" ("occidental" meaning "of the falling"). The sun is of course implied here, but the Latin verbs orior and occido more generally indicate rising and falling motions of anyone and anything.

Not just land area; ~90% of the world population lives on the northern hemisphere, so it's more important in that sense, political and historical considerations aside.

You lose a lot of the details of the northern hemisphere when its compressed downwards in that map.

if only the axis was in the middle of middle earth would I agree

I mean several languages are right to left?

I'd be interested to see if handedness in those countries is different.

> The notion that north should always be up and east at the right was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). "Perhaps this was because the better-known places in his world were in the northern hemisphere, and on a flat map these were most convenient for study if they were in the upper right-hand corner," historian Daniel Boorstin opines. Mapmakers haven't always followed Ptolemy; during the Middle Ages, Boorstin notes, maps often had east on top--whence the expression "to orient."

Much like this:

https://i2.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/...

It's also a rabbit :)

One of my favorite episodes! This immediately came to mind. I was due for a rewatch, thanks for linking.

I think rather than berating people for allegedly stodgy thinking that a better approach is just that everyone has an equal moral right to produce a map in which they are in the position of prominence, and since everyone can do that equally, nobody should be running around complaining about any particular orientation.

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

The maps were common, but there was nothing anti-USSR about them, and they go way back before the Cold War.

It's long been practice for maps to be centered on the country/continent they're produced in. American world maps centered on the Americas, British world maps centered on Greenwich, Chinese world maps centered on East Asia.

These days we've mostly standardized on the more "neutral" choice of having the edges in the middle of the Pacific because that minimizes the land getting split up, but there are also Asian maps that split in the middle of the Atlantic, since Greenland's population is low.

And looking at the map, it would be hard for those map makers not to be north(ish) since the South is mostly ocean. Not too many civilizations that have sprung up in the ocean.

Intriguing. I wonder if an Arabic reader looks more prominently at the right side (Europe), the way an English speaker looks more prominently at the left side (Africa).

Would be interesting to see a world map designed with latitude vertically instead. If the top were the Pacific, your eyes would first appraise East Asia. If the top were the Atlantic, North America.

Yeah I'm not sure why taking the same projection and mirroring it does anything. Surely you'd want a different style of map entirely for this kind of project? Africa could be much larger in it for instance

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.

Butterfly for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterman_butterfly_projection

In practical terms, though, 90% of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere contains ~65% of the earth's land mass, so it's not entirely without merit that we orient the map that way.

"The enemy's gate is down"!

Reading the "Divine Comedy" led me to a realization (or at least a shower thought) the other day: It makes perfect sense for someone living in the northern hemisphere to think of "north" as "up." Why? Because when you look up, you see the stars, all rotating around a fixed point at the very top of the heavens. (In our current epoch, this fixed point is close to the star Polaris.) If you journey on foot in the direction of this fixed, highest point — toward Polaris — you'll find that you are traveling due north.

So the conventional association between Upward and Northward is very much grounded in physical reality (for dwellers in the northern hemisphere).

Translation:

Panel 1: But Libertad¹, you’re hanging it upside down.

Panel 2: Upside down in relation to what? Earth is in space, and space has neither up nor down.

Panel 3: Saying the northern hemisphere is up is a psychological trick from those at the top, so that those who believe we are below continue to believe we are at the bottom. And the worst part is that if we keep believing we’re below, we’ll continue to be. But starting today, that’s over!

Panel 4, top: Where were you, Mafalda?

Panel 4, bottom: I don’t know, but something just came to an end.

¹ It’s her name: https://mafalda.fandom.com/es/wiki/Libertad

Ancient Egypt too. It was more natural for the Nile to run 'downwards'. This is also why upper Egypt is South and lower Egypt is North.

Print regular map in a design you like and hang it upside down. It's literally that. Or if you want to be strict you can use "flip" function in image editing tool. You can compensate me for saving your money

Recently I had been looking for a specific map of a local trail system and found a map store near me that might have it, and had seen this exact map in the store. Crazy to see it here a couple days later!

I believe you should be able to get it shipped wherever. https://www.mapcenter.com/store/p/upside-down-world-by-rober...

I mean you could just Venmo him

Weirdness isn't the issue. It would be literally much harder to see the bottom side (which is where most cities and humans are located, as you mention) unless you make the globes easy enough to lift, or tall enough to go above most people's heads. I fail to see how that would be better UI.

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

For navigation, having the poles at top and bottom is really the only way to do it. Lining up positions of constant noon sun angle along a horizontal line (i.e. latitude line) makes the paper map correspond nicely to the navigational information available.

> (i.e. we expand the land in the north more than the south

Yes. This is a consequence of the fact that the "land in the north" is, on average, further north (of the Equator) than the "land in the south" is south (of the Equator).

The southernmost point on the South American mainland, per Wikipedia, is Cape Froward, Chile, at about 54°S. For perspective, some cities between 53°N and 54°N include Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Hamburg, Germany; and Dublin, Ireland. Similarly, the capital of New Zealand is about in line with the capital of Albania, and the capital of South Africa is about in line with the capital of Qatar.

I don't think Russia looks small on this map, it's just not as blown-out as on Mercator maps. When I was growing up in Russia, the map I had in my room was a similar projection -- except with the North up, of course -- and Russia was about the same size on it.

The sun doesn’t rise directly in the east though unless you live exactly on the equator, and it rises a different amount off of east every day. However, at noon, the sun is always either due north or due south depending on what hemisphere you’re in, so number 3 is quite arguable.

Also the North Star being a thing is quite influential.

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.

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