Why north is taken as up on the map?

Why north is taken as up on the map?

For mariners the compass was just an artificial replacement for the star. And since Europe was situated in Northern Hemisphere, which anyway had more landmass to be explored, North-up maps became a standard. Mercator’s world map in 1569 was a defining moment in North-up maps.

Is north always up on a map?

“As far as we astronomers can tell, there really is no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in space,” he says. So the answer to the question of which way up is the Earth is simple: it is not any particular way up and there is no good reason other than a historical superiority complex to think of north as being the top of the world.

What is wrong with the Mercator projection?

Mercator maps distort the shape and relative size of continents, particularly near the poles. The popular Mercator projection distorts the relative size of landmasses, exaggerating the size of land near the poles as compared to areas near the equator.

Why north is up on maps Quora?

The real reason why north is at the top of every map, then, is not because of Eurocentrism, the north star, or any of the other reasons that are usually given, but rather because one geographer living in Egypt during the time of the Roman Empire thought that drawing the map from left to right, top to bottom was more …

Is north really up?

For world maps, because we often put them on a wall, north really is up, and south is down, even though on earth those directions are both horizontal. Later, maps were oriented with north at the top for sailing ships, since that made it easier to do navigational calculations and use a magnetic compass.

When was the Mercator map created?

1569
In 1569, Mercator published his epic world map. This map, with its Mercator projection, was designed to help sailors navigate around the globe. They could use latitude and longitude lines to plot a straight route. Mercator’s projection laid out the globe as a flattened version of a cylinder.

How was Mercator map made?

In 1569, Mercator developed a better, more accurate projection. Although the execution was difficult, the basic idea was simple: Imagine a globe with a paper cylinder wrapped around it — Mercator projected that globe onto the paper and then unwrapped it.

Who decide north is up?

For reasons that have been lost to history, Ptolemy put the north up. Or at least that’s the way it appears from the only remaining copies of his work, made by 13th century Byzantine monks.

Why isn’t north at the top of the world’s map?

“North was rarely put at the top for the simple fact that north is where darkness comes from,” he says. “West is also very unlikely to be put at the top because west is where the sun disappears. Confusingly, early Chinese maps seem to buck this trend.

Is this old world map wrong?

That world map is wrong. Most might recognize the old world map from faded school textbooks. It’s called the Mercator projection. In 1569, Gerardus Mercator built a whole world drawn along colonial lines — literally.

Is north at the top or bottom of the page?

By convention north is towards the top of the page (thus some maps do not have north arrows), but the orientation must still be given for a ‘proper’ map. North does not have to be at the top of the page and a north arrow is essential in maps where it is not.

Should we reverse the way we draw the world map?

Equally, we could do east-up, west-up or any other compass bearing. Purposefully reversing the typical way world maps are drawn has a similar political effect to using the Peters projection, putting more developing countries in the generally poorer southern hemisphere at the top of the map and so giving them greater significance.