4 ms·
AFAIK in the past there were all sorts of 'up' conventions, for instance medieval European maps sometimes put East up, because Jerusalem is in the East. Ancien
by flohofwoe 7d ago
AFAIK in the past there were all sorts of 'up' conventions, for instance medieval European maps sometimes put East up, because Jerusalem is in the East.
Ancient mediterranean maps often were South up, as well as maps of Islamic cartoghraphers.
There were also Roman road maps which were entirely schematic, more like our modern public transport maps (e.g. such maps only cared about how locations were connected by roads and their distances, but not about any geographical mapping)
- allknowingfrog 7d agoI was taught somewhere along the way that the term "Orient" for the East comes from the idea that maps were once oriented in that direction.
- thaumasiotes 6d agoPut it out of your mind. The term "Orient" comes from the fact that the sun rises in the East; the Latin word (oriens) literally means "rising". This is also why the contrasting term is "Occident" (meaning "falling"), but that word is less well known today.