There seems to be no particular reason why on a map north is always up. It seems arbitrary, you can look at a map upsidedown just as well so why and when did cartographers around the world agree to use the standard of north being the “up” part of the map?
Did other civilizations that developed map making skills independantly from the west also use north as up?
The Chinese used to have South as up.
From here we get this tidbit:
That page has several related links.
I recently saw a “South is up” oriented map of the world for sale.
Supporting what Ringo wrote, there is a famous C13[sup]th[/sup] map in Hereford cathedral in England called the Mappa Mundi (Map of the World) that is centred around Jerusalem and has east at the top.
Cecil says, blame it on Ptolemy.
Putting east and west as up would seem to be problematic, wouldn’t it? You can go east forever, never stopping. So where’s the “top”? You can only go north for half way around the globe, then you start going south. There’s a definite, physical point where north ends.
Well, a mapmaker has to make a decision about where east “ends” anyway, in order to produce a flat map. Reflecting that decision as a right/left border rather than an up/down one seems to be a matter of convention. When we decided that 0 degrees longitude went through Greenwich that established a point (180 degrees, middle of the Pacific) that most mapmakers would use for a split, or occasionally 90 degrees east if the map maker wanted North America in the center.
That “MacArthur Universal Corrective Map” with south at the top also splits East/West 180 degrees around from Sydney, in the mid-Atlantic, so that Australia is top dead center with Africa and South America sticking “up” on the sides to frame it.
Hmm…I suppose that’s a good point. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. 