Why North Is Always top on map??

So let's say we have a map which has Australia on top and Russia bottom like southern hemisphere on top and northern hemisphere bottom. Generally the understanding would be ohh the map is upside down. But ever wondered why this has been the case? Why North is always on top? And no the aliens did not asked us to do that!    

Maybe we can explore this topic using one episode of NASA adventures.

In 1972, astronauts aboard Apollo 17 took a beautiful picture of our planet and called it the Blue Marble. Now the orientation of the spacecraft was travelling towards the moon and a picture of a well lit earth was clicked.

The twist here is the image captured showed the south pole on top and north at bottom. When the image was eventually published to the general audience, NASA changed its orientation to bring the north to top.

So deep rooted in our minds the perception that North should always be on top can be loosely attributed to a famous Flemish guy in the cartography world Mr Gerardus Mercator. When he released his version of map to the world in 1569, the conformality of each and every line describing the shape of the countries, continents while also maintaining the local directions which could be measured by compass was like a true genius thing to come out.

Added to the whole fact that it also included the curvature of earth while drawing out the map.

And this north at top alignment on map is just some few hundred years old and but it also has its roots in the exploratory voyages that happened. People always looked at north pole star as a point of reference for their exploration. Sailors found this extremely useful and this helped them in exploring the new areas and moving ahead.

Since North was pointed to top in this map, it kinda became a standard. Also the fact that the North was more explored than its counterpart South.

So no other specific reason, maybe not found yet... Will probably have to go in the past to ask Gerardus why did he do that he did do.? :D

Another interesting fact on this topic would be there are mentions in the history where the arrow was towards EAST i.e in the direction of the rising sun. There is said to be ample evidence in the Bible as well.  Well the direction did go for SOUTH as well where the early Egyptians or the Arabs who also used SOUTH as top on their maps. So it was kind of on the lines of which stayed more in the people's usage after certain time also the impositions which happened during the colonization era cannot be disregarded.

British Imperialism, Colonialism, Exploratory Voyages, North Pole Star, Map Accuracy and many more. There could be a lot of reasons for why the direction North is put on top of the map. Its good though to have different perspectives for why some things are how they are.

Well that's about it for this pointy topic up top... So until next time... Remember curiosity talks should happen a lot!!

Powered by Froala Editor