If you've utilised a map at any point in your life, whether it's Google Maps to find out which right turn you just missed on the highway or a paper map in your hands, you might have noticed that maps seem to be universally oriented to have north displayed at the top.
On the face of it, this seems arbitrary. Why not east, west or south? Why are maps oriented this way?
In this post, I will present the argument for maps being upside down.
1. Maps Used To Be Upside-Down Anyways
One of the most complete maps from the medieval era belongs to Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100-1165), a Muslim cartographer who served the Norman King of Sicily, Robert II. Not only is this map incredibly detailed especially when one considers its contemporaries, you would note that south is on top and north is at the bottom.
2. North-Top Is Eurocentric
North being top was the norm for hundreds of years whilst European explorers, conquerors, and imperialists spread over the world. This required maps and as such, European cartographers placed North (where Europe was situated) at the top of the map for convenience since they made the maps, and this later became the norm. It doesn't help that Mercator (the cartographer with that problematic map of his which became widely used) adopted this orientation.
2.1 The North-Top Mercator Complex Inflates The Prestige of the Northern Hemisphere
Going back to Mercator, his map is well known for the inflated sizes of countries and continents close to the poles due to the trouble of projecting a 3D sphere onto a 2D map. You would have seen a Mercator map at some point in your life - it is notorious for distorting the shapes of countries closer to the poles; giving the reader an impression that they are larger than they are especially in comparison to countries at the equator.
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| Note how the Mercator projection implies that Greenland is larger than Africa |
This is a wonderful website that allows you to compare the sizes of countries and give you a chance to explore the damage caused by the Mercator projection.
