How the north ended up on top of the map
is an article by Nick Danforth, author/curator of (The/Mid) Afternoon Map blog
, detailing how the north-up orientation came to be the default orientation, looking beyond Eurocentrism to Byzantine monks and Majorcan Jews who set the path for modern cartography. If you want more information, you might enjoy the Wikipedia article on the history of cartography
, or you can really dig deep with the three-volume text, The History of Cartography
, which is available in full from the University of Chicago Press online, split into individual PDFs for each chapter.
In the main article, Danforth starts by noting that early Egyptian maps placed south at the top, likely oriented by the flow of the Nile
, and that Arab map makers, including Muhammad al-Idrisi
, may have followed some practices of previous Chinese cartographers who also oriented south at the top of their maps
(Google books preview). Alternatively, early Christian maps from Europe orienting maps with east at the top, the direction of Paradise, as seen in the Ebstorf Mappamundi
" is the any medieval European map of the world, and can be very roughly translated as "cloth or napkin (of the) world". The most common were tripartite
(Gbp) or T and O maps
, named so because they split the known world into three parts, and contained the world in a circle. On top was Asia, the lower left was Europe, and the lower right Africa. (And thus, the maps were oriented with east at the top
.) The Don (Tanais) river
separated Europe from Asia, the Nile (or the Red Sea) separated Asia from Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea separated Africa from Europe.
There are more complex versions of the usually small T-O maps, often called Beatus maps
, as they were inspired by or copied from the original map by Beatus of Liébana, found in the illuminated copies of his Commentaria In Apocalypsin
, or Commentary on the Apocalypse
. Again, east is at the top of these maps.
The third category of medieval maps are the "complex" maps, larger and more detailed than the tripartite T-O maps or the quadripartite Beatus maps. One example is the Psalter World Map
, which retains the east-at-top orientation, and serves as "a visual encyclopedia, embracing ancient history, politics, scripture and ethnography as well as geography" (best viewed with Flash to experience all the features of this online presentation).
All this is not to say that there are no historical maps with north at the top. One of the earliest remaining maps is the Babylonian "map of the world
," which was oriented to the prevalent winds, with northwest at the top
. Then there are the Macrobian World Maps
, which are generally based on hemispheric maps of Macrobius from the fifth century, depicting a spherical world, divided into different horizontal zones (sets of examples: one
(deep link; framed site
) were a distinctly different sort of map, "made to get seafarers from home to another place and back again safely." And they are surprisingly accurate, given the technology available at the time
, as long as you didn't try to use them to get across the Atlantic. Replicating the curvature of the earth on a flat map tended to skew the attempts to map longer distances.
At first, these charts, though useful for navigating, were not consistently designed, with no real up or down, and no consistency in the direction of images or text
, but all included a compas rose
that clearly indicated north. Enter the Majorcan cartographic school
, who weren't so much a formal group as they were a local association of predominantly Jewish cartographers, cosmographers and navigational instrument-makers and some Christian associates who experimented and developed their own cartographic techniques. Amongst them, the tradition of the compass rose pointing to the North Star, much as a compass would.
Interesting tangent: China first developed a compass, known as the South Pointer, in their in Warring States Period (475-221BC)
. Refined versions included the the south-pointing spoon and fish, and finally the marine compass, which made its way to Europe by way of nautical Arabian traders
Still, in the 15th century, maps were made with varying orientations, east
(best with Flash), and north
, yet all remain centered on or near Italy or Jerusalem
. But thanks to a 13th century rediscovery and (re)creation of maps
from Ptolemy's Geography
by the Greek monk Maximus Planudes
, the world was set with north on top
. The example was followed by such notable map-makers as Gerardus Mercator
, Henricus Martellus (Germanus)
and Martin Waldseemüller
(whose map "named America"
If this leaves you wanting to know more about the history of cartography, you can read:
- Portolan charts; their origin and characteristics (1911) by Edward Luther Stevenson on Archive.org;
- Ancient Orientation Unveiled (Gbp), an article by A. L. Frothingham in the American Journal of Archaeology, Second Series, Vol. 21 (1917),
- read through Afternoon Map, which strives to be the "number one Ottoman/Turkish/Middle Eastern/Balkan cartography blog on the internet,"
- browse Cartographic-Images.net, with its 163 monographs and 1,688 images, or
- download the entire three glorious, searchable volumes of The History of Cartography from U of Chicago, split into individual chapters, which was previously mentioned in a comment, but otherwise not featured or referenced on MetaFilter.