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The establishment of the journey to the north was both accidental and closely related to the development of navigation technology. However, due to the typical map drawing and projection theory of ancient Europe, which used up north and down south, this habit gradually spread to the world through Europe.
This is another established convention that few people will question? Modern maps are almost always up north and down south. Even if there are disputes and differences in the drawings of various countries, it all depends on whether their country is at the center of the drawing. Very few people challenge the north-south direction.
Is this a tradition from ancient times?
It seems so. In ancient China, perhaps influenced by the atlas "Yugong Territory Map" written by Pei Xiu of the Western Jin Dynasty, except for the Yuan Dynasty where almost no maps remained, the national maps from the Song to the Qing Dynasty almost all had north as the top.
For example, the Song Dynasty's "Nine Regions Guarding Map", "Yu Traces Map", "Huayi Map", and "Geographical Map"; Ming Dynasty's "Guangyu Map", "Daming Hunyi Map", "Yang Ziqi Postscript" "Maps" and so on; most of the national maps of the Qing Dynasty are like this.
But not all maps are like this.
There are no unified orientation rules for ancient coastal defense maps, border defense maps, local chronicle maps, etc. It appears in the south, north, east, and west.
This also proves that the subjective judgment of the cartographer greatly affects the orientation of the map.
There is even less uniformity around the world. For example, the maps of ancient Arabs used to point south up (probably because the holy city of Mecca is in the south of the Arab world), which is exactly the opposite of the west. More regional drawings are not standardized in themselves. They are made according to actual needs. They are done whatever is convenient and there is no consistent direction.
Who made the map face north?
Like most modern norms, still European. Their drawing habits unified map patterns around the world.
It seems that another target of Eurocentric thinking can be set up? They put their country at the top of the map. This is a consistent arrogance.
Wait a minute. The real story is far more complicated than the conclusion. The establishment of the journey north was both accidental and closely related to the development of navigation technology.
This starts from the ancient Mediterranean region.
Ptolemy's world map
The prototype of the top-north-bottom map can be traced back to Alexandria, Egypt today.
During the Roman Empire, maritime trade within and across the Mediterranean became increasingly prosperous. As a result, the people of Alexandria, a cargo distribution center in the eastern Mediterranean, acquired rich geographical knowledge of Eurasia, which provided necessary information for early map production.
The astronomer and geographer Ptolemy was one of the best. At that time, he completed the epoch-making work "Geography", which collected the longitude and latitude of about 8,000 places, attached 27 maps, and described two map projection methods (converting a three-dimensional sphere into a two-dimensional plane through mathematical rules) )?The last point is particularly important as it determines how the map is presented.
What is the map projection method?
In short, it is a method of converting the latitude and longitude grid on the earth's ellipsoidal surface to a flat surface using certain mathematical rules. Why is there such a projection method? The reason is very practical. The earth is an undeployable sphere. Imagine that the surface of the globe is flattened. Of course, wrinkles, stretching and fractures are inevitable. Map projection is a tool for orderly transformation of surfaces into planes.
It is probably for the convenience of map projection that the location distribution of upper north and lower south was established.
Ptolemy chose the north-up direction. He naturally knows that the earth's axis points to the North Star, so the most convenient way to choose the projection intersection point is to select a point over the North Pole and put the north position at the top of the map.
However, this beginning was not taken seriously by people after the Roman Empire, and the direction of map drawing fell into chaos for a time. During the Middle Ages, faith became the source of inspiration for Europeans to draw world maps. The map changed to have east as the top. The Garden of Eden in the Bible was considered to be in the easternmost part of the world.
This situation lasted for hundreds of years before another map with north as top appeared.
Charts of Italian city-states
In the 11th century, Italian city-states regained control of Sicily and many other Mediterranean islands from the Arab Empire, and during the Fourth Eastern Expedition (1202-1204) Lieutenant General expanded the trade area to the Eastern Mediterranean.
A seemingly unexpected gain changed the compass spread by the Arabs in Europe and greatly improved the navigation technology of Italian city-states.
The use of the compass certainly affected map drawing and directly led to a higher level of nautical charts? Portland charts of Italian city-states at the end of the 13th century AD. It is the earliest European nautical chart ever discovered.
Specifically, the Portland Chart breaks through the limitation of using the North Star as navigation coordinates and replaces it with a pointer that is stable and accurate in all weathers.
One end of the compass points in the direction of Polaris. Polaris and the compass help positioning at the same time, which is undoubtedly safer. This reinforces the tradition of north orientation, and Portland charts are usually drawn with up-north-down-south orientation.
With the advent of the Age of Discovery, Portland charts were applied to the wider Atlantic Ocean. In 1406, Ptolemy's "Geography", which had been forgotten in Europe for more than a thousand years, was translated from Greek into Latin by the Byzantine Angelus. His doctrine and maps became the best geographical guide for southern Europeans at that time. , the accumulated experience also promotes more map drawing.
But both have disadvantages? The continental outlines of the Ptolemaic world map are almost drawn by imagination; the Portland chart does not take into account the curvature of the round earth and is used in a large range of sea areas. There will be a large deviation in the rhombic line.
In 1569, the Flemish (now northern Belgium) geographer Mercator drew the first nautical world map using the Mercator projection method. The three-dimensional sphere can be converted into Two-dimensional plane, and can ensure that the rhombus line is displayed as a straight line on the map.
In other words, after measuring the angles of the rhombus and longitude from the departure point to the destination on this kind of map, you can adjust the course at once, and you can reach the destination without having to adjust the course again on the way. destination.
At the end of the 16th century, the Atlas of the World Survey by Mercator’s friend Oriteus also exerted a major influence. The World Survey was printed in more than 40 editions, and its translations were spread all over Europe. Primary language.
Both the Mercator projection map and the Oriteus map inherited the "north is up" approach, which also influenced the subsequent modern scientific land map drawing habits.
For example, France's first national map in the 18th century was drawn using triangulation and astronomical observations, continuing the habit of "going north". This is the world's first nationwide map of a country completed using triangulation, and is also regarded as the beginning of modern land scientific cartography.
In fact, as long as there is a tool that can stabilize the direction, no matter which direction is up, it can be operated. Setting the axis with the North Star and the compass only facilitates the northward tendency, and is not a necessary condition.
However, the typical map drawing and projection theory at that time all followed the top-north-bottom-south orientation. Since then, this feature has been established in Europe.
The diffusion of European cartography
Since then, this cartography has followed the global expansion of European power, following the trade, missionary, and colonization of European merchants, missionaries, rulers, etc. The footsteps have unified the map of the world.
For example, Japan was influenced by Portuguese traders and adopted the Portland Chart in the early 17th century; India drew modern maps under the leadership of British colonists.
And in China, which has strong traditional power, how did European cartography replace local cartography?
The role of missionaries cannot be underestimated. In 1584, the missionary Matteo Ricci drew the first Chinese world map "Yudi Mountains and Seas" in Zhaoqing, Guangdong.
In 1708, the national map "Imperial Map" compiled under the order of Emperor Kangxi was also compiled using triangulation and astronomical observation methods under the auspices of missionaries Du Demei and Bai Jin. However, other maps of the Qing Dynasty did not adopt modern scientific drawing methods, and provincial or county annals were still drawn using traditional pictographic symbols.
Until the Republic of China, the Beiyang government formulated the "Ten-Year Rapid Survey Plan", and later the Nanjing Government formulated the "National Land Survey Ten-Year Plan". China's various general maps were finally unified into the "Northward" direction.
Not everyone likes modern map conventions. Of course we can understand the hatred of people in the southern hemisphere? Who would feel comfortable putting it down there?
So some Australians who didn’t like to be ignored simply turned the map over.
Taiwan is also very dissatisfied: the map drawn according to the orientation of up, north and down south has caused Taiwanese, who originally have a maritime character, to ignore the vast Pacific Ocean to the east. Therefore, the traditional map of Taiwan should be rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise.
This does not change the established principle of "up north and down south". People in the southern hemisphere should just tolerate it for a while longer.