“Upside-down” Map

Or at least, that’s how the people in the Northern-hemisphere would view it… however, these maps have been produced in Australia, and I find them very interesting and thought provoking -

A further explanation by Francis, tells you that:

“… It is completely artificial that we have North at the top of a map. The convention came a few centuries ago when Northern hemisphere, European navigators started using the North star and the magnetic compass. Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from.”

It always amazes me when things like this are pointed out, things that you take for granted which don’t actually have to be that way… like the alphabet and numbers or even colours, they don’t have to be called that and in the case of letters they don’t need to be in that order, it’s just the way someone decided it would be and everyone else just seemed happy to go along with it

But it looks weird that way around, doesn’t it? Especially knowing that’s how it’s meant to be (shown by the writing being the correct way up), yet it’s completely plausible for it to look that way…

There we go, a little info-tainment for you all