Who decided that North was up and South was down?

Question

And why not the other way around? Do the words originaly derive from latin or another language and mean something?

Answer 1

Paul FB (12th answer) is the only one who knows what he's talking about or with any common sense at all.

The geographic poles are the points around which the earth revolves (nothing to do with the magnetic poles which are not far away in this era). In the northern hemisphere you can find north by the direction of the Pole Star. The closer you get to the north pole the closer this star is to overhead, i.e. up. So south appears to be down, in relation to the heavens.

This of course would be reversed in the southern hemisphere but the first map drawers were not "down there", they were "up here".

Answer 2

It's purely a convention. The early Mediaeval maps in fact had East at the top, because that's where Paradise was believed to be.

However, North is basically defined by the Earth's rotation; the stars appear to "fixed" at a point close to the Pole Star (in the Northern Hemisphere). Therefore, if you hold a map and line it up with the North Star, you'll naturally have north at the top. If global geography had developed in the Southern Hemisphere, maps would probably be the other way round.

There is nothing in the words "North" and "South" that relates to "up" and "down"; people knew which way North was thousands of years before anyone had any kind of map.

Answer 3

Ok this is wierd because there is some scientific thing going on at the moment whereby North and South will be at opposite ends soon. There is some change happeneing and eventually North will be South and South will be North - some magnetic change occuring in the atmosphere or by the world moving. I dont remember the facts as I heard it ages ago on the documentary channel, but hopefully someone on here will know more about it. When the time comes, all compasses will be reading opposite readings. Wierd or what!

Answer 4

South is derived from AS (Anglo-Saxon) for "sunth" (toward the sun or equator relative to those who spoke the language?). North is from Norse (or vice versa?) for the earliest navigators who lived in the far north vs the sunth. Evidently the Anglo-Saxons decided what they wished to call north and south. The earth has a North geological pole (axis of rotation) and a slightly different North magnetic pole that wanders and has flip-flopped many time millions of years ago as determined by magnetic orientation of frozen lava, especially where the ocean floor is spreading mid-Atlantic and mid-Pacific.

Answer 5

The cartographic convention that maps are usually oriented with north as up is a modern custom. Since most of the Earth's population lives in the Northern Hemisphere, maps are usually designed to accomodate the Northerners.

Maps can be drawn with any orientation. Maps of the polar regions are usually drawn with the Meridian of Greeenwich up.

Answer 6

Lol, technically North isn't up... and South isn't down... that's in simple terms our attitude is we seem at a map or globe. you would possibly want to correctly be going downhill, yet nevertheless going north. Whoever were given to fixing the secret of the earth probable determined this.

Answer 7

wow, not sure if people are jokng or not, but basically it is just because the british and european explorers who mapped out most of the world didnt want to think of themselves as being on the bottom, so they made north on top. It has no scientific explanantion, just egotism on the part of map makers.

Answer 8

Basically magnetic north is stronger in the northern hemisphere, the most populace hemisphere and the place where maps were first made.

Answer 9

First of all. there are no up's and down's on earth as it is spherical. Can u find the upside and downside of a soccerball? No, right? Likewise you are misunderstanding that north is up and south is down just because it appears so on the map.

Answer 10

The magnetic pole. I guess when the first compass kept pointing in that direction they had to call it something. Of course there is magnetic deviation...