Upside Down Maps & McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World (1 Viewer)

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Laron

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Research has shown that north-south maps do actually have psychological consequences. North can be said to contain expensive real estate, richer people and be a higher altitude. The south has cheaper prices, poorer folk and a lower altitude—the “north-south bias”. When people are presented with a north-down oriented maps, this bias disappears.

Educators of media literacy and cultural diversity are known to use south-up oriented maps to assist their students viscerally experience the frequently disorienting effect of seeing something familiar from a different perspective. When students consider the privileged position given to the Northern hemisphere (especially North America and Europe), this can help them confront their potential for culturally biased perceptions.

The earliest Egyptian maps show the south as up, likely equating the Nile’s northward flow with the force of gravity. There was a long stretch in the medieval era when most European maps were drawn with the east on the top. In that same period, map makers in Arabia often drew maps with the south facing up possibly because this was how the Chinese did it.

42088783_10160799451620057_7654277723208024064_o.jpg

South-up maps have been used for political statements in the past. As you can see above, one example is "McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World" (1979). An insert on the map says that the Australian, Stuart McArthur, tried to confront "the perpetual onslaught of 'downunder' jokes”—implications from Northern nations that the height of a country's prestige is determined by its equivalent spatial location on a conventional map of the world.

So who decided what way the maps should go? The answer is not clear, but there seems to have been a heavy influence by Claudius Ptolemy, a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, poet and Hellenic cartographer. In the 2nd century A.D. he created a systematic approach to mapping the world, complete with intersecting lines of longitude and latitude on a half-eaten-doughnut-shaped projection that reflected the curvature of the earth. The cartographers who made the first big, beautiful maps of the entire world, Old and New—men like Henricus Martellus, Gerardus Mercator, Germanus and Martin Waldseemuller—were obsessed with Ptolemy. Ptolemy’s maps were north-up.


Sources:
http://america.aljazeera.com/…/maps-cartographycolonialismn…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-up_map_orientation
 
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Snowmelt

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I'm OK with the north-up maps. Even though I am an Australian, I don't feel lowly or demeaned in any way because of latitude. The way I look at it, Ptolemy and those Mediterranean cartographers had a Eurocentric view (meaning the Mediterranean was their world) and they had great and wonderful things within that view. But they were not to know that a continent on the south of the Equator held such amazing and endemic floral and faunal species, as to trip the light fantastic. If we hadn't been isolated by massive expanses of oceans for so long, some of those natural wonders in Australia might not have had time or space to evolve.

I'm going to go with my favourite Royal Hakea to illustrate my point:

IMG_0222.jpg
 
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Linda

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Growing up in Dallas - the perception was that north was better, no real physical reason
Austin - the perception is west is better, which has a lot to do with hills and canyons

To me, the idea of "down under" was something mysterious
 
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Sinera

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There is another aspect to today's world maps. A much graver one. They are wrong. :eek:o_O

Already years ago I saw some vids and documentaries that showed that our world maps based on the Mercator projections (although the best for navigations) are all wrong regarding the size comparisons and relativity anyway.



In 1569, the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator devised an elegant solution that became the standard world map for the next five centuries.
But his method resulted in massive distortions of the relative sizes of the continents, dramatically shrinking Africa and making Europe, North America and particularly Greenland look much bigger than they actually are. Antarctica appears to be the largest continent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/world-map-mercator-peters-gall-projection-boston-globe-us-schools-european-colonial-distortion-bias-a7639101.html

This could be more real:

 

Alain

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upside down and i see shoes and a crab is that normal?
 
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Alain

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why that one didn t surprised me too much

ah yes right we are lied about in so much things
 
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Laron

Laron

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I guess, for me, it's got nothing to do with the maps, but I just know northern latitudes are where the richer countries are with more opportunities, but it's also where it wouldn't be a good spot to survive if everything went to hell in the world because of the nuclear power plants and industrial centers. When I was preparing for the GCE in 2013, I had done a lot of research and worked out Australia would be the best spot in that regard, if up in the tablelands.

upside down and i see shoes and a crab is that normal?
Completely. :cool:
 

Carl

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but it's also where it wouldn't be a good spot to survive if everything went to hell in the world because of the nuclear power plants and industrial centers.
You just reminded me of another old movie that I saw many, many years ago Laron. It was called On the Beach (with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner; for those curious). It was a very depressing Science Fiction movie dealing with the aftermath of a global nuclear war and Australia was the last place on Earth with its population still alive but it would be dying in a few months too as the radiation kept increasing. After that movie I thought that in the event of everything going to hell it would be better to leave this plane at the start rather than survive and then having to face the ordeals that the survivors would endure before finally having the same fate.
 
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Snowmelt

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You just reminded me of another old movie that I saw many, many years ago Laron. It was called On the Beach (with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner; for those curious). It was a very depressing Science Fiction movie dealing with the aftermath of a global nuclear war and Australia was the last place on Earth with its population still alive but it would be dying in a few months too as the radiation kept increasing. After that movie I thought that in the event of everything going to hell it would be better to leave this plane at the start rather than survive and then having to face the ordeals that the survivors would endure before finally having the same fate.
You're right about that depressing movie..... Tasmania was the last thing to survive, but the story stopped at Melbourne because in those days, Tasmania was hardly on the map!!!
 
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Snowmelt

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I guess, for me, it's got nothing to do with the maps, but I just know northern latitudes are where the richer countries are with more opportunities, but it's also where it wouldn't be a good spot to survive if everything went to hell in the world because of the nuclear power plants and industrial centers. When I was preparing for the GCE in 2013, I had done a lot of research and worked out Australia would be the best spot in that regard, if up in the tablelands.


Completely. :cool:
My 95 year old father lives on the eastern tablelands in NSW, so he must be on to something...
 
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