NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Definition of term
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2003 Jan 25, 19:28 +1100
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2003 Jan 25, 19:28 +1100
Walter Guinon wrote: > On a related but different notion are the maps and charts of southern hemi > countries printed with South at the top? > There are maps of the world printed here, for the tourist trade presumably, 'upside down'. The point (if point there be) seems to be to show Australia as this country standing out boldly at the top of the world rather than being lost at the bottom; which then becomes the fate of, for example, Europe. Just take a map or globe and invert it to get the idea. Of course our choice of orientation is entirely arbitary, and was chosen a long time ago by people in the northern hemisphere. There is a TV show called 'Survivor' or something similar. They did a series using Americans (supposedly) surviving in the bush in Cape York (S15d E143d). They got comprehensivly lost at one stage because they supposed that 'down here' the compass needle must point in the opposite direction, just as the seasons and day and night are reversed, compared to where they come from ... Its easy to laugh but I'm sure we've all done something equally silly at some stage, navigationally, if we're honest.
