Who says North is up? Upside Down maps (also known as South-Up
or Reversed maps) offer a completely different perspective of
the world we live in. Technically speaking, even referring to
the earth with words like “up” or “down” or comparing places
with words “above” or “below” is flawed, considering that the
earth is a spherical body (it’s actually slightly “fatter” at
the equator) and flying through 3 dimensional space with no
reference of up or down. However, the issue of “up” and “down”
does become an issue when viewing the surface of the earth
projected onto a flat piece of paper (a map). And the effect of
the orientation of a map is more significant than you might
realize. As all maps require orientation for reference, the
issue of how to layout the map orientation is as old as maps
themselves. As map orientation is completely arbitrary, it is
not surprising that they differed throughout time periods and
regions. The convention of North-up is usually attributed to the
Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168