Why is North up?

It's good to learn, and here are three things we've now learned:

- Tolkein did make a map without North at the top. He's more imaginative than we gave him credit for.
- Lower Egypt is named for being in the lowlands. This is the sort of mistake we consider *embarrassing*.
- Orientated isn't a word. It's oriented. Which sounds worse, but is actually correct. I blame the fact we were incredibly young when we said that.

Thank you for watching, and do stop being cleverer than us.

Map Men finally returns after almost 2 years. Excited to see the future episodes, they’re all amazing!

I am a Diagnostic Imager and we are trained to flip chest radiographs upside down to spot rib fractures. It really does help to look at the image with new eyes and spot hidden lesions!

8:22 He died because he was no longer the cameraman.

I've very often wondered why in every single movie involving aliens approaching planet Earth, the planet is always oriented in a north-up fashion. Like, why couldn't an alien spacecraft approach us from another of the possible 359 degrees??

1:05 Jay really showed a clip from an old episode and expected no one to notice.

On the topic of Tolkien, he DID actually play around with orientation. Dwarves put East up on their maps (like on Thror's map that Thorin follows in The Hobbit). Also, the fact that the Elvish words for north and south are related to the words for right and left respectively strongly implies that Elves and other peoples influenced by them usually drew maps with West upwards.

Tolkien would likely have said that he put north at the top on his maps of Middle-earth to simplify for the readers (especially since Middle-earth is supposed to be our world in a bygone age)...

My grandfather was a meteorologist and went on a couple expeditions to Antartica. Every map he has hangs with the south to the top. He also has a habit of remounting globes upside down, even those in the library at his college.

Actually, Tolkien could and did imagine a different orientation. In his legendarium, maps produced by Elves or allied peoples were oriented towards the west. However, they were printed in northern orientation for the convenience of readers.

i love mapmen. you guys are like a modern monty python skit show combined with geography. can’t wait till the next one!

Interesting correction, Tolkien DID actually make at least one map with East at the top: Thorin’s map in The Hobbit. Though it is meant to be handed down from his ancestors, so it could be another case of older maps simply being different

In Finnish, the root word for "north" ("pohjoinen") is "bottom" ("pohja"), like the bottom of a vessel. As structures were erected with the doorway facing south and the Sun, thus the "bottom" of the structure (aka. the part opposite of the opening) was facing north.

Upside down maps look like the land is falling and it's disturbing.

When one of my college professors published a book on military history, he specifically commissioned the maps to not have north at the top, so that readers would be forced to actually look at the terrain and other features, rather than just thinking "oh, yeah, that's a map of Western Europe."

I like how early maps are the blobby ones we draw off the top of our head lol

Missed opportunity to make the patron credits scroll the opposite direction

Fun fact, a common way to navigate and give directions in Hawaii (on land at least) is mauka and makai, or mountains and ocean. So each island has their own little North Pole that people navigate around.

As for left and right, people typically refer to landmarks like hills or regions. It’s not the east or west side of the field, it’s Diamond Head or Ewa.

Edit: additional fun fact: this has made me absolutely useless at navigating anywhere without a visible mountain or grid system. I regularly get lost in suburbs because my mental north is governed by changes in elevation.

Another Map Men! 🎉

The delivery of "It's because of the rock type," was so perfect that I lack the words. Top-notch.

As a Geography teacher, I'm thrilled to see another video! Map Men, along with Geography Now, is one of my most commonly-used video series to supplement the information I teach!