For example, why is the world map not upside down?
It’s a legitimate question. I haven’t bothered to look up the answer. Do any of you know why?
Human instinct seems to be to place one's own location in two dimension towards the upper middle of the page but yeah, maps can and do orient on any compass point as needed so why is North typically up? The answer is Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, Egypt, who wrote the most influential Roman work on the subject of Geography, called "Geography," in 150 CE and set the standard that North should always point to the top of the page, at a right angle to the top of the page and East should always point to the right hand edge of the page, at a right angle to North. In 150, there wasn't much west and north of the Empire to map but the known world beyond the Empire was mostly east to China.
This standard was forgotten in Europe and Byzantium after the fall of the Roman Empire but preserved by the Persians and adopted early by the Islamic Empire. Most European maps in the Middle Ages put the Eastern compass point at the top. The Roman Church translated Ptolemy from Arabic back into Latin around 1400 and the Ptolemaic standard was quickly re-established in Europe.
