how did they decide north to be north originally.
In: Earth Science
There are multiple natural phenomena that naturally have created cardinal directions.
We currently calculate them very precisely, having a system of longitude and latitude, GPS satellites, and digital maps.
But these are based on the natural phenomena that “create” direction. The geomagnetism of the planet create a magnetic north pole, and the rotation of the Earth round it’s axis creates a North pole in the sky- the point around which the night sky appears to rotate.
The rotation of the Earth gives an apparent rising of the sun in the east & setting in the west, making a very obvious east-west direction.
So north/south, and east/west, gives us four cardinal directions, and subdividing those into things like northwest, northnorthwest, etc gives even finer direction.
So “direction” is very obviously a real thing, and there’s four main directions created by the planet and it’s rotation. There’s no real reason north has o be “up”, and many old maps don’t use North as the top of the map, they used to put the *east* at the top, regardless of which direction you put on the top of the paper doesn’t change the relative orientation of stuff on the map compared to other stuff on the map
so if humanity were to start all over again, we’d probably still have north, east, south, nd west, if by different names, because they’re very obvious features of the world
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