If the world is round can we make any point of the world the center in maps? Or is there a specific reason all the world maps show the continents in the same orientation?
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It pays to win the war(s). For better or worse, accurate mapmaking was a European hobby while ancient empires were crumbling. Why would a Portuguese sailor understand the world starting from the international date line? They were busy figuring out whether 0 degrees longitude goes through Greenwich, Rome, or Constantinople.
That doesn’t make it right, wrong, or good or bad. It just is, you have to have a zero longitude line, or the ‘prime meridian’; and if the major seafaring nations are England, France, Belgium, Spain, etc there was no real need or desire to make the prime meridian anything other than an area all of them would be very familiar with.
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