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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Any point can be the center of the map. You can have the North or South Pole up too. What is common is what is common depends on the culture.
Most of the possible centers have the problem that you cut a continent in half so maps that have the edge in the Pacific or Atlantic result in the least amount of cut land, this makes two alternatives the most common for maps.
Mapping the world is the result of European country’s exploration. From a European perspective, it makes sense to have your own continent on top and the cut in the Pacific.
But if you look at maps from other cultures a cut in the Atlantic is more reasonable to them and you get maps like [this](https://live.staticflickr.com/4054/5129465738_4ba2c46965_b.jpg) from China where it is in the center.
There are maps with the Americas in the center too, [like this map](https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/7herhg/why_is_the_usa_in_the_center_of_this_map_and_why/) they are less common because the cut is on land
There are fewer maps with the south up, only 10% of Earth’s population lives in the southern hemisphere and most are close to the equator. A map like [this](https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/41561a7c2082009d18f5192471fbc150?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=676&cropW=1016&xPos=0&yPos=26&width=862&height=575) is as valid as anyone any other map. If it was native Australians who started maps making and exploring the world this might be the standard
There is may map projection wah is selected depending on the usage, You can have the center at any point on earth. Here is a map with the [center is Wellington, New Zealand](https://www.mapability.com/ei8ic/maps/great_circle/capital_cities/wellington_new_zealand_great_circle_map.php)
It is as valid as any other map. It is terrible for navigation in Europe because it is very stretched out. What it is good for is measuring distance and baring from Wellington. The distance or the map from the center is the distance on the earth’s surface from that point. This is a map for amateur radio operators where distance and bearing from the center are easy to measure. You do need a different map for each location on earth.
When I was taking classes in Japan the map they had in the classroom had it reversed, with Asia on the left and the Americas on the right. Why would this make a difference in a country where you normally read things right to left, you might ask?
Um, I…don’t know.
Two main reasons are:-
1) The Prime Meridian runs through the United Kingdom. This divides the planet into Eastern and Western Hemispheres. By convention, west is on the left, east on the right.
2) Most exploration of the world was done setting out from Europe and many modern maps are based on Mercator’s projection. These maps tended to be Eurocentric as they were drawn by Europeans.
Why don’t maps show the world centered on the north pole?
Honestly, it’s an eye opener.
Because that’s the orientation that minimizes cutting land masses in half and appearing on opposite ends of the map — cut in the Pacific where there is the greatest contiguous water.
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.
The reason is arbitrary. The Prime Meridian runs through England, which (along with the anti-meridian which is on the exact opposite side of the globe) is the imaginary line that we decided divided “east” from “west”. If that line were instead chosen at, say, Denver, then maps would center on Denver instead.
The line was set in England because the navigation system we use was developed by people in Europe who all agreed on England as the place to put it.
People looking at maps are usually more interested in the land forms than they are in the vast flat oceans. [The geographic center of land on Earth is in Turkey](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_centre_of_Earth) and splitting the map through the middle of the Pacific puts Turkey pretty close to the center of the map while minimizing the amount of land that has to be split.
Occasionally you’ll of course find places that split the map other ways to focus on their own regions. You can for example find many Asiacentric maps in Asia.
Sort of related: I’ve always been curious as to why the Northern Hemisphere is portrayed “on top”. Is it just because most of the navigators making maps lived on that hemisphere and decided they were on top of the countries they were sailing to? I heard ancient Persians (or Chinese?) depicted “up/top” as the direction the sun came from, so a map would unfurl like a scroll with eastern areas on top and westernmost was at the bottom, where the sun sank. Which kind of makes sense, all choices considered. Why *not* have East be the top?
In sci-fi, Earth is also always depicted (on approach from space) as the current Arctic-on-top view. But I wonder if alien “maps” would agree with this arbitrary perspective. Our view might look upside-down to them. Or they might have Earth recorded in its relation to the Galactic Plane, in which case the Mercator Map would be tilted at a 60° or 30° angle to its current framing (depending on whether they view Earth as ‘above’ or ‘below’ the midplane).
I guess it’s all a matter of perspective–that of the mapmaker.
Because, historically, the Americas were discovered by Europeans by voyaging across the Atlantic, not the Pacific. Most other parts of the world, such as Central Asia, Middle-East or Africa also historically interacted with Europe and thus, adopted the same common style.
Some countries in East Asia show maps the other way round, because that is more beneficial for them.
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