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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There’s basically only one place where you can split the map and not have it cut through a major land mass (excluding Antarctica, which will always be split), and thats in the narrow area between Russia and Alaska going on down through the rest of the Pacific. If you split in the Atlantic you run into Greenland. Anywhere else your splitting countries and continents. The line through the Pacific has the least impact and allows all the major land masses to remain connected on the map.
>For the deep historians, [this](https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17759/pg17759-images.html) is the proceedings of an international conference in October 1884, in Washington DC, USA, called at the request of the President of the USA for the purpose of fixing the “Prime Meridian” (i.e. zero longitude). There were many different longitude references back then, but the bulk of maritime tonnage used Greenwich as their reference (much to the annoyance of the French, who used Paris as their reference). The final adoption of Greenwich was on October 22, 1884, and at the same time, the original global time zones were also established.
>If the world is round can we make any point of the world the center in maps?
Well, yeah, it’s done all the time. You can even have one centred on the poles. There are “world ocean” maps based on this.
>Or is there a specific reason all the world maps show the continents in the same orientation?
Because the British had the largest empire on earth, with the largest merchant navy, so when it came time to define 0 longitude internationally, it run through London. That’s THE reason.
It didn’t hurt that the split runs through the middle of the pacific, including the Bering Straight, so the map nicely splits without cutting any land.
I bought a world map (poster-sized) from Rand McNally that is Pacific centric. It’s pretty cool.
I can’t find it online now…
Well, a major advantage is that by cutting the map off in the middle of the Pacific is that you’re not cutting off any major land masses, besides a small mostly uninhabited bit of Siberia.
The real reason, though, is that European colonizers decided the middle of the map would be a line running through Greenwich England, for reasons.
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