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I know the planet has poles, but it surprises me somehow that basically every map I've ever seen respects the poles as top bottom.

The earth is a sphere and we could just as well pick any pode/anti-pode we want when drawing.

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For navigation, having the poles at top and bottom is really the only way to do it. Lining up positions of constant noon sun angle along a horizontal line (i.e. latitude line) makes the paper map correspond nicely to the navigational information available.

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