Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting article. I looked for references to Chinese practice. In Chinese, a (magnetic) compass is referred to as a "指南针," literally "south-indicating needle," so it does appear that south was the most important cardinal direction for the Chinese-speaking people who first used compasses. The article notes that old Arab maps showed south on the top, and attributed this to Chinese practice in map-making (which, if I remember correctly without sources at hand, was not fully uniform in this regard).

Overall, the article offers an interesting discussion of trade-offs in map-making, including the trade-off of what country to put in the middle of a flat wall map that shows the whole world. I have become quite used to Chinese wall maps of the world in Mercator or equal-area projections that display China in the middle (left-to-right) and consequently split North America along both sides of the map.

The Chinese name has a good deal to do with cultural tradition. In traditional Chinese practice, north is the direction of evil. Cities were planned with gates at the south and rulers sat facing south. Magnets were actually first used as tools in geomancy rather than navigation. [1] This is why you would not call a magnet a points-north-needle.

Of course, the association of North with evil is itself probably because of the Northern hemisphere seasons. North, cold, winter and evil and all grouped together in opposition to South, warm, summer, and good.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Geomancy_and_feng_shui

Not to mention the Mongols and Manchurians who were always trying to invade, as opposed to the tribute-paying Southern kingdoms. There's a reason they built the Great Wall to the north and not the south.

Weather also does play a role, as the south was able to generate three harvests a year vs. two in the north. Historically, the capital of China has been in the south, only being moved north during the Ming (aka second to last) Dynasty.

Not sure how much any of that has to do with compass points, but did want to elaborate a little on the cultural/historical context of north vs. south in China.

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