2011-06-13
post/6499994331
quote 22:50:31
“ It was fairly common in medieval times to put east at the top. Which has a logic to it: when traveling across open terrain, the one consistent thing you had to orient yourself by when you broke camp in the morning was the sunrise. In fact, that’s the source of the term “orient yourself”: it literally means to face east. ”
Carl Muckenhoupt in a comment on See Different, a MetaFilter thread about alternative maps.
I’d never thought about the word. This was a little explanation bomb going off in my head.
