Why Is North Always at the Top on Maps?

This updated guide answers the question 'Why Is North Always at the Top on Maps' with clear explanations and practical context. Why is the North Pole always at the top of the map? Do you want to know the answer? Here is the answer to the question why is the North Pole always at the top of the map.

North does not always mean 'up' when it comes to geophysics. Scientists have known for decades that the magnetic north pole, a point that used to be in the Canadian Arctic, is moving toward Siberia. And magnetic north is different from geographic north, the place where all meridians intersect in the Northern Hemisphere. But even these facts do not explain why modern maps always have the north pole at the top.

Nothing points north. Some ancient Egyptian maps put south at the top; in medieval Europe, Christian cartographers tended to point east, because you had to face that way to face Jerusalem. Others put east at the top because the sun rises. And early settlers in America sometimes used maps with west at the top, because that was the direction they usually traveled.

If anyone is responsible for the fact that today's maps always have the north pole at the top, it is Claudius Ptolemy. His Geographia, written in the 2nd century AD, featured a map of the known world with north at the top. Why he positioned it that way is unclear, but it is possible that the Library of Alexandria, where he did his research, didn't have much information about the Southern Hemisphere. Renaissance scholars resurrected Ptolemy's work, and by that time the phenomenon of magnetic north had been discovered, making his layout even more appealing to mapmakers.

Still, the magnetic north pole was not determined until 1831. During a disastrous expedition to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, British explorer James Clark Ross discovered the pole—where the compass needle on the horizontal axis points straight down—on the west coast of Canada's Boothia Peninsula. " I must leave it to others to imagine the excitement of our minds at having at last reached this great goal ," Ross wrote. "There was nothing left for us now but to return home and be happy for the rest of our lives ."