The Downover Map or Why is North up?

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the downover world map ANTARCTIC CIRCLE

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created & designed by max singer at THE MAXYFACTORY © 2000 max singer / THE MAXYFACTORY (PATENT PENDING)

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the downover map EQUATOR

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“The first really new way to look at the world since Galileo met with the Inquisititor!”

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E D U C AT I O N A L ! S T I M U L AT I N G ! W E I R D !

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Or, were perhaps the makers of our maps themselves in thrall to some even earlier cultural inheritance and, if so,

Who said North was Up anyway?

might the scenario have gone something like this:

by Max Singer, Creator and Designer of The Downover Map

Early man, in attempting to make sense of himself and his place in the universe had nothing to work with but his own perceptions, his senses. And what he perceived was this.

Photographs of the earth taken by astronauts, floating in gravityless space, always Life strains towards the sky, Up. Death towards the earth. Down.

appear in print with North at the Top of the page and South at the Bottom.

Yet, Modern science teaches us that Up and Down are relative constructs: In space, in the absence of gravity, there is no Up or Down. Why is the idea that North is

The sky, with the sun, moon and stars, it’s free flying creatures is “Up”. And good.

The earth with death and decay, vipers and crawling insects is “down”. And Bad.

Up so ingrained a part of our thinking that even Scientists take it for granted?

And if that was the case, then perhaps those parts of the human body that were also “Up”: the head, the brain,

What’s Up

What’s Down

SKY

GROUND

Etymology is usually a good starting place for such inquiries. But in this case it

were also “Good.” And those parts of the body that were “down”: the anus, the genitals were also “Bad”. And so:

offers us no help. In our own antecedent languages [Middle English, Middle

the “Higher” and “Lower” functions.

French, Old English, Old High German and Old Norse] “North” is a tautology, that is, it simply means “North.” One has to go back to Ancient Umbrian to

As clan grew to tribe to village to city-state to nation-state to empire, these early body-oriented cosmologies became

find a meaning that has anything to do with direction but even here the distinc-

the unconscious, and perhaps not so unconscious bases of our theologies, religions and, later, political theories:

SUN

DIRT

LIFE

DEATH

BRAIN

GENITALIA

HEAD

ANUS

GOD

DEVIL

HEAVEN

HELL

That the North=Up analogy is not something built into our DNA, hard-wired in our mental structure, but a cultural construct, is demonstrated by an ancient

tion is not between Up and Down. “Nertru,” the root of North means “on your UP was the sky, God the King, The Immortal Angels, Heaven, the Clean, the Chaste, the Saved, the Powerful, those

left as you face the sunrise.”

as Pure as the White Light. And DOWN was Hell, Satan and his Underlings, the Promiscuous, the Lewd, the

GOOD

EVIL

CHASTE

IMPURE

UPPER CLASS

LOWER CLASS

UPPER CHAMBER

LOWER HOUSE

CIVILIZED

THIRD WORLD

EUROPE

AFRICA

NORTH

SOUTH

Damned, the Powerless living in the Darkness of their Ignorance.

Chinese topological map from the 2nd century B.C. depicting what is now

When the mapmakers of our civilization made our maps, they would naturally reflect the values and assumptions,

modern Hunan with South “Up”.

hidden and overt of our civilization. And since one of the predominant assumptions of our European civilization is its superiority to all others, it would be unthinkable if we weren’t Top Dog, Sitting on Top of the World, Top

Then why is North Up on our maps?

Banana, if North, where the heart of our civilization was, were not at the top of the map, Up.

The simplest answer is also the most obvious. North is Up because the

And thus, our map of the world, seemingly a neutral representation, product of the new scientific age, is, in fact, an

people who made our maps, put North Up, and we have accepted that as part and parcel of our unquestioned

instrument of propaganda that declares to all who look at it, the natural superiority of the North, the guys at the

cultural heritage.

Top of the Heap, over the inhabitants of the South, the guys at the Bottom.

But was the mapmaker’s choice of this particular alignment a conscious one? Was it an arbitrary decision (in the

Perhaps “The Downover Map” may serve not only as a stimulus for a discussion of these scientific and historical

same way that some early farmer’s footprint evolved into a standard measure of length)? Did they flip a coin?

issues, but also perhaps in some way be an antidote to some of the damage that our unexamined assumptions have had on the course of the lives of millions of human being whose only crime was being born Upside-Down.

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COPYRIGHT 2000 MAX SINGER, THE MAXYFACTORY

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COPYRIGHT 2000 MAX SINGER, THE MAXYFACTORY