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I ponder whether, if the poles flipped and we survived that relatively intact, there would be a sudden enthusiasm for "South is up".

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AFAIK in the past there were all sorts of 'up' conventions, for instance medieval European maps sometimes put East up, because Jerusalem is in the East.

Ancient mediterranean maps often were South up, as well as maps of Islamic cartoghraphers.

There were also Roman road maps which were entirely schematic, more like our modern public transport maps (e.g. such maps only cared about how locations were connected by roads and their distances, but not about any geographical mapping)

I was taught somewhere along the way that the term "Orient" for the East comes from the idea that maps were once oriented in that direction.

Put it out of your mind. The term "Orient" comes from the fact that the sun rises in the East; the Latin word (oriens) literally means "rising".

This is also why the contrasting term is "Occident" (meaning "falling"), but that word is less well known today.

Wikipedia confirms your explanation and I have no reason to doubt it. Wyoming has the Occidental Hotel, which introduced me to the term, but I never made the connection that its a simple pair of Latin antonyms. I'll correct this in my mental list of "fun facts".

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