Comment by flohofwoe
7 hours ago
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.