Why is the 'North' associated with 'Up' in maps? A world map turned upside down would be disorienting but correct. Why do we draw North in the upper part? Is there any reason other than convention?
<a href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/441/on-maps-why-is-north-always-up" rel="nofollow">http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/441/on-maps-why-is-...</a> and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html" rel="nofollow">http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartograph...</a> seem to cover the topic pretty well. Is there anything you want that a web search on the topic fails to resolve?
"Lintukoto" (Home of the birds) was a warm place where earth raises to meet the sky. It was southwest from Finland and up. And of course "Tuonela" (Home of the dead) was northeast and down.
Probably one of the oldest ways of orientation were the stars, in particular the north one, that is more or less fixed in the sky, and it was up.<p>So probably the first maps (and the ones coming after them) followed that idea.
North is up because most of human's civilizations especially the Western ones have occurred in the Northern hemisphere, where water generally flows south "down" towards the equator. So in Egypt where the Nile Flows North, the Upper Nile is in Southern Africa, while the Lower Nile is in the North.