Hey folks!

The other night, I found myself in bed thinking of Alaska, specifically, the west coast of Alaska, and I thought to myself about the proximity between Alaska & Russia, which made my puny mortal mind think a bit more - Are there any maps that don't adhere to the current standard of "The US is on the left, and Europe's on the right"?

When was the standard for maps reached? Since there aren't really any East/West poles to speak of, I was thinking if there was a map where you could see, for example, America & Asia closer than they are on the standard maps?

If this comes across as vague, I could probably get into some specifics, although my skills at explaining are second to most.

Thanks in advance!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian

That's basically what I was talking about, most, if not all maps adhere to the prime meridian - But let's say someone moved that red line to where Japan is on todays maps, and the map would "adhere" to that (despite defeating the point of the fancy line-in-the-middle that is the prime meridian.), is there no such thing? Did they settle on having this current system so long ago, that it's been the global standard for thousands of years?

I'm just really interested in seeing such a map, for some reason.

http://www.worldmapsonline.com/lg_image_windows/egc_mural_lg.htm
http://mustangs.coloradoacademy.org/~pkim/

first, there are different projections available for maps. each projection is losing information. some are losing angles, they are not respected. The other type of projection is respecting the angles but not the distance... Most of the flat map (mercator style) have for example a Greenland extremely large while India is small. because distances and so surfaces are not respected. Finally, there are maps that respect other information: for example, the surfaces are proportional to the population, number of internet users, GDP etc... I recently found an advertisemant for Monaco which represents the surface of Monaco in Europe vs the % of cultural budget...
Through the ages, maps have been used to represent the politics of the countries who draw it. For example, putting Jerusalem in the middle of the earth, during Christian middle-ages. China name itself means the country of middle. Every one wants to be at the center of the world. it's human.
Maps are not a scientific exact representation of our world. They are views of our mind of a partial representation of this world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/communicate/blog/student//images/worldmap_lg.jpg

Basically, yes. I think Chinese had maps before Europeans did, but Europeans ended up having a greater global influence and thus Europe remained usually centred in maps of the world, long before the position of the prime meridian was globally agreed upon. Incidentally, "Mediterranean" comes from Latin medius, "middle" or "centre", and terra, "Earth" or "world", so it basically means "the centre of the world". The Greek word for Mediterranean, Μεσ?γειο?, anologically comes from Greek words μ?σο?, "middle", and Γη, "Earth".

I think it the link Nami posted answers this. It was set up during the British Empire, so it was done from a British perspective. To us, America is to the left, and Asia is on the right.

There were other proposed prime meridians. It just helped the amount of shipping that the Uk had. (We were the world superpower at that point I think). Hence, as most shipping used the Uk proposal, every adopted that.

That's what I mean, it was during the height (not quite the peak though if memory serves) of the British Empire so we had a lot more say in what happened internationally.

The map doesn't look like that everywhere. Did no one see solid_moose's post?

Yes, the point is that the style is the most prominent. Or at least it is where I've ever seen it (American media, UK, Germany, Poland, and some other European media)

Well it's not the least surprising that it's going to be used in European media.

The advantage of this map is that it doesn't split any major piece of land in two pieces, like the map Solid_moose linked to does with Greenland.