Re: North again

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 10:34 -0700 12/8/01, Jim Green wrote:
> OK let me ask a more fundamental question:  Where/when did the idea of
> North come about?
Since references to "the four corners of the earth" occur early in
the bible, I suspect that the idea that there are four principal
directions dates from very early in our history, probably well before
there would be any written record.

The sun, moon and stars all seemed to rise and set in approximately
the same opposite places in the sky every day, suggesting two
directions, opposite to each other. the idea that there may be two
others perpendicular to those doesn't seem to be too big a stretch to
me. Since our knowledge of how civilization began is primarily
concentrated in the northern hemisphere, and some of the worst winter
weather seemed to come from that direction, and for those in the
Northern areas (Scandanavia, Northern Siberia, etc.) one could argue
that the sun seemed to be "pulled" toward the north every year, with
its rising and setting points moving northward every spring and
summer, the idea that there might be "something" up there seems
reasonably logical.

It may be that the idea of some absolute "north" is a particularly
northern hemisphere concept. When I lived in the Honolulu area some
years ago, there were four directions, but they were perpendicular
and parallel to the general orientation of the mountains. So instead
of telling people to go north or south they said "mauka" or "makai"
meaning toward the mountains or toward the shore (I may have them
backwards--that was forty years ago), and "Diamond Head" or "Ewa"
referring to the geographical markers at either end of the island and
roughly parallel to the mountains. This grid was actually rotated
about 45 degrees to our traditional north-south grid. I didn't spend
enough time on the other islands to know if they also had four local
directions that may or may not have corresponded to the ones used on
Oahu. But since the early Hawaiians came from the southern hemisphere
tropics, where there wasn't much in the way of "global" preferential
directions, they may well have simply developed local ones, like that
on Oahu.

However we got it, I suspect its origin is lost in antiquity.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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