Los mapas: ¿orientan o desorientan?

Abstract

Maps, an indispensable tool for orientation and location in a territory, by their very nature of not being the territory, leave aside aspects of physical reality depending on their projection. Beyond the fl at projections of a three-dimensional reality, there is a proposal in which the orientation of maps, where the north is above, is a misrepresentation due to geopolitical and economic realities. Th e origin of the word “north” comes from the protoindoeuropean “ner” which means “left,” and use the north as if it were “above.” Th is has generated a disorientation not only of geographical nature, but one that is also political and economic, since the time when the north was used as the reference point, instead of the orient, or east. Th ere is a proposal by Cristóbal Cobo Arízaga, with scientifi c foundations, that maps should help guide us returning to the east as a planetary reference point, that is, to use the east, where the sun rises, as a methodology that brings us out of the geographical habit of “orienting” the maps towards the north.