“Do the people in Antarctica know they're upside-down?”

Photo by David Mark

 

My son asked this when he was five, with a great look of wonder and slight concern on his face.  One could say the answer is “no,” because they’re standing right-side-up relative to the earth beneath their feet, but I’m going to go with the globe-comparison approach.  My answer is: “yes,” insofar as they know that they are upside-down as they would appear if placed on a globe, being on the southern end of the earth, and that position being designated “down” on standard modern maps, 3-D and otherwise. 

I confidently say so because Antarctica appears to have no indigenous people and therefore everyone there has come from elsewhere on the globe, where I boldly presume they would have become aware that their travels would take them south, down, to the bottom of the earth as it appears on diagrams galore. 

Even if Antarctica did have natives, chances are they would probably have figured that Earth is round (based on the fact that people had figured out Earth’s shape at least as early as ancient Greek civilization) – but granted, they might not see themselves at the bottom.  I have seen no evidence for any native Antarcticans, however.

Do the people in Antarctica buy into the idea that they’re on a globe-shaped object?  There aren’t a whole lot of statistics available detailing how many people on earth believe it’s not spherical, but I can tell you that The Flat Earth Society membership represents less than   1/100,000^th of one percent of the world population, so the odds are good that everyone in Antarctica does, in fact, think they are on a round planet, the south pole of which we have generally agreed to place at the “bottom.”

Notice that the questioning child was not concerned with whether the folks at the bottom of it all would fall off.  He was also amenable to the idea that while the South Pole Station crew may know that, on a globe, they’re “upside-down,” they seem right-side-up to themselves, thanks to gravity and perspective.

Questions beget questions, and as this one could be either succinctly or elaborately answered, it also begs a few more items to be pondered.

Like, why is Antarctica even considered “upside-down?”   And what is actually on the bottommost point on the globe when it’s mounted with its tilt?  And have any civilizations ever thought they were upside-down on the earth?  Or about to fall off?

Why is North “up?”

The placement of north on the topside of a map is generally attributed to Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek scholar living 90-168 AD.  Exactly why he did this is unknown (perhaps his notes on the matter were in the Library of Alexandria before it burned) but the practice was heartily adopted by European Renaissance mapmakers, for whom ancient Greek pedagogy was all the rage. 

It’s been theorized that the preference was to put the better known and/or more important places at the top, and for a Greco-European mapmaker, that would be Europe.   (So if you put the important things at the top of the map, what would you have there?  I’m thinking I might top mine off with the local coffee shop.)

Still, maps worldwide were not standardized to be north-up until well after that Renaissance fad.  Early European maps often had east up, while Egyptian, Arab and Chinese maps often faced south, and American maps sometimes pointed westward.  Every mapmaker had their reasons for compass placement, but these reasons were largely lost to time, including the original reason for north-up…but that’s the standard that prevailed.

Still, it’s neat to see how the world looks on north-down maps for a change.

What’s bottom-most on a tilted globe?

Globes are usually mounted at a 23.5° tilt in keeping with the relative position of Earth to the Sun.  When you look at the bottom of the globe in this case, since the South Pole is tilted to the side, the actual “bottom” of the earth falls along the Antarctic Circle, with the seas and land masses along that line rotating their way into and out of the bottom spot.  The honor of the bottommost spot goes to the edges of Antarctica, mostly coastline and islands,  including the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands which get a close shot at being at the bottom.  Those folks probably know they’re upside-down, globe-wise, as well.

Has any human culture thought they were walking on the earth upside-down?  Or that they could fall off?

Thus far in my travels, I have found no hint of any culture that has thought people would drop off the earth because they are upside-down on it.

There have been times and places when the prevailing vision was of a flat earth.  Most ancient flat earth models I’ve encountered envisioned the world as a disk of land floating in water, so in that case, if you fell off the end of the earth, you would get wet.  Perhaps if you took a rowboat beyond the land’s edge, you may find the water drops off, too, although I haven’t yet come across historical documentation of whether these cultures envisioned an end to the water as well.  Although the idea of a world-end waterfall sure makes for a great story. 

The final word

But enough of my postulating.  Let’s go to the source and ask someone who has been at South Pole Station if she knew she was upside-down at the time.

Speaking to her own perspective on the experience, widely-traveled author Heather Shumaker says, “No, I didn't notice being upside down, but I did notice being high up.  The South Pole was on top of 2 miles of ice, so it was like being on top of a very high mountain.”

Turns out that being at the “bottom” of the earth can actually give one the sense of being on top of things!

As far as the ultimate description of placement, Shumaker sums it up perfectly: “We're all upside down to somebody.  It just depends on the way you look at the planet.”