The world is a handkerchief.
The popular proverb says so, our particular pocket encyclopedia.
In Latin the word
mappa
meant napkin, towel or rag.
That's what they called the rectangular canvas that, in the expectant silence of the circus, gave the starting signal for the chariot races, as if those horses were going to gallop across confines and borders.
On the surface of these canvases, the Romans drew the profiles of the known world.
The maps portray our best and worst traits: avid curiosity and a hunger for discovery, but also conflicted vanity and a thirst for annexation.
They fascinate us because they tell stories and reveal our passions.
In addition, they build our gaze.
The reasons why north appears above are not scientific, but strategic.
Tall has positive connotations, while short is looked down upon.
We associate poverty with the south and prosperity with northern countries.
The famous photograph of the Earth that the
Apollo 17 spacecraft took
in 1972 —the blue marble— was rotated for publication, since we only know how to read the planet placed in that unique way.
However, for centuries the east usually occupied the superior position because the light comes from the east, while the north symbolized a territory of darkness: since then, “orienting ourselves” means looking for the reference where the day is born.
Maps tell many truths, but also lies.
They are atlases of the mentalities, fears and expectations of the societies that create them.
The most widely used cartographic projection still used today, known as Mercator, hides biased distortions.
The planispheres through which we travel with our eyes and navigate with our fingertips draw a huge and central West, oversized in a northern hemisphere that occupies two thirds and relegates the south to a tiny lower third.
In an episode of
The West Wing of the White House
2001, the president receives several members of a fictitious Organization of Cartographers for Equality, who press to renew the school maps.
They explain that Mercator's Europe is represented larger than South America, when the latter doubles it.
In addition, Germany appears in the center, although it should appear further north.
"Wait a minute," interrupts a perplexed Josh Lyman, "are you telling me that Germany is not where we thought it was?"
The answer is lapidary: "Nothing is where you think it is."
Ever since we began to draw paths and geographies on napkins, human beings have tended to believe that we are the navel of the world.
Throughout history, people and towns have suffered from this mirage, unbecoming of inhabitants of a spherical planet.
According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus wanted to know where the center of the Earth was, and to find out, he released two eagles at the ends of the universe.
Inevitably, the birds found themselves in a place in Greece, Delphi, marked for posterity with an oval stone that they called "omphallus", that is, navel.
The Chinese of that time called their country Zhonghuó, “central kingdom”.
Both believed to be the cartographic core of the cosmos and the only civilized culture.
Each one is located at the epicenter of everything and perhaps that is why the world has more navels than brains.
Often the megalomaniac delirium has chiseled geographies through invasion, war and subjugation, in the name of remote purities and triumphant nations.
History proves, however, that thought and science flow at the crossroads of diverse populations, on travel routes, meetings and exchanges.
Although archaic wisdom coined at Delphi a self-absorbed maxim—know thyself—the success of the oracle was fundamentally cosmopolitan: it depended on the stories and data brought by its visitors from distant origins.
For this reason, the playwright Menandro dared to rectify it: "It is more useful to say: know the others."
In reality, we learn about ourselves when we dare to look at other landscapes and listen to other voices.
It is unoriginal to feel unique: only others tell us who we are.
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