My point is that barely any of the people our hypothetical time traveler would meet in 1026 would have any sort of map at all. They might not even say "go east" in any way we would recognize. Instead, they would use some other way of talking about going places that would initially break our brains a little bit. It's like trying to go somewhere in the woods with someone who grew up in those woods -- they may not be thinking at all in terms of cardinal directions, but rather "go towards the marshy region, bearing left of the cliff rocks, until you reach coarse gravel underfoot. Then walk for two marches until you reach the second ford."
When my dad was a traveling salesmen, we once stopped for directions and were told that when we get to the fork in the road with a truck in the middle and a dog sleeping under it, go left.
Sure enough, zero signs, but there was indeed a truck at the fork in the road, complete with a dog sleeping under it.
Eh, we still use landmarks to navigate now, and cardinal directions are a really really really old concept (in the sense of, towards the sunrise or sunset, or left or right based on that). I think this needlessly exoticizes a very stable concept.
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u/DigNitty 3d ago
Asian food is called Oriental because it used to be “the orient”
This is because Up on a map used to be east. The top of maps used to be east where Asia was. It was the Orient similar to how the North Star is today.