Back in the day, maps were oriented so East was at the top instead of North, hence the term "Orient".
Hey that's really interesting
That's why I crack up whenever some fool claims "Oriental" is "racist". It literally means "Easterner", much as "Occidental" means "Westerner".
It came out of Christians orientating maps eastwards towards Jerusalem. Sure, it's actually south east of Europe, but early geography was pretty challenging due to the difficulty of accurately surveying land over long distances so East was a close enough approximation.
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