Cardinal direction: Encyclopedia - Cardinal direction

Cardinal direction

Cardinal direction - Four Cardinal Directions

Four directions are north, east, south and west. Or forward, back, left and right.

Cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four principal directions or points of the compass in plane.

The Four Cardinal Directions correspond to the following degrees of a compass: North: 0 (= 360) degrees, East: 90 degrees, South: 180 degrees and West: 270 degrees (see azimuth).

During the Migration Period, the Germanic languages' names for the cardinal directions entered the Romance languages, where they replaced the Latin names borealis (or septentrionalis), australis (or meridionalis), occidentalis and orientalis. See French language#The Franks.

Cardinal direction - Five Directions

Traditional Chinese culture and some others view the center as a fifth principal direction. In Asia, each direction is often identified with a color, and geographical or ethnic terms may contain the name of the color instead of the name of the corresponding direction.

Cardinal direction - Central Asia

The five cardinal directions were historically identified with colors. This was common to the Central Asian cultural area and was carried west by the westward migration of the Turks. These directional color terms were applied both to geographic features and sometimes to populations as well.

• North: Black
  • Heilongjiang "Black Dragon River" province in Northeast China, also the Amur River
  • Black Sea: north of Turkey
  • Kara-Khitan Khanate
• South: Red
  • Red River (Vietnam): south of China
  • Red Sea: south of Turkey
• East: Green or Blue (青 "qīng" corresponds to green or blue)
  • Qingdao (Tsingtao) "Green Island": a city on the east coast of China
• West: White
  • White Sheep Turkmen
  • Ak Deniz "White Sea" in Turkish indicates the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea, or the Mediterranean Sea
• Center: Yellow
  • Huangshan "Yellow Mountain" in central China
  • Golden Horde: "Central Army" of the Mongols

Cardinal direction - Americas

In Mesoamerica and North America, traditional indigenous beliefs also focus on the belief in the four cardinal directions and a center. Each direction was associated with a color, which varied, but each color corresponded to the hues of corn (green, black, red, white, and yellow).

Cardinal direction - Six Cardinal Directions

In solid geometry, there are Six Cardinal Directions: north, south, east, west, heaven, and land. Or forward, back, left, right, upward, and downward.

A cube or a common room has six quadrangles, which cross each other at right angles.

Three axes are x-axis (left and right), y-axis (forward and back), and z-axis (upward and downward).

Cardinal direction - Seven Directions

In various Native American and New Age practices, there are seven primary directions: north, south, east, west, heaven, land, and center (or self, now).

Cardinal direction - Non-compass directional systems

Use of the compass directions is common and deeply embedded in European culture, and perhaps even more so in Chinese culture. Some other cultures make greater use of other referents, such as towards the sea vs. towards the mountains (Hawaii, Bali), or upstream and downstream (Yurok, Karok).

See also

• Ordinal directions
• Boxing the compass

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cardinal direction", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_directions, used and available under the GNU Free Documentation License.