Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?

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[–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Most Mediterranean cultures used to have names for at least eight winds, each at 45 degrees from each other. Greeks (and therefore Romans) used twelve, at 30 degrees.

Here's a classic navigator's wind rose, for instance, with 32 different directions based on eight named winds (might be a bit hard to read on dark backgrounds, here's the original SVG):

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