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Classical compass winds
In the ancient Mediterranean world, the classical compass winds were names for the points of geographic direction and orientation, in association with the winds as conceived of by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Ancient wind roses typically had twelve winds and thus twelve points of orientation, sometimes reduced to eight or increased to twenty-four.
Originally conceived as a branch of meteorology, the classical wind rose had only a tentative relationship with actual navigation. The Classical 12-point wind rose was eventually displaced by the modern compass rose (8-point, 16-point and 32-point), adopted by seafarers during the Middle Ages.
== Origins ==
It is uncertain when or why the human sense of geographic orientation and direction became associated with winds.〔In a survey of a widely distributed sample of 127 world languages, Brown (1983) finds 18% of the languages have no cardinal points at all, and only 64% have all four cardinal points. Brown finds four sources for cardinal direction: (1) environment-specific features (e.g. landmarks); (2) celestial bodies (esp. the position of the sun); (3) atmospheric features (e.g. winds, temperature) (4) application of generic directions to cardinal directions (e.g. uptown/downtown = north/south).〕 It is probable that for ancient settled populations, local physical landmarks (e.g. mountains, deserts, settlements) were the initial and most immediate markers of general direction ("towards the coast", "towards the hills", "towards the lands of Xanadu", etc.). Astral phenomena, in particular the position of the sun at dawn and dusk, were also used to denote direction.〔Brown (1983) finds that sunrise-sunset accounts for the west-east cardinal points in 45% of the 127 world languages in his survey – or, perhaps more informatively, c. 60% of those languages which have east-west to begin with.〕
The association of geographic direction with wind was another source.〔Brown (1983) finds that winds account for north-south cardinal points in 19% of the world languages in his survey (or 28% of those that have north-south to begin with), but account for less than 2% of the west-east directions – Turkish is one of these few.〕 It was probably farming populations, attentive to rain and temperature for their crops, that noticed the qualitative differences in winds – some were humid, others dry, some hot, others cold – and that these qualities depended on where the wind was blowing from. Local directional names were used to refer to the winds, eventually giving the wind itself a proper name, irrespective of the observer's position. This was likely furthered by sailors who, far from landmarks at sea, nonetheless recognized a particular wind by its qualities and referred to it by a familiar name.〔Brown (1983) emphasizes the transition to winds as cardinal points as the population becomes more mobile. See also Aczel (2001: p.40)〕 The final step, completing the circle, was to use the proper names of the winds to denote general cardinal directions of the compass rose. This would take a little longer to work itself through.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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