Why did the ancients write Chinese characters from left to right?

The writing habit of the ancients was from right to left, essentially from west to east, which is the same as that of modern people, and this is the direction of the earth's rotation. This kind of writing originated from gossip and later became a habit.

Anyone who knows a little about the Book of Changes knows that the orientation in the Eight Diagrams is: Zuo Dong is in the west, up, down, south and north, which is just the opposite of the orientation in modern maps. This is the origin of the idiom "and heaven remains our neighbourhood", because the sky is south and the earth is north.

Why are you going in the opposite direction? The reason is that the former looks at the sky from the ground, and it stands on the ground of China, so it looks up. The latter is "looking at the earth from the sky", which is a overlooking angle.

How did the ancients get that definition? Let's assume that an ancient man stood on the ground of China and spread a piece of paper on the ground, with his face facing south and his back facing north. The right west station in Zuo Dong is good. Then write the position on the paper on the ground beside you, and then look at this paper, which just matches the position on the gossip. If this ancient man turned180 to see the earth, that is, his face was facing north, his back was facing south, his left was facing west, and his right was facing east, which was consistent with the orientation of the map, so there was no difference between the two in essence.

If we rotate the horizontal axis in the coordinate system by 180, it will conform to the ancient writing habits and gossip orientation. According to the definition of "left is yang, right is yin, upper is yang and lower is yin" stipulated by the ancients, a surprising and interesting result will be obtained: we find that the ancients' set conforms to both natural principles and mathematical principles.

Let's look at the picture above, which draws the coordinates in mathematics with the orientation of gossip. 1, in nature, the sun rises and sets in the west, so the east is yang and the west is yin; The climate in the south is hot, the fire is yang, and the climate in the north is cold, and the water is yin; So the southeast is the yang in the yang, and the northwest is the yin in the yin. The yin in the northeast is shaoyin, and the yang in the southwest is shaoyang.

2. In the definition of the ancients, the left is Yang, the right is Yin, the upper is Yang and the lower is Yin, so the Yang in the upper left Yang is the sun, the Yin in the lower right Yin is Taiyin, the lower left is the Yin in the Yang, and the upper right is the Yang in the Yin.

3. Looking at the arrow directions of the horizontal and vertical axes in the coordinates, we can see that the upper left quadrant is positive, the lower right quadrant is negative, the lower left quadrant is positive and negative, and the upper right quadrant is positive and negative. Suppose that positive is positive and negative is negative, that is, (the sun) is at the upper left, Yin (the lunar calendar) is at the lower right, Yang (less Yin) is at the lower left, and Yin (less Yang) is at the upper right. This is consistent with the reality of nature and the nature in mathematics. I draw three attributes in the same picture, which is called "Trinity of Nature, Mathematics and Eight Diagrams Orientation".

There is too much nonsense. In short, many habits of the ancients came from gossip, which can't be simply thought to be caused by sanitary habits.