Neither. Until the compass arrived in Europe in 1200, things were mostly oriented to the east, because that's where the sun rose every morning (hence the word "oriented"). Sunrise or sunset on summer and winter solstices were often used. Stonehenge is missing many of its original stones, but one of those remaining indicated it may have been oriented towards sunrise on the winter solstice.

In the English village of Bradford-on-Avon, there's a Saxon-era church and a modern church, both aimed at sunrise but 13 degrees different, possibly because of Earth's wabble since 900 AD.

European churches named for a saint would likely be oriented towards sunrise on that saint's day (St. Valentine = Feb 14, etc.).

The Chinese oriented maps to the south for reasons I have yet to discover. Despite having the compass since at least 37 AD, they never seem to have used it for navigation, but did for feng shui etc.

Saudi Arabian highway maps are oriented towards the east (I used to live there). Towards Mecca? NO! Mecca is in the western coast of Saudi Arabia. Islam dates to 621 AD, the sunrise to somewhat earlier. All hotel rooms in the Muslim world have an arrow showing the direction of prayer (al Qibla), and I encountered country folk who didn't know where east was, but did know what direction to pray.

Check out "The Riddle of the Compass" by Amir Aczel and "The Lost Art of Finding Our Way" by A. E. Huth.

hi! If you don't get responses here, you might try x-posting to a sub with a stronger focus on archaeology or anthropology, e.g. /r/AskAnthropology, /r/AskScience (Social Science category)