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World's Oldest Map: Spain Cave Landscape from 14,000 YA

maximus otter

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Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago.

PHOTOGRAPH AT LINK BELOW

A stone tablet found in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape.

Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting.

A team from the University of Zaragoza spent 15 years deciphering the etched lines and squiggles after unearthing the artefact during excavation of the cave in 1993.

"We can say with certainty that it is a sketch, a map of the surrounding area," said Pilar Utrilla, who led the research team.

"Whoever made it sought to capture in stone the flow of the watercourses, the mountains outside the cave and the animals found in the area."

"The landscape depicted corresponds exactly to the surrounding geography," she said. "Complete with herds of ibex marked on one of the mountains visible from the cave itself."

The research, which is published in the latest edition of the Journal of Human Evolution, furthers understanding of early modern human capacities of spatial awareness, planning and organised hunting.

"We can't be sure what was intended in the making of the tablet but it was clearly important to those who populated the cave 13,660 years ago," said Ms Utrilla. "Maybe it was to record areas rich in mushrooms, birds' eggs, or flint used for making tools."

The researchers believe it may also have been used as a storytelling device or to plan a hunting expedition.

"Nothing like this has been discovered elsewhere in western Europe," she said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...-cave-has-landscape-from-14000-years-ago.html

maximus otter
 
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That's very interesting. But it is very hard to tell from the picture what we are dealing with here.
 
Here's the publication data and abstract from the published paper that triggered the news story in 2009.

Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 57, Issue 2, August 2009, Pages 99-111

A palaeolithic map from 13,660 calBP: engraved stone blocks from the Late Magdalenian in Abauntz Cave (Navarra, Spain)
P.UtrillaC.MazoM.C.SopenaM.Martínez-BeaR.Domingo

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.05.005

Abstract
An engraved block from the cave of Abauntz is interpreted as a Magdalenian map in which the actual surrounding landscape, including mountains, rivers, and ponds, is represented. Some possible routes or avenues of access to different parts of the geography are also engraved on the landscape. The engraving seems to reproduce the meandering course of a river crossing the upper part of side A of the block, joined by two tributaries near two mountains. One of these is identical to the mountain that can be seen from the cave, with herds of ibex depicted on its hillsides, on both sides of the gorge in front of which the cave of Abauntz is strategically located. In the southern part of the gorge, there is a completely flat area where the watercourses slow down, forming meanders and flooding in springtime. The following elements are also represented on the block: tangles of concentric strokes and bundles of lines forming very marked meanders. In short, all of these engravings could be a sketch or a simple map of the area around the cave. It could represent the plan for a coming hunt or perhaps a narrative story of one that had already happened. This paper is provided in the context of recent discussions on early modern human capacities of spatial awareness, planning, and organized hunting.

SOURCE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248409000839
 
This image contains 2 of the 3 photographs accompanying the article cited in post #1.

mapa-Abauntz.jpg

SOURCE: https://peregrinacultural.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/mapa-de-14-000-anos-desenhado-numa-pedra/
 
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