World's Oldest Map Deciphered in Spain
A stone tablet discovered 16 years ago has been announced as the world's first known map, say experts. The prized artefact, found in a cave in Abauntz in the northern region of Navarra, Spain, was first located in 1993 - yet its intricate tangle of lines and swirls confounded archaeologists. Now however, the University of Zaragoza team who first found the tablet believe they've cracked its use. And team leader Pilar Utrilla believes its would have been used as much more than a mere A to Z: "We can say with certainty that it is a sketch, a map of the surrounding area," she tells the Telegraph. "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," Ms Utrilla adds, "complete with herds of ibex marked on one of the mountains visible from the cave." The tablet far predates any other known land map. The previous oldest is the Çatalhöyük Map, in central Turkey, which dates back to around 6,200 BC. Both discoveries are a far cry from today's interactive maps of the world, including Heritage Key's very own Google Earth flyovers of London, Rome and the lost city of Atlantis.Other uses mentioned for the tablet include a storytelling device, or plans for a hunting expedition. "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. Maybe it was to record areas rich in mushrooms, birds' eggs or flint used for making tools," Ms Utrilla continues. "Nothing like this has been discovered elsewhere in western Europe."
Image by Assar.
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No illustration of the map? That's too bad. This sounds like something I would like to see.
This list of twenty historical maps says a lot more about the knowledge of man than the geography of our planet. Some are almost laughably inaccurate.
Scientists today located 20,000-year-old cave paintings in Deba, Gipuzkoa, Basque Country. Their 'paired fragments', while uninspiring aesthetically, are rare in that they prove the paintings were hewn during the Solutrean era of the Upper Paleolithic Age.
Can someone please explain what 'paired fragments' are?
Are they something like these "boats" from El Castillo Cave (Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain):
http://bandstex.globat.com/preclovisforum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=57
Thanks,
Charlie
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