But on the other hand, we can compare prehistoric works with each other. Minusinsk, Russia, is home to a large rock carving similar to the Bedolina Map, which also features houses, people and animals scattered across a large area almost ten metres in length–this too is a representation of a village. Here, however, the stonecutter was more interested in reproducing the houses than showing how they were situated in relation to each other, and everything is drawn in profile. It is also difficult to say whether the rock carving was created as a single picture; whether the houses were drawn together, or whether new ones were simply added where there was space to draw them on the rock. The comparison suggests that the rock carving at Bedolina is a map, while that in Minusinsk is an image.
MAPS IN THE MIND | The ability to communicate geographical information was developed by certain species long before the age of modern humans–the most widely known of these techniques is the dance honey bees perform to tell each other where flowers can be found. The bee moves up the honeycomb while waggling its tail, before turning to the right in a semicircle, back to the starting point, and beginning the dance again. Then the bee turns down to the left. If the flowers it has found are in the direction of the Sun, the bee dances straight up the honeycomb; if the other bees must fly to the left or right of the Sun to reach the flowers, the bee marks the exact angle in the dance. The further forwards the bee dances, the further away the flowers are; the more intensely the bee waggles its tail, the more enthusiastic it is about its findings. Aristotle noticed that bees must be able to give each other directions: ‘[…] each bee on her return is followed by three or four companions,’ wrote the Greek philosopher in his History of Animals over 2,000 years ago.
The dance of the honey bee has a clear function–the hive gets richer when bees who know where food can be found share this information with the others. The same must have been true of prehistoric peoples–those who were able to communicate where prey, plentiful fruit or fresh water could be found ensured that the community would grow fat and survive. The early humans were nomads, and while our closest relatives, the other apes and Prosimians, lived mainly in the forests, we spent much of our time out on the plains. This resulted in us developing better sight than our predecessors, along with a different relationship to distances, space and direction. Spatial awareness was probably the first part of our primitive consciousness.
Humans also acquired four additional traits that were central to the development of our ability to think in maps. First, the ability to go on exploratory expeditions; second, the ability to store acquired information; third, the ability to abstract and generalise; and fourth, the ability to know what to do with the information. While our ancestors were generally only able to talk about what was happening in the here and now, humans learned to link events in terms of the past, present and future–and to physical space.
Putting the world into words–this tree, that lake and that mountain–makes the world simultaneously larger and smaller, and more comprehensible. It facilitates the dissemination of information, and it is therefore easy to see how the development of spatial awareness and language have helped each other. Because they wished to articulate the maps they had in their heads, prehistoric peoples may have built up a vocabulary to express long and short distances, directions, landmarks and the time it takes to reach a specific location. They may then have created the first maps from sticks and stones, using sand, earth and snow, and making marks with their fingers or a brush on cave walls.
PREHISTORIC MAPS | Humans began creating representations of the world around 40,000 years ago–or at least, the oldest images we know of–depictions of animals painted in black, red and yellow on the walls of the Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain–are from this period. The cave-dwelling peoples here used the pigments they found in clay and soot, and mixed them with fat, wax, blood or water. Rock carvings discovered in Australia are also estimated to be around 40,000 years old.
What is believed to be the world’s oldest map is carved into the tusk of a mammoth. Estimated to be somewhere between 32,500 and 38,000 years old, it was discovered in the Alb-Donau-Kreis region of Germany, and according to German professor Michael A. Rappenglueck is a celestial map of Orion. Rappenglueck also claims that a 17,300-year-old painting discovered in the Lascaux Caves in south-west France, which depicts an ox, a man with a bird’s head and a bird, is a map of the stars Vega, Deneb and Altair, also known as the Summer Triangle–the first stars to become visible on Nordic summer evenings. Rappenglueck illustrates this by drawing three lines between the eyes of the figures.
Not everyone is convinced by Rappenglueck’s theory, but it is logical to think that humans created maps of the stars before creating maps of the landscape–it’s much easier to obtain an overview of the sky than the terrain. The stars hang above us, arranged into formations as if stretched across a canvas or a wall, and are easy to represent using dots. Celestial maps may have played an important role in the earliest agricultural societies–the emergence of certain constellations continues to be used today as a sign of when crops should be sown. But not all prehistoric dot formations are celestial maps.
An illustration of the Bedolina Map, which makes it easier to see what the carving represents. The map depicts six houses and around thirty fields, all connected by small paths, in addition to a ladder, animals and people, all viewed from above. Not until 1934 did anyone begin to wonder whether the carving might be a map.
Rævehøj, on the island of Fyn in Denmark, is situated on a ridge that houses a hidden burial chamber from the Stone Age. Carved into one of the load-bearing stones is an elegant pattern of dots, and in 1920 Danish historian Gudmund Schütte argued that these represented the Plough, Virgo, Gemini, the Tropic of Cancer, Boötes, Leo, Canis and Auriga. But the problem with this theory, as Schütte himself admitted, is that the distances between the various constellations are incorrect, and the carving features more dots than there are stars. It’s easy to see why Schütte was so convinced–the pattern of dots has a striking resemblance to a celestial map. But today’s archaeologists believe the dots form a sun cross–an equal-armed cross within a circle.
In 1967, British archaeologist James Mellaart published a book about the excavations undertaken at the 9,500-year-old city of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, in which he claimed that one of the discovered wall paintings was a map of the city featuring the Mount Hasan Volcano in the background. The map quickly became famous–with many supporting Mellaart’s interpretation.
‘The oldest town plan in existence,’ wrote Jeremy Harwood in To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World; ‘The oldest authenticated map in the world,’ wrote J. B. Harley in the UNESCO Courier; ‘The oldest known [map],’ wrote Catherine Delano-Smith in The History of Cartography; ‘The Catal Huyuk map […] is perhaps 2,000 years older than the oldest known writing system,’ asserted James Blaut in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. But was the painting really a map? In 2006, archaeologist Stephanie Meece wrote an article in which she argued that the ‘houses’ are geometric patterns, which have also been found at other locations in Çatalhöyük, and that the ‘volcano’ is actually a leopard skin. Seven years later, a team of geologists tested the map theory by investigating whether Mount Hasan might have erupted around the time at which the map was created. Rock samples showed that the volcano had in fact erupted around 8,900 years ago–and the eruption would have been visible from the city. Does this ultimately prove that the painting is a map? Not necessarily. but it does illustrate how hard it can be to find clear answers to questions about historical artefacts from so long ago.
Our view of prehistory also influences how we view maps from the period, and may result in the under- or overestimation of their existence. First, it was common to underestimate the presence of prehistoric maps–as late as 1980 only four maps that could be said to be from prehistoric times had been properly studied. Then followed a period in which new theories arose around prehistoric religion, the Stone Age people’s
way of thinking, the role of symbols in primitive society and the significance of rock carvings. This resulted in the discovery of a number of ‘new’ maps–when the first edition of The History of Cartography was published in 1987, the chapter on prehistoric times in Europe, the Middle East and north Africa concluded with a list of fifty-seven possible maps. Several of these have since been refuted, while others continue to be debated today.
At Talat n’Lisk, in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, is a round cave painting measuring one metre in diameter. Inside the circle is a painstakingly crafted image, thought to show a broad valley flanked by two mountain ranges, and between them a wide river and tributaries as well as two dots, one small and one large, symbolising settlements. The painting is around 6,000 years old.
In the North Caucasus mountains, a 5,000-year-old silver vase was discovered, engraved with two rivers running down from a mountain range to meet at a lake or sea. This may have been an attempt to represent the mountains of the Caucasus region, and two of its rivers.
Another vase, from Tepe Gawra near Mosul in Iraq, features a motif depicting hunters in a wide valley containing a river and tributaries, flanked by high mountains. Some believe the design was painted with a specific landscape in mind, while others believe the image to be more schematic and illustrative of a general phenomenon–hunting–rather than a particular place.
The Cangyuan region of south-west China is home to yet another rock carving reminiscent of the Bedolina Map. At its centre is a village, featuring houses constructed on stilts. That the stonecutter’s aim was to denote space, distances and the positions of these houses is evident from the fact that the houses furthest away are painted upside down, to indicate that their stilts are located against the outermost fence. Towards the village run dotted lines–roads–along which people and animals walk.
Another village is reproduced in stone at Lydenburg in South Africa. The rock carving is large–4.5 by 4 metres–and with its depictions of round settlements within a network of roads is also not unlike the Bedolina Map.
Along the Yenisei River, at Mugur-Sargol in Mongolia, are rock carvings that provide a bird’s-eye view of the local shepherds’ tents and enclosures. Mongolia is also home to many maps of grave sites, some of which illustrate both our world and that of the afterlife.
MAPS OF THE DEAD | Historians estimate that humans first began to imagine the existence of a world other than our own around 100,000 years ago, and graves from this period have been found to contain objects that the dead wished to take with them to the next world. But it was long believed that prehistoric peoples would have been unable to produce maps of anything other than their immediate surroundings–that representing their position relative to the Sun, Moon, stars, realm of the dead and abodes of the gods was far more advanced than their capacity allowed. ‘As a rule […] the maps of primitive peoples are restricted to very small areas […] their maps are concrete […] they cannot portray the world, or even visualise it in their minds. They have no world maps, for their own locality dominates their thought,’ wrote historian of cartography Leo Bagrow in 1964. More recently, however, maps that illustrate how humans viewed themselves in relation to the rest of creation have been discovered. These often feature labyrinths, circles, ladders and trees, and several of them present the various levels that make up the universe, including the heavens, Earth and kingdom of the dead.
A rock carving found in the Sahara depicts a human-like figure surrounded by a pattern of ovals, waves and rectangles, with an opening at the bottom thought to represent the path to the kingdom of the dead.
A small stone statue in Trioria in Italy features a motif comprising the Sun at the top, the Earth in the middle and a ladder leading down to the underworld. In Yorkshire, England, rock carvings have been discovered that depict ladders leading from one circle to the next–perhaps in an attempt to show a connection between the Earth, stars and planets.
A painstakingly crafted cave painting found in Madhya Pradesh, India, shows a sea with rushes, fish and birds at the very top, and a sun surrounded by various geometric patterns at the centre. It is thought that this might be a map of the universe, as understood by the map’s creators.
There is much evidence to suggest that maps were also used in ritualistic contexts. Shamans among indigenous populations in both Australia and Siberia, who have preserved all or parts of their religion over thousands of years, paint maps on the drums they use to enter a trance. These maps prevent the shamans from getting lost when they visit the spirit world.
In the early 1700s, Norwegian missionary Thomas von Westen drew a map taken from a Sami ceremonial drum, with clear cartographic features from both the old beliefs and the new Christian faith. Two lines divide the Earth from the heavens and the heavenly gods from the earthly ones; the Sun is included, and along the Christian road (Ristbaiges) are a horse, a goat, a cow and a church. The kingdom of the dead (Jabmiku di aibmo) features yet another church and a Sami cabin. A fishing lake and the Sami people’s earthly residence are also represented on this cosmic map.
Maps are images of the world–representations of a world view. Religious narratives are related to maps in the sense that they seek to describe what the world is like. They are ways of imposing order and structure on a world that is seemingly endless and difficult to comprehend, and we therefore find cosmogonies–stories about how the world came to be–and cosmologies–theories describing how the world might have been created–in almost all cultures throughout all ages.
The current dominating cosmology–the scientific theory that the universe was created by the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago–is not particularly old. It was first suggested by the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître as recently as 1927–before this, scientists believed the universe to have existed in an eternal and generally unchanging state. But the Big Bang theory was not readily accepted by all astronomers and physicists–that everything had been created in this way sounded far too religious; it reintroduced God as a primary cause, it was said–but the theory has since gained a strong foothold, not least due to astronomer Edwin Hubble, who in 1929 proved that the universe is expanding. But it was not until 1964 and the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation thought to be left over from the Big Bang that the theory was finally taken seriously in scientific circles.
The Big Bang theory is also embraced by many who hold a religious world view. Hindus believe that their Hymn of Creation, in which everything is described as being interwoven and initiated by heat under unclear circumstances, describes it:
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined cosmic water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing, arose at last,
born of the power of heat.
The Quran states ‘that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them,’ while in 1951 Pope Pius XII declared that the Big Bang theory is not incompatible with the Christian theory of creation.
Every place and time has its own stories of creation and ways of seeing the world. A Finnish creation story tells of an egg that divided to become the Earth and the heavens; in Hawaii people told of how the slime on the seabed gave rise to the Earth. The Inuit believed the Earth fell from heaven; the Greeks told of Gaia, who gave birth to the heavens, great mountains, beautiful valleys and Oceanus–the endless sea. These stories sometimes vary within the same culture at different times and locations, and their mythological descriptions do not always correspond to the geographic knowledge people possessed. This tells us that creation narratives should not necessarily be taken literally. ‘That which at some points in time is regarded as history becomes mythical at others, and the stories regarded as myths today may be considered truths tomorrow, or may have been regarded as such in the past,’ write Tor Åge Bringsværd and Jens Braarvig in the book I begynnelsen: Skapelsesmyter fra hele verden (In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Across the World). What the early cosmologies generally
agree upon, however, is that the Earth we live on is situated somewhere in the middle, and that there is also a realm of the dead and a supernatural place where the gods reside.
The Old Norse religion provides a good example of such a world view. At the centre of the world is Yggdrasil, an ash tree. ‘This ash is the best and greatest of all trees; its branches spread over all the world, and reach up above heaven. Three roots sustain the tree and stand wide apart,’ says one of the characters in medieval Icelandic author Snorri Sturluson’s narrative The Fooling of Gylfe. Around the tree’s trunk is Asgard–home of the gods–and surrounding this is Midgard–the home of humans. At the tree’s roots are Niflheim–in Norse mythology the deepest region of the realm of the dead–and the serpent or dragon Nidhogg, who belongs to the dark powers. Encircling Asgard and Midgard is the great ocean, where the Midgard Serpent poses a great threat.
The 13th-century Eddas and Sagas provide no account of how the tree named Yggdrasil came into existence, but describe how the world itself was created from a primordial being. The Prose Edda gives the following version:
Of Ymir’s flesh
was earth created,
of his blood the sea,
of his bones the hills,
of his hair trees and plants,
of his skull the heavens;
and of his brows the gentle powers
formed Midgard for the sons of men;
but of his brain
the heavy clouds are all created.
A ceremonial drum confiscated by Norwegian missionary Thomas von Westen in the 1700s. The drawings form a map of the Sami view of both this world and that of the spirits. ‘Let there be an end to devilish shaman arts, with wands, sorcery and magic drums,’ said von Westen, threatening villages with the bailiff or district sheriff if they refused to hand over their shamanic objects. He collected almost 100 ceremonial drums using this method.
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