page_title: History of cartography
section_title: Earliest known maps
hierarchical_section_title: History of cartography / Earliest known maps
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraving on a mammoth tusk perhaps representing a “map”, Pavlov (Břeclav DIstrict, Southern Moravia, Chech Republic), deposited in ArÚ AVČR Brno. Gravettian. Original. Length 37 cm. Temporary exhibition the Mammoth hunters in the NM Prague. Čeština: Rytina na mamutím klu, znázorňující pravděpodobně „mapu“, Pavlov (jižní Morava), délka 37 cm). Gravettien. Originál. Z výstavy Lovci mamutů v NM v Praze. Archeologický ústav AV, Brno.
context_page_description: The history of cartography traces the development of cartography, or mapmaking technology, in human history. Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world. The earliest archaeological maps include cave paintings, to ancient maps of Babylon, Greece, China, and India. In their most simple form maps are two dimensional constructs, however since the age of Classical Greece maps have also been projected onto a three-dimensional sphere known as a globe. In the 21st century, with the onset of the Information Age and the subsequent increase in computing power, maps can now be digitized in numerical form, transmitted and updated via satellite GPS.
  Maps, or depictions that can be identified as geographical representations, have been found across ancient and Bronze Age cultures, with many of these early maps being simple structures that were likely more intended to be used as religious or symbolic tools rather than practical ones.
context_section_description: The earliest known maps are of the stars, not the earth. Dots dating to 14,500 BC found on the walls of the Lascaux caves map out part of the night sky, including the three bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair (the Summer Triangle asterism), as well as the Pleiades star cluster. The Cuevas de El Castillo in Spain contain a dot map of the Corona Borealis constellation dating from 12,000 BC.
  Cave painting and rock carvings used simple visual elements that may have aided in recognizing landscape features, such as hills or dwellings. A map-like representation of a mountain, river, valleys and routes around Pavlov in the Czech Republic, carved on a mammoth tusk, has been dated to 25,000 BC, making it possibly the oldest known map of all time. The map etched on a mammoth bone at Mezhyrich is c.15,000 years old. A polished chunk of sandstone from a cave in Spanish Navarre, dated to 14,000 BC, may represent similar features superimposed on animal etchings, although it may also represent a spiritual landscape, or simple incisings.
  Another ancient picture that resembles a map was created in the late 7th millennium BC in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, modern Turkey. This wall painting may represent a plan of this Neolithic village; however, recent scholarship has questioned the identification of this painting as a map.
caption: Possibly the oldest surviving map has been engraved on this mammoth tusk, dated to 25,000 BC, found from Pavlov in the Czech Republic.
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