The oldest landscape

This engraving is about 13,800 years old, but I cannot resist the feeling of connection with the person – an artist, who made it. It was found in Spain, about 30 miles west of Barcelona. The huts in the engraving are arranged in three levels across a slab that measures 7 inches wide and 3 inches high. The largest of the seven huts is about 1.5 inches wide and 0.8 inches high.

You can read the details here. To back up their interpretation, the study authors turned to ethnographic data from more recent hunter-gatherer societies. They wrote that domed huts with a beehive shape similar to those depicted in the engraving are the preferred style of temporary dwellings constructed by such societies throughout the world. They also pointed to previous work that suggests groups described as “generic hunter-gatherers” make camp with an average of 3.9 to 7.6 individual households.

That was engraved landscape, but the oldest-known landscape painting might have been created in modern-day central Turkey. The British archaeologist James Mellart first found the mural in the early 1960s inside a mud-brick house in the proto-city of Çatalhöyük, which was inhabited by up to 8,000 people 8000 BCE–6000 BCE.

James Mellart believed the image represented a volcano 80 miles away, despite the fact that there are no known maps from that time period. Since then, archaeologists have more cautiously posited that the painting shows a leopard skin with an abstract pattern below it, as many other artistic representations of leopard skins were found in the town.

I look at it and, for whatever reason, do not get a similar feeling of connection. But maybe it is all just my imagination. As one of the researches said: “You know, these people that lived in Çatalhöyük 9,000 years ago — they are fascinatingly strange to us. There is always a danger in taking our views and knowledge and trying to impose it onto a culture that is that different from ours.”

And here is the oldest map, inscribed on the mammoth tusk from Předmostí, Czech Republic. It is 25,000 years old and considered to represent a map of the Pavlov Hills.

While these maps are “only” 13,660 years old (read here), they are the oldest known in Western Europe. They were found in Spain:

Looking at these two, my feeling of connection is back. I think I can relate to the desire of the author to capture the map of the place, maybe to pass it to others or maybe just for himself, so as not to forget.