14,000 Year Old Map the Oldest Known Cartography

World's oldest map: Spanish cave has landscape from 14,000 years ago - Telegraph

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

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.

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Europe Learns a New Position: Inverted Cartography

404 – Europe, Sunny Side Up « Strange Maps

Strange Maps writes:

The German polymath Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) also was a cartographer, and one with a penchant for strange maps. He produced an anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen (#141) for his Cosmographia (1544), and also this one, a map of Europe oriented south instead of north. The effect is quite literally disorienting, and provides an opportunity to re-examine an all too familiar geography from a different perspective. The Iberian peninsula, for example, seems too large this way up; but looks to be just about the right size if you turn the map the ‘right’ way up. Or is that just me?

This map was sent in by the people over at Martayan Lan, a New York dealer in rare books and fine antique maps, globes and atlases. Their website currently features a few of Munster’s more extraordinary maps, including this one.

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