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Published April 6, 2021
Bernie Taylor’s following “Ice Age Mapmapers?” was presented at the American Association of Geographers 2021 Conference #AAG2021.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present “Ice Age Mapmakers?” at this year’s American Association of Geographers conference. My name is Bernie Taylor and I explore mankind’s creative and intellectual origins.
We have a record of ancient mapmakers who depicted animals and supernatural beings to designate regions where they were believed to exist. This tradition is carried forth to the present where we use animals and caricatures of them to mascot political and geographic regions as well as athletic teams and educational institutions. This tradition of societally identifying animals with our natural surroundings may have originated in prehistory where Ice Age artists depicted animals they presumably had seen.
We begin our journey on the lower right under the subtitle “Geographic Journey” where there is a map of the Iberian Peninsula and part of Morocco. The Cantabria region of Spain is marked by the red dot at the top of the map.
Shifting to the left side of this poster, we can see the Upper Paleolithic Gallery of Discs in the Cantabrian Cave of El Castillo. The Gallery of Discs image is rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise and has a length of approximately 10 meters. The panel is archaeologically dated to roughly 34,000 years ago.
To the upper left of the Gallery of Discs, I have outlined a horse that is depicted on the panel. This breed is the endangered Przewalski’s horse as characterized by the upright mane and doggish muzzle. This animal is indigenous to Eurasia. Below the horse is a mother Iberian Lynx with her kitten pushing up against her ruff. Note that my outlines of the horse and lynxes are not to scale and they and other animals on this panel overlap each other.
To the right of the Gallery of Discs and centered on the panel are outlined the extinct Great Auk, a breaching Humpback Whale, a spinning Bottlenose Dolphin and a Monk Seal which are associated with marine environments.
Across the panel, we find an African elephant. There were elephants in Europe during this period but they were distinguished by their humped heads. Below the African elephant is the Barbary Ape which is native to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. At the bottom of the panel are two giraffes. The mother’s neck is in the foreground. The juvenile’s neck wraps around that of the mother. The necks of the giraffes extend directionally opposite that of the horse. The giraffe is indigenous to Africa and there is no fossil record of this animal being present in Eurasia during the Upper Paleolithic.
Turning back to the subtitled image “Geographic Journey” on the right, we can follow the path of the artist. The artist begins in Cantabria, Spain, at the top of the map, walks southward down the Iberian Peninsula, swims across the Strait of Gibraltar, which is roughly 10 nautical miles, and as represented locationally by the marine animals. The artist then walks to the Atlas Mountains in what is now Morocco. The lower red dot in Morocco designates Jebel Toubkal, which is also the highest mountain in western North Africa, and where we find Barbary apes today. There are no longer elephants or giraffes in this corner of Africa, but we find them depicted on rock art in the region from when the Sahara was wetter.
The Google Maps distance from Cantabria to Jebel Toubkal is about seven hundred kilometers, which would take approximately 30 days to walk and swim.
This Upper Paleolithic panel may help us to better understand the early evolution of mapmaking, why animals and supernatural beings came to be depicted on maps, and how we learned to find ourselves in time and space. More on my work can be found at www.beforeorion.com. I am open to present my research in other forums and collaborate on projects. Thank you again.
Bernie Taylor is the author of Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero (2017).
Explore more intriguing prehistoric research and other provocative posts from Bernie’s Blog.
