View of the three-dimensional map on the Ségognole 3 cave floor (Credit Dr. Medard Thiry)
In an extraordinary discovery, researchers from the University of Adelaide’ have unearthed what could be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map, etched into a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin.
The Ségognole 3 rock shelter, long celebrated since the 1980s for its remarkable Late Palaeolithic engravings—two horses carved in exquisite detail alongside a symbolic depiction of a female pubic figure—has now revealed yet another marvel: a meticulously crafted miniature representation of the surrounding landscape.
Dr. Anthony Milnes of the University of Adelaide’s School of Physics, Chemistry, and Earth Sciences joined forces with Dr. Médard Thiry of the Mines Paris – PSL Centre of Geosciences to lead this groundbreaking research, reshaping our understanding of ancient human ingenuity and cartography.
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New research suggests that part of the floor of the sandstone shelter which was shaped and adapted by Palaeolithic people around 13,000 years ago was modelled to reflect the region’s natural water flows and geomorphological features.
Following his initial visit in 2017, Dr. Thiry demonstrated that Paleolithic people had deliberately sculpted the sandstone to evoke the female form, even creating fractures to direct water and nourish a spring. New research reveals a further connection to the natural environment: the shelter floor, shaped around 13,000 years ago, was also modeled to mirror the region’s water flows and geological features.
“What we’ve described is not a map as we understand it today — with distances, directions, and travel times — but rather a three-dimensional miniature depicting the functioning of a landscape, with runoff from highlands into streams and rivers, the convergence of valleys, and the downstream formation of lakes and swamps,” Dr Milnes explains.
“For Palaeolithic peoples, the direction of water flows and the recognition of landscape features were likely more important than modern concepts like distance and time.
“Our study demonstrates that human modifications to the hydraulic behavior in and around the shelter extended to modelling natural water flows in the landscape in the region around the rock shelter. These are exceptional findings and clearly show the mental capacity, imagination and engineering capability of our distant ancestors.”
