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For over a century, archaeologists from around the world declared the mysterious signs accompanying cave paintings indecipherable. Dotted lines, rectangles, parallel strokes... what did they mean? The answer remained hidden in plain sight until the seemingly impossible was achieved: deciphering some of these signs, revealing them to be precise maps of the territory our ancestors once inhabited.
Paleolithic signs deciphered for the first time in history
What did the strange signs that appear alongside the bison and horses of Altamira mean? Why did our Paleolithic ancestors paint dots, lines, and quadrilaterals on cave walls? Vicente Moreno presents a groundbreaking discovery that reshapes our understanding of Paleolithic rock art. After years of research, he has succeeded in deciphering the enigmatic signs that accompany the animal paintings in our caves.
The first cartographic representations of our world
His central thesis is bold: these signs are the earliest cartographic representations of our world, maps and plans created more than 15,000 years ago by prehistoric artists who mastered surprisingly sophisticated techniques of spatial representation. The book examines ten Paleolithic maps from the Strait of Gibraltar to Cantabria, demonstrating with mathematical precision the correlations between rock art signs and the real geography of each region. It reveals the remarkable capacity for abstraction and spatial organization of our ancestors. The Rock Art Atlas includes mathematical verification, topographical analysis, and an innovative methodology that opens new avenues of research in prehistoric archaeology. A major contribution to our understanding of the origins of cartography and human symbolic thought.
VICENTE MORENO GARCÍA-MANSILLA (Madrid, 1959), is a naval engineer and a lieutenant in the Spanish Navy. He spent thirty years at Accenture, holding international responsibilities across Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Israel, and Portugal, and served as Chairman of the company in Spain for a decade (2005-2015). He also led the launch of the Accenture Foundation. He is currently an independent board member of several companies and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Hispanic Society of America. He has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Princess of Asturias Foundation, the Board of Patrons of Madrid s Teatro Real, the Board of Trustees of the seres Foundation (as Vice President), the Business Council of the Spanish Confederation of Employers (ceoe), the Círculo de Empresarios, and other leading institutions. With a strong interest in astronomy and archaeology, he has published three academic articles presenting, for the first time, a scientific solution to the enigma of prehistoric parietal signs: A Possible Paleolithic Map in Southern Andalusia (2022) and The Tectiforms of El Castillo, La
Pasiega and Altamira (2025), both in RAMPAS (University of Cádiz), and Space and Land Representation during the
Upper Paleolithic: Six Rock Art Croquis in Spanish Caves (2024), in the international journal Rock Art Research
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