Before Maps: How Humans First Imagined Space

The Shape of the World: A History of Maps

Chapter 1: Before Maps: How Humans First Imagined Space

第一章：地图之前：人类如何最初想象空间

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The Paradox of Human Spatial Cognition

人类空间认知的悖论

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Consider this curious fact: every human culture ever studied, from the most isolated hunter-gatherer band in the Amazon rainforest to the sophisticated urban dwellers of ancient Mesopotamia, has possessed some form of spatial representation—a way of thinking about, talking about, and organizing knowledge about the world in relation to place. This is not a skill that required formal education to develop. Children as young as two years old begin using spatial language, and by the age of four, most children can create recognizable "maps" of their environment using drawings, toys, or verbal descriptions. We seem, as a species, to be hardwired for cartographic thinking.

思考这个有趣的事实：每一个被研究过的人类文化，从亚马逊雨林中最与世隔绝的狩猎采集部落，到美索不达米亚古城中老练的都市居民，都拥有某种形式的空间表征——一种思考、谈论和组织关于世界与地方关系知识的方式。这不是一种需要正规教育才能发展的技能。两岁的幼儿就开始使用空间语言，四岁时，大多数孩子就能使用绘画、玩具或口头描述来创造可辨认的环境"地图"。作为一个物种，我们似乎天生就具备制图思维。

This raises a profound question that lies at the heart of our exploration: if humans are so naturally inclined toward spatial representation, why did it take so long—hundreds of thousands of years, in fact—for our ancestors to produce what we would recognize as a map? The oldest known map-like artifacts date to only about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, yet the archaeological record shows that *Homo sapiens* has existed for at least 300,000 years. What were our ancestors doing with their spatial cognition during all those millennia? Were they not "thinking in maps" even before they drew lines on cave walls or scratched symbols into clay tablets?

这就引出了一个深刻的问题，贯穿我们探索的核心：如果人类如此自然地倾向于空间表征，为什么我们的祖先花了这么长时间——实际上是好几十万年——才制作出我们能认作地图的东西？已知最古老的类似地图的人工制品可追溯到大约15,000至20,000年前，而考古记录显示，*智人*至少已经存在了300,000年。在这些漫长的岁月里，我们的祖先是如何运用他们的空间认知的？即使在他们在洞穴墙壁上画线或在泥板上刻符号之前，他们难道不是在"用地图的方式思考"吗？

The answer, as we shall discover in this chapter, is both simple and profound. Humans did indeed possess sophisticated spatial cognition long before the first maps appeared. What changed was not our mental capacity but our *technology*—the external tools we developed to capture, store, and share the spatial knowledge that previously existed only in our minds, our bodies, and our languages. To understand the history of maps, therefore, we must first understand the pre-cartographic history of spatial thinking: the invisible maps that existed in human consciousness long before anyone thought to draw them on stone, clay, or papyrus.

答案，正如我们将在本章中发现的，既简单又深刻。早在第一幅地图出现之前，人类确实已经拥有了精密的空间认知。发生变化的不是我们的心智能力，而是我们的*技术*——我们开发的外在工具，用于捕捉、存储和分享那些以前只存在于我们头脑、身体和语言中的空间知识。因此，要理解地图的历史，我们必须首先理解前地图时代的空间思维史：在任何人想到在石头、泥土或纸莎草纸上绘制地图之前的漫长岁月中，存在于人类意识中的那些无形的地图。

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Archaeological Evidence: The Cave as Cognitive Archive

考古证据：洞穴作为认知档案

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The archaeological record offers us a tantalizing glimpse into the spatial minds of our prehistoric ancestors. Perhaps the most famous example is the Cave of Lascaux in southwestern France, a subterranean gallery of paintings and engravings created approximately 17,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic period. While most visitors focus on the magnificent depictions of animals—horses, aurochs, deer, and the famous "Chinese horse"—scholars have increasingly recognized that these cave paintings may encode sophisticated spatial and symbolic information.

考古记录为我们提供了对史前祖先空间思维的一瞥。最著名的例子可能是法国西南部的拉斯科洞穴，这是一个约17,000年前在上旧石器时代创造的绘画和雕刻的地下长廊。大多数游客关注的是那些壮观的动物描绘——马、野牛、鹿和著名的"中国马"——但学者们越来越认识到，这些洞穴绘画可能编码了复杂的空间和象征信息。

The cave's layout itself appears to follow a deliberate spatial organization. The paintings are distributed across multiple chambers, each seemingly associated with different activities or symbolic meanings. In the famous Hall of the Bulls, the largest composition depicts a procession of animals moving in a single direction, which some researchers interpret as representing a seasonal migration route. The famous "semiogrand chevaux" in the axial gallery shows a horse figure that appears to be wounded by what might be a spear or arrow—an image that may represent not just a hunting scene but a *cartographic record* of a particular hunting event, with the wounded animal positioned in relation to the cave's spatial features.

洞穴本身的布局似乎遵循着一种有意的空间组织。绘画分布在多个洞室中，每个洞室似乎都与不同的活动或象征意义相关联。在著名的"公牛大厅"中，最大的构图描绘了一队动物朝同一方向移动，一些研究人员将其解释为代表季节性迁徙路线。轴廊中著名的"半重大马"显示了一匹马的形象，似乎被可能是矛或箭的东西刺伤——这幅图像可能不仅代表一个狩猎场景，还代表了一次特定狩猎事件的*地图式记录*，受伤的动物与洞穴的空间特征相关联。

But the Lascaux cave also contains abstract symbols that may be even more significant for understanding prehistoric spatial cognition. Among the paintings, researchers have identified patterns of dots, lines, and geometric shapes that bear striking resemblance to the kinds of symbolic notation systems used by indigenous peoples around the world to represent geographic features, territorial boundaries, and travel routes. The famous "bird-headed stick figure" in one chamber has been interpreted by some scholars as a wayfinding symbol, perhaps representing a particular individual's hunting territory or spiritual landscape.

但拉斯科洞穴也包含一些抽象符号，这些符号对于理解史前空间认知可能更为重要。在绘画中，研究人员已经识别出点、线和几何形状的模式，这些模式与世界各地土著人民用来表示地理特征、领土边界和旅行路线的符号标记系统惊人地相似。一个洞室中著名的"鸟头棒形图"被一些学者解释为一种导航符号，可能代表某个人的狩猎领地或精神景观。

Other archaeological sites reinforce this interpretation. In 1968, near the town of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, archaeologist Marcel Otte discovered a wall painting dating to approximately 7,000 BCE that depicts a settlement viewed from above—a bird's-eye perspective that is remarkably similar to modern aerial photographs. The painting shows houses arranged in a grid pattern, with what appears to be a volcanic eruption in the background. This remarkable image suggests that humans were experimenting with *cartographic abstraction*—the deliberate transformation of three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional representation—long before the invention of writing or formal cartography.

其他考古遗址也强化了这种解释。1968年，在土耳其中部的Çatalhöyük镇附近，考古学家马塞尔·奥特发现了一幅可追溯到公元前7000年左右的壁画，描绘了从上方俯瞰的定居点——一种与现代航拍照片非常相似的鸟瞰视角。这幅画显示房屋以网格模式排列，背景中似乎是一座火山喷发。这幅引人注目的图像表明，人类早在书写或正式制图术发明之前，就已经在尝试*制图抽象化*——将三维空间有意转化为二维表征。

Yet perhaps the most compelling evidence for prehistoric spatial cognition comes not from celebrated cave paintings but from more humble artifacts. In 2000, researchers analyzing ochre pigments from Blombos Cave in South Africa discovered a pattern of cross-hatched lines scratched into a piece of silcrete stone approximately 77,000 years old. While the exact meaning of this "Blombos Engraving" remains debated, its geometric regularity suggests a deliberate symbolic system—and some scholars have proposed that similar marks found on artifacts from this period may represent early attempts to encode spatial information, perhaps recording the location of water sources, hunting grounds, or social territories.

然而，也许史前空间认知最引人注目的证据并非来自著名的洞穴壁画，而是来自更朴素的文物。2000年，研究人员在分析南非布隆伯斯洞穴的赭石颜料时，发现了一个大约77,000年前的燧石上刻有交叉划线的图案。虽然"布隆伯斯雕刻"的确切含义仍有争议，但其几何规律性表明了一种有意的符号系统——一些学者提出，在这个时期的文物上发现的类似标记可能代表早期编码空间信息的尝试，也许记录了水源、狩猎场或社会领地。

These archaeological findings challenge us to reconsider what we mean by "maps." If a map is simply a visual representation of spatial relationships, then humans have been making maps—in the form of cave paintings, rock art, and symbolic engravings—for tens of thousands of years. But if we define a map more narrowly as a *deliberate, standardized, and shareable* representation designed to convey geographic information, then the first true maps appear much later, emerging alongside the development of agriculture, urbanization, and the administrative needs of complex societies. The question then becomes: what cognitive and social changes were required to transform the intuitive spatial knowledge of prehistoric humans into the explicit, portable, and universally comprehensible representations we call maps?

这些考古发现挑战我们重新思考"地图"的含义。如果地图仅仅是空间关系的视觉表征，那么人类已经在以洞穴壁画、岩画和符号雕刻的形式制图了数万年。但如果我们将地图更狭义地定义为