The Rock Art Atlas

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
Vicente Moreno García-Mansilla (Madrid, 1959), ingeniero naval y alférez de navío de la Armada Española, desarrolló su carrera profesional en Accenture durante treinta años, con responsabilidades internacionales en Latinoamérica, África, Europa del Este, Israel y Portugal, siendo presidente de la compañía en España durante una década (2005-2015) y liderando el lanzamiento de la Fundación Accenture. Actualmente es miembro independiente de varios consejos de administración y del consejo asesor internacional de la Hispanic Society of America. Ha sido miembro del Patronato Princesa de Asturias, la Junta de Protectores del Teatro Real, el Patronato de la Fundación SERES (como vicepresidente), el Consejo Empresarial de la CEOE, el Círculo de Empresarios y otras destacadas instituciones. Vivamente interesado por la astronomía y la arqueología, ha publicado tres artículos académicos que presentan, por primera vez, una solución científica al enigma de los signos prehistóricos parietales: «Un posible mapa paleolítico en el Sur de Andalucía» (2022) y «Los Tectiformes de El Castillo, La Pasiega y Altamira» (2025), ambos en RAMPAS de la Universidad de Cádiz, y «Space and land representation during the Upper Palaeolithic: Six Rock Art croquis in Spanish caves» (2024), en la revista internacional Rock Art Research.

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