Ancient Scratched Stones: World's Earliest Maps or Magic Artifacts?

A set of broken stones covered with etchings of lines and squares, discovered at a 5,000-year-old sacred site in Denmark, may be some of humankind’s earliest maps, according to archaeologists. The researchers think the inscribed stones are symbolic maps of local landscapes, and were perhaps used in rituals by Stone Age farmers who hoped to magically influence the sun and the fertility of their farmlands. Fragments of 10 of the "map stones" or "landscape stones" were found in June, during e