Geospatial analysis can be traced back to as far as 15,000 years ago, to the Lascaux cave in southwestern France. In this cave, Paleolithic artists painted commonly hunted animals and what many experts believe are astronomical star maps for either religious ceremonies or potentially even migration patterns of prey. Though crude, these paintings demonstrate an ancient example of humans creating abstract models of the world around them and correlating spatial-temporal features to find relationships. The following photograph shows one of the paintings, with an overlay illustrating the star maps:
Over the centuries, ...
