Europe s oldest map is a carved stone slab from the Bronze Age cnn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cnn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This giant stone slab might be the oldest known 3D map in Europe
It was stored for decades but researchers found it in a cellar in 2014
It’s not exactly 3D printing, but it’s just as amazing if not more. First unearthed in France in 1900, a Bronze Age stone slab has been recently rediscovered by a group of researchers, who now believe it could be the oldest three-dimensional map in Europe.
In their study, they determined that the markings were carved 4,000 years ago, representing an area in Western Brittany, France.
Image courtesy of the researchers .
The intricately carved Saint-Bélec slab was found during digs on a prehistoric burial ground in Finistère by local archaeologist Paul du Chatellier. It is believed to date from the early Bronze Age, sometime between 1900 BC and 1650 BC. Following the finding, the slab was apparently forgotten for over a century, stored for decades at Chatellier’s home.
A stone slab forgotten for a century has been deemed the oldest map in Europe
The stone slab dates back to some 4,000 years ago during the Bronze Age
It was first discovered in France in 1900 and then sat in a castle cellar until 2017
Experts recently analyzed the slab, which shows etchings of West Brittany
There is a 3D shape to represent the valley of the River Odet in France
The researchers reportedly suggest that the protoplanet that likely spawned the meteorite in question either got smashed in a collision with some other rocky body or.
A meteorite found in the Sahara Desert last year – specifically Adrar, Algeria – was actually part of a protoplanet (a rocky body in the process of forming into a planet) in our solar system and dates back before Earth was even formed. The piece of volcanic rock, which has been named Erg Chech 002 (or EC 002), is more than a million years older than the previous-oldest meteorite ever found.
According to the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the fragments of EC 002 were “relatively coarse grained, tan and beige” with some crystals that were “larger green, yellow-green and less commonly yellow-brown”.
It is composed of a rock called andesite that is pretty much only found in subduction zones here on Earth (locations where tectonic plates collided with each other that resulted with one of them going underneath the other). Interestingly, meteorites very rarely contain andesite and are mostly created by a different volcanic rock called basalt. Detailed analysis of the meteorite