Forgotten Stone Slab May Actually Be The Oldest Known Map in Europe
7 APRIL 2021
The markings are unfamiliar: carved contours that now only hint at a lost landscape from long ago. Nonetheless, a large, mysterious slab of stone recently rediscovered in France looks like it might just be the oldest known map in Europe.
In a new study, researchers re-examined the Saint-Bélec slab – an intricately carved, partly broken slab of stone first found in 1900, before being set aside in a castle and largely forgotten about for over 100 years.
Only now are modern archaeologists reappraising the slab and learning its significance – specifically, that it could in fact represent the most ancient cartographical depiction of known land in Europe.
Bronze Age stone slab discovered in France is oldest map in Europe, say archaeologists
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Europe s oldest map is a carved stone slab from the Bronze Age
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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.