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.