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Excavated in 1900 by Paul du Chatellier in a barrow and forgotten for a century, this ornamented slab was recently rediscovered in the Musée dArchéologie nationale (MAN Museum of National Archaeology) and was the subject of a significant study that allowed it to be interpreted as the oldest cartographical representation of a known territory in Europe, a probable marker of the political power of a principality of the early Bronze Age.
BREST
(AFP)
.- A Bronze-age slab first uncovered in 1900 in western France is the oldest map in Europe, according to a study released this week. The 4,000-year-old object, known as the Saint-Belec slab, is engraved with markings that represent part of the Black Mountains region of western France, said Yvan Pailler, an archaeologist and one of the authors of the study published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society. Today, it is the oldest map of a territory in Europe, he said. You can see
An ancient engraving on a very old stone slab has been called the oldest 3D map of Europe.
The stone, which measures 2 meters by 1.5 meters (6.6 feet by 5 feet), has been named the Saint-Bélec Slab. It was initially found back in the year 1900 by archaeologist Paul du Chatellier during a dig at a prehistoric burial ground in Finistère, western Brittany, and was rediscovered in the cellar of the French castle, Château de Kernuz, over a century later in 2014.
Recent analysis of the stone revealed that it dates back approximately 4,000 years (between 1900 BC and 1650 BC during the early Bronze Age) and contains what archaeologists believe is an ancient map of an area in France’s northwestern region of Brittany.
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Researchers only began to study the rock in 2017.
Brest, France:
A Bronze-age slab first uncovered in 1900 in western France is the oldest map in Europe, according to a study released this week.
The 4,000-year-old object, known as the Saint-Belec slab, is engraved with markings that represent part of the Black Mountains region of western France, said Yvan Pailler, an archaeologist and one of the authors of the study published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society. Today, it is the oldest map of a territory in Europe, he said. You can see on the slab carvings which, at first sight, are not understandable.