Dating from the Bronze Age, the map shows part of the Black Mountains in Brittany.

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HANDOUT / DEPARTMENTAL ARCHIVES OF FINISTERE / AFP

  • The oldest map of a territory in Europe has been unearthed in Finistère.

  • It was engraved on a slab discovered in 1900 in a tumulus and fallen into oblivion.

  • Researchers will now try to decipher the symbols engraved on this map to find out the legend.

It was discovered in 1900 but it is only today that it reveals its secrets.

The engraved slab of Saint-Bélec in Finistère is indeed the oldest map of a territory in Europe, according to a study published Wednesday in the Bulletin of the French prehistoric society.

"We are dealing with a map which represents a territory from the early Bronze Age (2150-1600 BC) and which corresponds to part of the Black Mountains", underlines Yvan Pailler, archaeologist from the National Research Institute. preventive archeology (Inrap) and one of the authors of the study.

“Currently, it is the oldest map of a territory in Europe,” he says, adding that there were plans or maps of older villages or camps, but no territories.

“We see on this slab a tangle of engravings which at first glance seem completely hermetic to the human eye and to human understanding,” he describes.

"You really have to take the time to begin to see a real organization and structuring of these patterns, which are all linked together by lines", continues the researcher.

The engraved symbols remain a mystery

Unearthed in 1900 in a tumulus and forgotten for a century, this slab was recently rediscovered at the National Archaeological Museum.

From 2017, the topography of this locally sourced shale slab, measuring 2.20 meters long by 1.53 meters wide and weighing a ton, began to be studied, as did the morphology, technology and the chronology of the engravings.

Round and oval cups, straight or curved lines, squares, circles, ovals, pear-shaped patterns, the patterns are numerous on this slab representing a territory of about 30 kilometers long and 21 wide and which can represent "the territory of an entity. highly hierarchical policy ”, specifies a joint press release from Inrap, UBO, the British University of Bournemouth (England) and the CNRS.

"If we managed to decipher what these symbols mean, we would have the legend of the map", underlines Yvan Pailler, believing that the discovery of this map raised "a lot of questions".

“Can we still speak of societies without writing and therefore of pre or protohistory from the moment we make a map with a legend?

He asks himself.

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