Bronze Age slab found in France is oldest 3D map in Europe

BBC ^ | April 7, 2021 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

The 2m by 1.5m slab (5ft by 6.5ft), first uncovered in 1900, was found again in a cellar in a castle in France in 2014.

Archaeologists who studied patterns engraved on the 4,000-year-old stone say they believe the markings are a map of an area in western Brittany.

They say this makes the slab the oldest 3D map of a known area in Europe.

The piece of rock, known as the Saint-Bélec Slab, is believed to date from the early Bronze Age, between 1900 BC and 1650 BC.

It was first unearthed in 1900, during digs on an prehistoric burial ground in Finistère, western Brittany, by local archaeologist Paul du Chatellier.

The slab was apparently forgotten for over a century, stored for decades under a moat at Mr du Chatellier's home, the ChÂteau de Kernuz.

But researchers hunting for the slab found it in a cellar in 2014.

[SunkenCiv]

The slab was first discovered in Brittany in 1900.

[SunkenCiv]

Let me guess -- "I don't see no map" and "why is there this or that in the text". Save it.

[heavy metal]

must be really tricky to fold back up...

[marktwain]

Somebody has a very good eye to correlate those squiggly lines to terrain features.

[diatomite]

I’d like to see a topographic overlay on that slab to see if really is a depiction of the region’s geography.

[Donkey Odious]

Original game board for “Risk”?

[PIF]

Then there is the far older and far less crude Map of the Creator.

[dfwgator]

[libertylover]

I’ll take GPS.

[libertylover]

must be really tricky to fold back up...

Do you know what the easiest way to refold a road map? ... Differently.

[rdl6989]

I never would have figured it out.

[SunkenCiv]

[Vermont Lt]

Maybe that’s why no one is using it—it’s not a good map. Ha ha.

[Larry Lucido]

It says “Rand McAlley-Oop. Soon to merge with Gronk-Nally.”

[Larry Lucido]

It also says “Looking for GPS.”

[dfwgator]

Where's the fork in the road?

[Larry Lucido]

I don’t know, but when you come to one, take it!

(Yogi Berra supposedly had an actual fork in a road leading to his house and you could get there irrespective of which way you went).

[Larry Lucido]

But where is the Slauson Cutoff?

[teofila]

Isn’t the world only 6,000 years old?

[pepsi_junkie]

Somebody has a very good eye to correlate those squiggly lines to terrain features.

There was an old British TV show in the '90s called "Time Team". It was a group of archaeologists that would go dig a specific site - usually one ignored up until then - and try to locate a medieval manor or a bronze age village or whatever in a weekend. One of the guys, a fellow named Stewart, was didn't dig, he scanned the ground. He would walk around making notes and then come back and say 'there was a river over there 1,000 years ago, those slight bumps (everyone would say 'what bumps?') were battlements, and the gatehouse would be over there in the small depression.'

Everyone would laugh and ignore him and by the end of the episode, 9 times out of 10 they'd relent and dig where he said and lo, he was right all along.