The first map of Europe dates from the Bronze Age!

General view of the Saint-Bélec slab • INRAP/SERVICE DE PRESSE

An engraved slab can take on the appearance of a rebus that is difficult to decipher, but that of Saint-Bélec will have found its “Champollion” a century after its discovery in 1900! His study has just revealed that it represents a map, the oldest known in Europe.

It was in a tumulus located in Leuhan, in Finistère, that the prehistorian Paul du Chatellier had spotted and well documented it, establishing that it dated from the Early Bronze Age, a period between 2150 and 1600 BC. . Completely engraved, it presents repetitive motifs, which already intrigued the prehistorian at the time:lines, cupules, potatoes, circles, squares, etc., these signs being connected by dotted lines .

Forgotten in a cellar

Broken, this grey-blue schist slab, 2.20 m long and 1.53 m wide, had been reused to form the wall of a funerary chest in a tumulus dating from the end of the Early Bronze Age. , the engraved side facing the interior of the tomb. The National Archeology Museum (MAN) of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had bought it in 1924. It had then fallen into oblivion and rested in a cellar of the castle of the museum. Recently rediscovered, it has therefore been the subject of an important study since 2014.

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Scientists from the universities of Western Brittany and Bournemouth (Great Britain), CNRS and Inrap (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) have studied it with a magnifying glass:photogrammetric coverage, high-resolution 3D surveys to record its topography and analyze its morphology. They established that it had been overexcavated and represented a territory 30 km long by 21 km wide, oriented along an east-northeast and west-southwest axis. According to the researchers, the whole forms a network; it would be a cartographic representation corresponding to the Odet valley, a watercourse that passes through Leuhan.