Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
The European Bronze Age exists just beyond the grasp of our surviving written sources from antiquity, in many ways like a world cloaked in shadow, ever just outside the reach of light. We have, instead, plenty of archaeology on the European Bronze Age but how to make sense of it is often difficult and not clear.
In 1900, an artifact was discovered from the period—The Slab of Saint Belec, named after the barrow of Saint Belec in the Armorican Peninsula. A mystery for over a century, this is being changed by a recent study which suggests it is not only one of the oldest maps in the world, but also a map of a lost Bronze Age kingdom in Europe.
SOURCES:
An Early 3-D Map of a Territory? The Bronze Age Carved Slab From Sait-Belec, Leuhan (Brittany, France), Nicolas et al
The European Bronze Age exists just beyond the grasp of our surviving written sources from antiquity, in many ways like a world cloaked in shadow, ever just outside the reach of light. We have, instead, plenty of archaeology on the European Bronze Age but how to make sense of it is often difficult and not clear.
In 1900, an artifact was discovered from the period—The Slab of Saint Belec, named after the barrow of Saint Belec in the Armorican Peninsula. A mystery for over a century, this is being changed by a recent study which suggests it is not only one of the oldest maps in the world, but also a map of a lost Bronze Age kingdom in Europe.
SOURCES:
An Early 3-D Map of a Territory? The Bronze Age Carved Slab From Sait-Belec, Leuhan (Brittany, France), Nicolas et al
