Mysterious 4,000-Year-Old 'Treasure Map' May Reveal Ancient World

Archeologists are hoping that an ancient map, left largely unstudied for 4,000 years, can point them towards some hidden secrets of the ancient world.

The Bronze Age map, at first look, is just a piece of rock etched with mysterious markings. But it turns out, the so-called "Saint-Belec slab" could lead archaeologists to lost monuments in northwestern France, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported.

"This stone map is important because for the first time we have been able to demonstrate statistically its cartographic content," Clement Nicolas from the CNRS research institute, who worked on the project, told Newsweek. "The precise 3D depiction of part of the relief—the Odet Valley—and further rivers, especially the meanders of the Aulne River, have been compared to the modern-day maps through network analyses."

Usually, archeologists use technology such as radar equipment and aerial photography to make discoveries.

But this ancient map may prove just as effective. The Saint-Belec slab was declared Europe's oldest map in 2021, and ever since, archaeologists have been trying to decipher its markings, to lead them to other archaeological finds. It was first discovered in 1900, but the historian who found it did not understand its importance, AFP reported.

Then in 2014, Yvan Pailler, a professor at the University of Western Brittany, and Nicolas rediscovered the artifact, that had been stored in a museum, and began to take a closer look at its markings.

"There were a few engraved symbols that made sense right away," Pailler told AFP.

Researchers have so far discovered that the map spans an area of around 18 miles by 13 miles.

Archaeologists believe the territory covered by the map may have once been an ancient kingdom. The entire area will have to be surveyed and cross-referenced before more exploration can be done—a job that will take around 15 years to complete.

The areas include the mountains of Roudouallec, in the Brittany region of France. The researchers also decoded rivers marked on the slabs in the form of bumps and lines on the rock.

When they compared the map with modern ones, it was an 80 percent match.

"For now, we have only understood the figuration of the natural landscape (rivers, mountain). Main parts of the depicted symbols (ovals, circles, squares, cupmarks) need to be decoded," Nicolas said. "Some might correspond to enclosed settlements, barrows of peculiar point of interests. The idea now is to use the Saint-Bélec map as such for finding the depicted sites. We will use all available aerial and satellite imagery, as well as upcoming LiDAR survey to identify archaeological features which can be preserved underground or in elevation.

"We hope to do airborne acquisitions of hyper- and multi-spectral imagery for obtaining high-resolution datasets on targeted areas for enhancing site recognition. Finally, we will carry fieldworks for better characterizing plan and material cultures of suspected settlements, especially enclosures, that might have been depicted on the Saint-Bélec Slab, by pedestrian and geophysical surveys. On several sites whose shape or relative position might match carved symbols, we will conduct planned test excavations. There are also small hollowed-out areas of the map which may mark certain burial mounds."

Before any additional sites are explored however, the researchers are starting by searching the site where the slab was originally found—according to Pailler, it is one of the biggest Bronze Age sites in Brittany.

Pailler said searching for this area first will allow them to "better contextualize the discovery" and give them a "way to date the slab."

So far, they have found some additional fragments belonging to the slab.

"Ideally, if we can identify some figured sites, that will help in better understanding the purpose of this map and its chronology," Nicolas said. "If we can excavate some sites that match symbols depicted on the map, this will give us an indication of the dating of the engravings and a more precise context for why this map has been carved. Then, it will be easier to decode the map legend and understand the meaning of further symbols, such as cupmarks."

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Update 10/19/23, 10:38 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Clement Nicolas.