WORLD'S OLDEST MAP FOUND

Archaeologists find western world's oldest map
By Hilary Clarke in Rome
(Filed: 18/11/2005)

The oldest map of anywhere in the western world, dating from about 500 BC, has been unearthed in southern Italy. Known as the Soleto Map, the depiction of Apulia, the heel of Italy's "boot", is on a piece of black-glazed terracotta vase about the size of a postage stamp.


The map details the Puglia region of southern Italy

It was found in a dig led by the Belgian archaeologist Thierry van Compernolle, of Montpellier University, two years ago. But its existence was kept secret until more research was carried out.

"The map offers, to date, for the Mediterranean, and more generally for western civilisation, the oldest map of a real space," the university said recently.

Its engraved place names are indicated by points, just as on maps today, and are written in ancient Greek.

The sea on the western side, Taras (Taranto), today's Gulf of Taranto, is named in Greek. But the rest of the map is in Messapian, the ancient tongue of the local tribes, although the script is ancient Greek.

The seas on either side of the peninsula, the Ionian and the Adriatic, are depicted by parallel zig-zag strokes.

Many of the 13 towns marked on the map, such as Otranto, Soleto, Ugento and Leuca (now called Santa Maria di Leuca) still exist.

The map went on public display for the first time this week in the Archaeological National Museum of Taranto.

Apart from being the oldest geographical map from classical antiquity ever found, it is the first material proof that the ancient Greeks were drawing maps of real places before the Romans.

It was known from ancient Greek literature that the concept of a map existed and that some had been drawn but none had been found.

The ancient Chinese had a well-defined system of map-making, but modern cartography descends from techniques laid down by the ancient Greeks.

Most existing classical maps are Roman and date from the period after Christ's birth.

Experts have suggested that the discovery demands not only a reconsideration of the beginnings of ancient cartography, but also of regional history, in particular that of relations between the local population of the Messapian tribes with their neighbours, the Greeks.

The Soleto map also gives vital new clues to the cultural exchange between the newly arrived Greeks and the Messapi.

They lived in the area but probably came originally from Greece as their language is believed to be a dialect of Illyrian.

The Soleto map is a contemporary of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who set up a philosophy school in Crotone, now Calabria, on the other side of the Gulf of Taranto.

His hypothesis that the Earth was round, developed after observing that the height of stars was different at different locations and noticing how ships appeared on the horizon, formed the basis of modern map making.