A piece of rock with mysterious markings that lay largely unstudied for 4,000 years is now being hailed as a “treasure map” for archaeologists, who are using it to hunt for ancient sites around north-western France.
I think it’s interesting that instead of talking about how cool this is, we’re all talking about whether a tldr was just a helpful blurb or the harbinger of the downfall of literacy…
But this is really cool! I wonder what happened to those old villages or towns and what languages they spoke. Do you think they would’ve been related to the Basque peoples? I also have to wonder whether there are still any human settlements in the places marked on the map. How cool would that be, to learn your sleepy hamlet had been standing there since before bronze was a thing?
On some of your questions i have some answers. This is from so long ago that there is not a written record. We can’t really compare these people to a modern day or even historical folk. It would take 2000 years for people to describe who lived in these areas, by then they were called gauls by the Romans.
However there is a point made by antropologists that the basque language is a remnant:
Archeologists are unsure whether Western Europe saw a Mesolithic immigration. Populations speaking non-Indo-European languages are obvious candidates for Mesolithic remnants. The Vascons (Basques) of the Pyrenees present the strongest case, since their language is related to none other in the world, and the Basque population has a distinct genetic profile.
Almost none of the settlements are standing, however in the Dordogne region of France (where the famous Lascaux cave paintings are from) have sites where people have lived 17000 years ago.
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