The Vault is Slate’s history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here. This stunning geological map of ...

A 4,000-year-old stone slab, first discovered over a century ago in France, may be the oldest known map in Europe, according ...

Maps are more than a measure of space; they are also records of how humans have understood, examined, and reconsidered the earth throughout history. In his new book, Great Maps, Jerry Brotton uses ...

Look at any map of Europe from the Middle Ages or the early modern era, before the Industrial Revolution, and you will be overwhelmed by its dizzying incoherence—all of those empires, kingdoms, ...

Five hundred years ago the first Bible featuring a map was published. The anniversary has passed uncelebrated, but it transformed the way that Bibles were produced. The map appeared in Christopher ...

The first Europeans looked dramatically different to many of the fair skinned populations that live there today. In fact, new ...