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Odet

River in France

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The Odet (French pronunciation: [ɔdɛ]; Breton: Oded) is a river in western France (Finistère department), which runs from Saint-Goazec (near Leuhan, in the Montagnes Noires of Brittany) into the Atlantic Ocean at Bénodet. The name of the town of Bénodet comes from the river; ben means river mouth in Breton.

The river runs past, or through, the towns of Bénodet, Combrit, Plomelin, Quimper, Ergué-Gabéric, Briec-de-l'Odet, Langolen, Coray, Trégourez, Leuhan and Saint-Goazec. It is 62.7 km (39.0 mi) long and its basin area is 724 km2 (280 sq mi).

The river is popular with kayakers.

In 2021, an article published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society reported that archaeologists had interpreted the Saint-Bélec slab, a 4,000-year-old stone rediscovered in 2014, as a three-dimensional representation of the Odet valley. This would make the Saint-Bélec slab the oldest known map of a territory in the world. According to the authors, the map probably was not used for navigation, but rather to show the political power and territorial extent of a local ruler's domain of the early Bronze Age. Measures of the slab were 2.2 metres long and 1.53 metres wide.

Watch videos about OdetExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Odet, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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