The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire. The document ... dating back to the 5th century. "In maps from the 12th or 13th ...

But as the empire began its long decline—Rome would fall in the fifth century ... as it existed during the Roman Empire. The map's origins were obscure: a 13th-century monk from Colmar had ...