Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze, was conquered half a century earlier than thought, the German mountaineering association Deutscher Alpenverein admitted yesterday.
A Bavarian surveyor, Josef Naus, had been credited with being the first to scale the 2,962-metre (9,718ft) peak in the Bavarian Alps between Germany and Austria in 1820.
But the association said a 1770 map discovered in its archives strongly suggested it had already been climbed by locals. "The likelihood is they would have been hunters or shepherds," said Martina Sepp, who found the map.