The Incredible Discovery Of The Oldest Depiction Of The Universe Was Almost Lost To The Black Market

The design on this disc might look like a six-year-old’s scribbles, but in reality, it’s one of the most sophisticated and influential artifacts of the Bronze Age.

And it might never have been discovered if not for a couple of illegal treasure hunters who dug it up and sold it on the black market.

Called the Nebra sky disc, named for the town where it was found in 1999, the artifact has been dated back to 1600 BC. It’s thought to have been forged during the European Bronze Age, a period between 3200 and 600 BC.

more….

what a find, a must read article

It is impressive. It’s not really the oldest known depiction of celestial objects, but the oldest to attempt an accurate depiction of certain constellations etc.

> “Archeologist’s were stunned when they finally got a good, close look at the artifact. The Nebra sky disc was unlike any other artifact of its time. Some archaeologists thought the disc was too incredible to be real. When I first heard about the Nebra Disc I thought it was a joke, indeed I thought it was a forgery,”

That was my first reaction, too.

The interpretation as constellations doesn’t look right to me. Seven stars close together would have to be the seven sisters – the Pleiades – not bloomin Polaris.

They are generally interpreted as the Pleiades:

The disk as preserved was developed in four stages (Meller 2004):
1. Initially the disk had thirty-two small round gold circles, a large circular plate, and a large crescent-shaped plate attached. The circular plate is interpreted as either the Sun or the full Moon, the crescent shape as the crescent Moon (or either the Sun or the Moon undergoing eclipse), and the dots as stars, with the cluster of seven dots likely representing the Pleiades.
2. At some later date, two arcs (constructed from gold of a different origin, as shown by its chemical impurities) were added at opposite edges of the disk. To make space for these arcs, one small circle was moved from the left side toward the center of the disk and two of the circles on the right were covered over, so that thirty remain visible. The two arcs span an angle of 82°, correctly indicating the angle between the positions of sunset at summer and winter solstice at the latitude of the Mittelberg (51°N). Given that the arcs relate to solar phenomena, it is likely the circular plate represents the Sun not the Moon.
3. The final addition was another arc at the bottom, the “sun boat”, again made of gold from a different origin.
4. By the time the disk was buried it also had thirty-nine or forty holes punched out around its perimeter, each approximately 3 mm in diameter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk

it has been mislabeled as Polaris (drehpunkt, pivot point)