The Nebra sky disk

The Nebra sky disk is a bronze disk of around 30cm diameter, patinated blue-green and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars (including a cluster interpreted as the Pleiades). Two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes (of uncertain meaning, variously interpreted as Solar Barge with many oars, as Milky Way or as Rainbow). Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1707x1680, 389 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Bronze Age Europe Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1707x1680, 389 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Bronze Age Europe Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or... Assorted ancient Bronze castings found as part of a cache, probably intended for recycling. ... A shorter exposure shows less nebulosity. ... Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²). A solstice occurs twice a year, whenever Earths axis tilts the most toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun to be farthest north or south at noon. ... Ra in his Solar barge A Solar barge (also Solar bark, Solar boat, Sun boat) is a mythological representation of the Sun riding in a boat. ... It has been suggested that Andromeda-Milky Way collision be merged into this article or section. ... Full featured double rainbow in Wrangell-St. ...

The disk is attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, and associatively dated to c. 1600 BC. It has been associated with the Bronze Age Unetice culture. Nebra is a small city in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. ... With an area of 20,447 km² and a population of 2. ... Association in archaeology refers to a close relationship between two or more objects. ... Dating material drawn from the archaeological record can made by a direct study of a artifact or may be deduced by association with materials found in the context the item is drawn from or inferred by its point of discovery in the sequence relative to datable contexts. ... The Lion Gate at Mycenae, the center of Mycenean Greece 1700 – 1500 BC -- Hurrian conquests. ... Unetice, or more properly ÚnÄ›tice, culture, (German: Aunjetitz) is the name given to an early Bronze Age culture, preceded by the Beaker culture and followed by the Tumulus culture. ...

Significance

Possibly an astronomical instrument as well as an item of religious significance, the disk is a beautiful object; the blue-green patina of the bronze may have been an intentional part of the original artifact. The sun rising over Stonehenge at the 2005 Summer Solstice. ... // The term Neolithic religion summarily refers to hypotheses concerning religious behaviour of the peoples of the Neolithic period and technology, especially in the Levant and Europe. ...

If authentic, the find reconfirms that the astronomical knowledge and abilities of the people of the European Bronze Age included close observation of the yearly course of the Sun, and the angle between its rising and setting points at summer and winter solstice. Observation of solstice is inferred from stationary arrangements such as Stonehenge and the neolithic "circular ditches" such as the 5th millennium BC Goseck circle, but the disk is the oldest known "portable" instrument to allow such measurements. The Bronze Age is a period in a civilizations development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) consisted of techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ore, and then alloying those metals in order to cast bronze. ... The Sun (Latin: Sol) is the star at the center of the Solar System. ... Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²). A solstice occurs twice a year, whenever Earths axis tilts the most toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun to be farthest north or south at noon. ... For other meanings of Stonehenge, see: Stonehenge (disambiguation) Stonehenge is a henge, a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. ... Reconstruction of circular ditches at Heldenberg, Lower Austria About 150 arrangements of prehistoric circular ditches are known to archaeologists spread over Germany, Austria and Slovakia and the Czech Republic. ... Site of the Goseck circle. ...

The disk is unlike any known artistic style from the period, and had initially been suspected of being a forgery, but is now widely accepted as authentic.

Discovery

The disk had appeared as if from nowhere on the international antiquities market in 2001. Its seller claimed that it had been looted by illegal treasure hunters with a metal detector in 1999. Archaeological artifacts are the property of the state in Saxony-Anhalt and following a police sting operation in Basel, Switzerland, the disk was acquired by the state archaeologist, Dr Harald Meller. As part of a plea bargain, the illicit owners led police and archaeologists to the site where they had found it together with other remains (two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel and fragments of spiral bracelets). Though no witnesses were present at the first discovery, archaeologists have opened a dig at the site and have uncovered evidence that support the looters' claim (in the form of traces of bronze artefacts in the ground, as well as matching earth samples found sticking to the artefacts). The disk and its accompanying finds are now in Halle in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte (State Museum for Prehistory) of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The two looters received a four months and a ten months sentence by a Naumburg court in September 2003. An appeal court raised these to six and twelve months, respectively. Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... The Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg is located in the German cities of Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wittenberg. ... This article is about the town in Saxony-Anhalt; for Naumburg in Hesse, see Naumburg, Hesse. ...

The discovery site identified by the arrested metal detectorists is a prehistoric enclosure encircling the top of a 252 m elevation in the Ziegelroda Forest, known as Mittelberg ("central hill"), some 60 km west of Leipzig. The surrounding area is known to have been settled since the Neolithic, and Ziegelroda Forest is said to contain around 1,000 barrows.   [] (Sorbian/Lusatian: Lipsk) is the largest city in the federal state of Saxony in Germany with a population of over 504,000. ... An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools. ... A tumulus (plural tumuli or tumuluses, from the Latin word for mound or small hill) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. ...

The enclosure is oriented in such a way that the sun seems to set every solstice behind the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz mountains, some 80 km to the northwest. It was claimed by the treasure-hunters that the artifacts were discovered within a pit inside the bank-and-ditch enclosure. Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²). A solstice occurs twice a year, whenever Earths axis tilts the most toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun to be farthest north or south at noon. ... The Brocken, or Blocksberg, is the highest peak (1142 meters) in the Germany, between the rivers Weser and Elbe. ... The Harz is a mountain range in northern Germany. ...

Dating

the swords found with the disk

other associated finds: chisel, axeheads, bracelets.

The more precise dating of the Nebra skydisk, however, depended upon the dating of a number of Bronze Age weapons which were offered for sale with the disk and said to be from the same site. These axes and swords can be typologically dated to the mid 2nd millennium BC (Unetice culture). Radiocarbon dating of a birch bark particle found on one of the swords to between 1600 and 1560 BC confirmed this estimate. This corresponds to the date of burial, at which time the disk had likely been in existence for several generations. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1000x357, 39 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Bronze Age sword Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1000x357, 39 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Bronze Age sword Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or... three Bronze Age swords (not to scale): from Hajdusamson, Hungary (ca. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2031x951, 168 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2031x951, 168 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... The 2nd millennium BC marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age. ... Unetice, or more properly Únětice, culture, (German: Aunjetitz) is the name given to an early Bronze Age culture, preceded by the Beaker culture and followed by the Tumulus culture. ... Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring isotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years[1]. Raw, i. ...

According to an analysis of trace elements by x-ray fluorescence by E. Pernicka, University of Freiberg, the copper originated at the Mitterberg in Austria, while the gold is from the Carpathian Mountains. Copper from Bottendorf in the immediate vicinity of Nebra has definitely not been used. But few copper objects are found where they were originally smelted. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is the phenomenon where a material is exposed to X-rays of high energy, and as the X-ray (or photon) strikes an atom (or a molecule) in the sample, energy is absorbed by the atom. ... Freiberg is the name of two cities in Germany (note there is also a Freiburg) Freiberg, Saxony Freiberg (Neckar) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... GOLD refers to one of the following: GOLD (IEEE) is an IEEE program designed to garner more student members at the university level (Graduates of the Last Decade). ... Satellite image of the Carpathians. ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic pinkish red Standard atomic weight 63. ...

History

The development of the disk as preserved was in four stages:

1. Initially the disk had 32 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 eclipsis), and the dots as stars, with the cluster of seven dots likely representing the Pleiades.
2. At some later point two arcs were added at opposite edges of the disk, constructed from gold of a different origin, as shown by its chemical impurities. To make space for these arcs one small circle was moved from the left side to the center, and two of the circles on the right were covered over, so that 30 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). The apparent solar context of the arcs suggest that at least at this stage, the circular plate was taken to represent the Sun.
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 39 or 40 holes punched out around its perimeter each approximately 3 mm in diameter.

1) On the left the full moon, on the right the waxing moon, and between and above, the Pleiades. The Sun (Latin: Sol) is the star at the center of the Solar System. ... Composite image of the Moon as taken by the Galileo spacecraft on 7 December 1992. ... In astronomy, a phase of the Moon is any of the aspects or appearances presented by the Moon as seen from Earth, determined by the portion of the Moon that is visibly illuminated by the Sun. ... Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. ... STAR is an acronym for: Organizations Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers], the self-regulatory body for the entertainment ticket industry in the UK. Society for Telescopy, Astronomy, and Radio, a non-profit New Jersey astronomy club. ... Pleiades refers to: Pleiades (star cluster) an open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. ... Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²). A solstice occurs twice a year, whenever Earths axis tilts the most toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun to be farthest north or south at noon. ... Ra in his Solar barge A Solar barge (also Solar bark, Solar boat, Sun boat) is a mythological representation of the Sun riding in a boat. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (918x901, 70 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk ... Composite image of the Moon as taken by the Galileo spacecraft on 7 December 1992. ... Lunar phase refers to the appearance of the illuminated portion of the Moon as seen by an observer, usually on Earth. ... A shorter exposure shows less nebulosity. ...

2) Arcs are added on the horizon for the zones of the rising and setting sun. Individual stars were shifted and/or covered. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (918x901, 84 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk ... The Rayleigh effect, seconds before sunrise in New Zealand Sunrise, also called sunup in some American English dialects, is the time at which the first part of the Sun appears above the horizon in the east. ... A composite image showing the terminator dividing night from day, running across Europe and Africa. ...

3) Addition of the "sun boat". Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (918x901, 95 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Nebra skydisk ... Ra in his Solar barge A Solar barge (also Solar bark, Solar boat, Sun boat) is a mythological representation of the Sun riding in a boat. ...

4) Diagram of the disk in its current condition (a star and a part of the full moon was restored). Download high resolution version (918x901, 98 KB)The Nebra Skydisk in a simplified diagram. ...

Authenticity

There were initial suspicions that the disk might be an archaeological forgery. Richard Harrison, professor of European prehistory at the University of Bristol and an expert on the Beaker people allowed his initial reaction to be quoted in a BBC documentary (link below): Archaeological forgery is a manufacture of supposedly ancient items that are sold to the antiquities market and may even end up in the collections of museums. ... The University of Bristol is a university in Bristol, England. ... The Beaker people (or `Beaker folk) were an archaeological culture present in prehistoric Europe, defined by a pottery style -- a beaker with a distinctive bell-shaped profile -- that many archeologists believe spread across the western part of the Continent during the 3rd millennium BC. The pottery is particularly prevalent in... The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion (US$7. ...

"When I first heard about the Nebra Disc I thought it was a joke, indeed I thought it was a forgery. Because it’s such an extraordinary piece that it wouldn’t surprise any of us that a clever forger had cooked this up in a backroom and sold it for a lot of money."

Though Harrison had not seen the skydisk when he was interviewed, it was a reasonable skepticism at that point, but the disk is now widely accepted as authentic and dated to rougly 1600 BC on grounds of typological classification of the associated finds. As the item was not excavated using archaeological methods, even its claimed provenance may be made up, hence authenticating it has depended on microphotography of the corrosion crystals (see link), which produced images that could not be reproduced by a faker.

Exhibition

The disk was the center of an exhibition titled Der geschmiedete Himmel ("the smithied heavens"), showing 1,600 Bronze Age artefacts, including the Trundholm sun chariot, shown at Halle from 15 October 2004 to 22 May 2005, from 1 July to 22 October 2005 in Kopenhagen, from 9 November 2005 to 5 February 2006 in Vienna, from 10 March to 16 July 2006 in Mannheim and from 29 September 2006 to 25 February 2007 in Basel. The Sun Chariot pulled by a horse is believed to be a sculpture illustrating an important part of Nordic Bronze Age mythology. ... The Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg is located in the German cities of Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wittenberg. ... This article needs cleanup. ... Vienna (German: , see also other names) is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. ... Mannheim is a city in Germany. ... Basel (British English traditionally: Basle and more recently Basel , German: , French: , Italian: ) is Switzerlands third most populous city (166,563 inhabitants (2004); 690,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area stretching across the immediate cantonal and national boundaries made Basel Switzerlands second-largest urban area as of 2003). ...

An exhibition center near the site of discovery is expected to open in July 2007.

Legal issues

The state of Sachsen-Anhalt has registered the disk as a trademark, which has resulted in two lawsuits. In 2003, Sachsen-Anhalt successfully sued the city of Querfurt for depicting the disk design on souvenirs. In an ongoing (as of 2006) lawsuit, Sachsen-Anhalt is suing the publishing houses Piper and Heyne over an abstracted depiction of the disk on book covers. The Magdeburg court is required to assess the case's relevance according to German copyright law. The defenders argue that as a cultic object, the disk had already been "published" in the Bronze Age, and that consequently all protection of intellectual property associated with it has long expired. The plaintiff on the other hand argues that the editio princeps of the disk is recent, and according to German law protected for the next 25 years, or until 2027. Another argument concerns the question whether a notable work of art may be registered as a trademark in the first place. Germany is a Federal Republic made up of 16 States, known in German as Länder (singular Land). ... With an area of 20,447 km² and a population of 2. ... A trademark or trade mark[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by an individual, business organization or other legal entity to uniquely identify the source of its products and/or services to consumers, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities. ... Querfurt a town in Merseburg-Querfurt district (Kreis) in the south of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, situated in a fertile country on the Querne, 18 miles west from Merseburg, on a branch line from Oberroblingen. ... Piper Verlag is a German publisher based in Munich, printing both fiction and non-fiction works. ... This article is about the German city. ... German copyright law or Deutsches Urheberrecht is a droit dauteur style law. ... For the 2006 film, see Intellectual Property (film). ... In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. ... 2027 (MMXXVII) will be a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Popular culture

The disk has begun to attract the kind of pseudoarchaeology, neopagan and paranormal speculation that is associated with Stonehenge. Pseudoarchaeology is an aspect of pseudohistory. ... Neopaganism (sometimes Neo-Paganism, meaning New Paganism) is a heterogeneous group of religions which attempt to revive ancient, mainly European pre-Christian religions. ... Paranormal is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of reported anomalous phenomena. ... For other meanings of Stonehenge, see: Stonehenge (disambiguation) Stonehenge is a henge, a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. ...

See also

• Golden hat
• Trundholm sun chariot
• Tumulus culture
• Antikythera mechanism
• Uriel's machine

Four tall conical golden hats dating to between 1400 BC and 800 BC, have been found in Central Europe: one find in 1835 near Schifferstadt near Speyer dated to 1400-1300, one fragmentary find in 1844 near Avanton near Poitiers, one at Ezelsdorf near Nurnberg in 1953, dated to 1000... The Sun Chariot pulled by a horse is believed to be a sculpture illustrating an important part of Nordic Bronze Age mythology. ... The Tumulus culture which followed the Únêtice, and from which they descended, dominated central Europe during much of the second part of the second millenium B.C.E.. As the name implies, the Tumulus culture is distinguished by the practice of burying the dead beneath burial mounds. ... The Antikythera mechanism (main fragment). ... The theory of Uriels Machine is postulated in a book of the same name by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas The book supposes that ancient (pre-historic) European (and by extension British) astronomers developed a stellar calendar. ...

References

• Ute Kaufholz: Sonne, Mond und Sterne. Das Geheimnis der Himmelsscheibe. Anderbeck, Anderbeck 2004, ISBN 3-937751-05-X
• Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt (Hrsg.): Archäologie in Sachsen-Anhalt. Dt. Verl. d. Wissenschaften, Halle 1.2002, S.7–31. ISSN 0072-940X
• Frank Hagen von Liegnitz: Die Sonnenfrau Weihnachtsgabe der WeserStrom Genossenschaft, Bremen 2002.
• Harald Meller (Hrsg.): Der geschmiedete Himmel. Die weite Welt im Herzen Europas vor 3600 Jahren. Ausstellungskatalog. Theiss-Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8062-1907-9
• Katja Näther, Sven Näther: Akte Nebra – Keine Sonne auf der Himmelsscheibe? Naether, Wilhelmshorst 2004, ISBN 3934858023
• National Geographic Deutschland. Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg 2004,1, S.38–61, ISBN 3-936559-85-6
• Uwe Reichert: Der geschmiedete Himmel. in: Spektrum der Wissenschaft. Heidelberg 2004,11, S.52–59. ISSN 0170-2971
• Der Sternenkult der Ur-Germanen. Titelbericht im Nachrichtenmagazin DER SPIEGEL vom 25.11.2002.
• E. Pernicka/C.-H Wunderlich, 'Naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen an den Funden von Nebra', [in:] Archäologie in Sachsen-Anhalt 1, 2002, pp. 24-29.

ISSN, or International Standard Serial Number, is the unique eight-digit number applied to a periodical publication including electronic serials. ... The National Geographic Society was founded in the USA on January 27, 1888, by 33 men interested in organizing a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge. ... ISSN, or International Standard Serial Number, is the unique eight-digit number applied to a periodical publication including electronic serials. ...

External links

• Brief description
• Official Landesmuseum website with spectacular microphotos (German, with some English translation)
• Video of BBC Horizon documentary on Google Video
• Transcript of BBC Horizon documentary on the disc
• http://www.physorg.com/news11357.html
• Article by archaeologist Schlosser about the possible interpretation of the disc (German)
• Translation of German newspaper article about trial of looters and authenticity of the disc

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Nebra disk

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Coordinates: 51°17′02″N, 11°31′12″E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...