Bronze Age Star Map: The Nebra Sky Disk

In 1999, a mysterious bronze disc buried for millennia in central Europe transformed how we see the prehistoric world. The Nebra Sky Disk - forged 3,600 years ago - is the oldest known depiction of the night sky. In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined, once again, by archaeologist Raven Todd DaSilva to uncover the remarkable story of this Bronze Age star map. Discovered in Germany in thrilling and illegal circumstances, this precious artefact reveals a sophisticated understanding of the heavens long before classical astronomy. Together, Tristan and Raven explore how ancient Europeans mapped the stars, what the disk’s symbols may represent, and why this extraordinary object continues to reshape our understanding of prehistoric science and belief. MORE The Skulls of Jericho: Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000749262721 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mkhmHnIquulOuqbZBIXT7?si=b_eTEUuOSpWrlOSx1rkSsw The Bronze Age Collapse: Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000641437640 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4dEddIFS5yfamKqVZd6xAE?si=9503fa324aab45f8 Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:21Tristan Hughes?

  It's one of the most extraordinary objects ever discovered from prehistoric Europe: a 3,600-year-old bronze and gold disc, created at a time when Stonehenge was still in use. Remarkably, it's the oldest known depiction of astronomical knowledge from anywhere in the world. The world's oldest map of stars, discovered right at the end of the 20th century in Germany in rather infamous circumstances. This is the Nebra Sky Disc, an object so strange and precise that has revealed just how advanced these Bronze Age people were when it came to mapping the stars above. Welcome to The Ancients.

• 2:05Tristan Hughes?

  I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the Nebra Sky Disc, a Bronze Age star map. Our guest is the award-winning archaeologist and art conservator Raven Todd de Silva.

• 2:22Tristan Hughes?

  Raven, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the show.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  It is so great to be back.

• 2:26Tristan Hughes?

  To go back to the Bronze Age and Bronze Age Europe. This is the oldest known star map in the world.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  It is, yes.

• 2:33Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, so this is the Nebra sky disc. It is such a remarkable object. I had the good fortune of seeing it when it was at the British Museum's World of Stonehenge exhibition, and it's unlike any object I've ever seen.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Me too, I was really fortunate to go to that exhibit as well. It is one of the most stunning artifacts that, in my opinion, that has ever existed. But it is also the most amazing thing that I think I've seen in a very long time.

• 2:58Tristan Hughes?

  And how old are we talking about with this object?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  We're talking around 1800 to 1600 BCE.

• 3:04Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  So around, yeah, around that nice, really good Bronze Age period.

• 3:08Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, almost 4,000 years old. So we're going to delve into all of the details of this incredible last fact. But we've got to start off with its discovery because this story in itself is quite the roller coaster.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yes, I, I love the story. I think a movie should be made about this.

• 3:24Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, great.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  So to set the scene, the year is 1999.

• 3:28Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Y2K madness. And there are these two metal detectorists in the region of Saxony anhalt in Germany, doing, doing their thing illegally without a permit.

• 3:41Tristan Hughes?

  Oh dear, okay, right.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Always how one of these stories goes. And they're on the Mittelberg hill, near the village of Nebra in Germany. And they uncover this horde. This horde has a 30 centimeter round disc. It's made of bronze with some gold inlays on it. It's very mysterious. There's also some swords, there's some axes, a chisel, some spiral armbands, this whole collection of all of this beautiful bronze. And the discoverers, they know that they have done something illegal. And the very next day, they sell this horde to a, to the black market in Cologne for, I think it was around 35,000 Deutschmarks.

• 4:22Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, they sold it quick.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  They knew they had to get rid of it. They didn't want to get caught. So that's 1999. Over the next few years, passes a few hands over the black market. We're sure, we're not exactly, you know, we don't know the whole details, it gets murky. And then around 2001. Public knowledge of this horde, the Middleburg Horde, becomes widespread. And this is the best part. This is such an Indiana Jones-type moment. There's an archaeologist, his name is Harold Mellor. He is the Nebra Skydisk guy. Okay, he is the expert. And he gets involved in this police sting in 2002 with the Swiss police. Because a couple is trying to auction it off for, I think it was around, again, 700,000 Deutschmarks. It's gone up quite a bit.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  And they do it. They capture the horde. I'm not sure it's that, you know, super high stakes, but they do get their hands on this horde. And it finally goes back into the hands of the German authorities back home. They find, they're able to track down the original two metal detectorists who found it.

• 5:28Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, gone full circle.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  They did. It was great. And, and they did go to trial. They actually got some jail time for it. What I love is that when they tried to appeal their sentences, it actually got extended.

• 5:40Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So that's the justice system for you. But they were helpful, actually, in the sense that they led the archaeologists to the exact spot that they found the horde. And that helped us. Obviously, it's been a few years, but it did help kind of understand the context of this horde. So that is the discovery of the Nebra Skydisk, plus all this other amazing bronze material that was with it.

• 6:04Tristan Hughes?

  And it was only in the 2000s then, when they finally, I guess when they finally realized just how incredible this horde was, when they can actually put it under the scientific knife as it was.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Exactly. And this, especially the Nebra Skydisk, has gone under a lot of scientific analysis because it had this very, you know, tabloid-esque discovery and retrieval, and also just because of how fantastic and anomalous it is.

• 6:31Tristan Hughes?

  And did this disk, did it make archaeologists rethink quite a lot of what they thought about Bronze Age Europe? And this, you know, go away from this idea of unsophisticated cultures who just fought against each other with swords and axes all the time?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I definitely think so, because we always see that sort of quote-unquote sophistication in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia and even Greece. But Central Europe, even, you know, Northern Europe, a little bit of the UK, kind of gets a backseat, especially for the Bronze Age. No one really, at least not anyone who's specialized in it. You know, you don't really think about much what's going on. He's all these barbarians because you hear about the Romans that coming in after, right? And oh, we're gonna have to civilize them all, et cetera, et cetera. So this was definitely one of the objects that was able to shift that narrative and get people to view Central Europe, especially during the Bronze Age, as something to pay attention to.

• 7:27Tristan Hughes?

  And we've got a sense already about its shape, given it's called a disk. But give us a sense of the size, first of all. How big an object are we talking about?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Thirty centimeters, round, essentially. Very, very thin, though. It is just a little disk and it has a few perforations around the edge at the moment that were made in previous times, don't worry. And so that's sort of the generic shape. It's just a round disk, thirty centimeters, like a dinner plate.

• 7:53Tristan Hughes?

  Right. And the material, is it bronze?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  It is bronze and it's also got some gold inlay on it.

• 7:59Tristan Hughes?

  Because when you look at pictures of it, it's got that kind of that greenish look to it. But is that just bronze that has become oxidized over those thousands of years, right?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yes, it's that lovely patina that we get with age.

• 8:09Tristan Hughes?

  Right. Well, we're going to focus in on this artifact and I'm gonna, well, your job is to describe this artifact through the different parts of it. It's fascinating to look at. And I have a picture here as well. And let's go through the details first off. So there's quite a lot packed in to this thirty centimeters, isn't it? And all of the yellow that you can see, first of all, different shapes would have into that. That's all gold, is it?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  It's all gold. It's actually gold coming from two different areas. They've actually been able to identify where the gold has come from and the bronze itself. The gold itself, there is some gold that comes all the way from Cornwall. So quite a different, a far-reaching interaction sphere there.

• 8:49Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  And we also have a little bit more local gold as well.

• 8:52Tristan Hughes?

  So the mix of the two, get whether they got the gold from. And I guess that also gives us a sense of the trade routes that they had at that time, the Bronze Age, you know, all of these trade routes that spanned big distances, same in Central Germany.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 9:05Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's look at the different parts of it now. So the first thing that draws my eye is there's a big gold circle just left of the center of it here. What is this?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  So it's potentially a sun, but other people have thought as well, it could also be a full moon. But it is definitely a celestial figure, either the sun or the full moon.

• 9:25Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, so you've got the sun there and then you've got a crescent shape a bit further to the right. I think, I'm guessing that's probably the moon shape, is it?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  The crescent moon, yes, which is why we're thinking that that is the sun. And then we have the moon as well. So we have both of those, you know, those orbiting around.

• 9:41Tristan Hughes?

  And then finally, well, before we get to those bands around the edge, you also have these, these lovely little clusters of small yellow circles. So what are all of these that you have everywhere, you know?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  These are stars.

• 9:56Tristan Hughes?

  These are the stars.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  There are thirty two stars on the disk. As you can see, there is a clustering and we have been able to identify that as a constellation. It is the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters.

• 10:07Tristan Hughes?

  So this is not just, this is not random how they're assorting all of this. They are actually looking up at the sky and picking out particular stars and then plotting it down on this disk.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 10:18Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. And then finally, well, we have a band on the far right and then a band at the bottom. Shall we start with the one on the right first of all? What do we think this is?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  So these have been called horizon arcs. There should be, there was at some point, one on the opposite side of the disk as well. You can sort of see in that image where it was. Yes, you see there's a bit of a darker area there. And so these are the horizon arcs that we believe sort of marked the summer and winter solstices and the angles of the sun. And then the little, almost a smiley face, as you can see, it does look like a, it's a Bronze Age smiley face, this whole thing. Yes, that has been believed to be something called a solar bark. So if you think of ancient Egypt, you have a really good idea of what a solar bark is. When you see that imagery of the god Ra kind of going across the sun,

• 11:12Speaker 02

  bringing the sun across the horizon during the day, he's in his little boat.

• 11:17Tristan Hughes?

  But that's interesting because, but this is found in Germany.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I know.

• 11:20Tristan Hughes?

  And solar barks, you think of Bronze Age Egypt, you know, more than a thousand miles away. Is that fascinating that they think that this is actually showing a solar bark in the sky? That this is, you know, kind of giving a sense of a connection, a borrowing of certain ideas?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Potentially, there is a lot, we're gonna definitely go into this throughout the rest of the episode. There is a lot of little bits of elements and hints here and there of different things that were borrowed or maybe kind of learned or shared from other cultures, not just, you know, Egypt or the Middle East, but also Northern Europe into, you know, Norway, for example, even Ireland. We have examples of certain things that we can still see also on the Nebra Sky Desk.

• 12:05Tristan Hughes?

  So how do we know that this disc, yes, it was found in Germany, but how can we be sure that it was also created in Germany? And it wasn't like bought from somewhere else, like the Mediterranean?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Well, we know it was made in Germany because obviously we have done some work with the bronze itself. We know the bronze came from Austria, which is very close. It's all within this region that we call the Unatia.

• 12:29Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  This archaeological culture that we have ascribed this name Unatia to. And this is very reminiscent, especially as well with the rest of the horde that we found. So the bronze swords and the spiral armbands, it's all very indicative of this archaeological culture that was thriving around, let's say, 2000, 2300 BCE to about 1800, 1600 BCE. And that was all within this area of Central Europe. So think Germany, Poland, a little bit of Ukraine, Austria, Czech Republic, that area.

• 13:07Tristan Hughes?

  Right. And so this is part of that culture and the materials are from the nearby area, the metals and so on. And of course, you mentioned the gold from even further afield. But can we also get a sense with the whole creation of this object? And the placement of, let's say, the moon, the sun and the constellations and the stars? Can we also get a sense that it aligns with what they would have seen in the sky above them in Central Europe some 3000, 4000 years ago?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yes, in fact, they've done some studies where if you're at the top of Middleburg Hill. That latitude on the earth, this, everything lines up.

• 13:43Tristan Hughes?

  Really?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  It's fantastic. So they know that this is where you were kind of, you'd be standing on the top of the hill and you'd have the disc with you, for example. And then you would be able to see how the solar movements are, is exactly lined up to this Nebrus sky disc, but the angles of the sun during the solstices.

• 14:02Tristan Hughes?

  During the solstices. So what do we mean by this?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  So the winter solstice and the summer solstice. So the winter solstice is about December 21st and then a summer solstice is in June. And that is, you know, the shortest day and the longest day of the year. And these are historically very, very important days for a lot of ancient cultures. We see that with Stonehenge, for example, where everyone, even to this day, still goes to Stonehenge and they witness the solstice and the sun rising through certain areas. We see this as well in other areas in the Unatija culture as well, where there's an amazing site in Germany called Pomelte. And it's, we call it Germany's answer to Stonehenge. It's its own thing, but it's just a way to get people interested in it. And it's made out of wood and there were these concentric wooden rings and that also

• 14:49Speaker 02

  do sign, line up to different solar events. So these are things that were very, very important to Bronze Age cultures all around the world.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 15:37Speaker 03

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• 16:21Speaker 03

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• 16:40Tristan Hughes?

  So just so I can get a sense of it, so do we think that this disc would have been used somewhere like that hill where it was discovered? And on either the shortest day of the year or the longest day of the year, they'd be standing up there at the top. And, you know, what they would see above them at night, or they, where, where this disc points that the sunrise would be, was where the sun would be. And then directly opposite that will be where the sun sets. And then when they look up, they can see, let's say the Pleiades constellation and where those other stars are. So they can kind of line themselves up.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can sort of orient yourself within the cosmos whilst you're on this hill with this disc. There are some theories that because we have a sun and a moon and 32 stars, there, it could be a way for, for the people to sort of create a loony solar year instead of just a lunar or a solar calendar. So the math for it, I'm not a math person, but 365 days in a solar year, 354 days, I believe, in a lunar year. So they are a little bit different, but 32 solar years is equal to 33 lunar years, give or, give or take, I think it's two days. So it is a way of sort of aligning both of those calendars. And then you can create just different events.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  You can plan your farming and you sort of rituals around it. It could be a way of... Potentially, we have these princes that we call them in the Unatia. They probably weren't called princes, but that's what we've given them where these have these, they have these very elaborate burials. And so it could have been a way for the ruling elite to sort of cement their rule and doing some sort of yearly ritual as well on top of the hill with a crowd or something so like, something like that.

• 18:22Tristan Hughes?

  And if there's that particular constellation, which is the Pleiades in it as well, why of all constellations do they show that particular one?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  The Pleiades seems to be quite an important constellation in multiple cultures, especially during the Bronze Age. Again, this is that time when we've had, we have a little bit of it before, but this is when we really see this explosion of other cultures really understanding the constellations and reading the stars. So the Pleiades showing up next to that crescent moon that you can see on the circle is very similar to a text that we have from Babylonia. And that's called the Mule Apin text. And it is a little bit later, it dates to a little bit later. So there is the, the, the debate of who came up with the idea first, who, who shared the idea. But for them, it's whenever the Pleiades is near the moon, that's when you need to add an extra month to the calendar.

• 19:12Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  So that's them, again, these, the counting of the days, understanding the year and the, the whole cycle, because it's great for farming and regulation, for, you know, planting and everything like that. So you need to know, especially as a Bronze Age culture, what the seasons are doing, what year it is, because your whole livelihood depends on it, like what time of the year it is.

• 19:32Tristan Hughes?

  And does this also once again link back to why the solstices were so important to these people?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:36Tristan Hughes?

  Because it's very much centered to their livelihood and to agriculture and to their survival.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Definitely, this, these are the times when you are so dependent on the seasons, because that is your livelihood. So that's what you need to always be kind of molding your whole life around.

• 19:52Tristan Hughes?

  Can you explain once again the particular layout that we have on the disk? With where what we think is the sun, the moon and the bands around the edges are? And how that aligns up with the particular latitude that you have in the area it was discovered in Germany?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  So if you're on the hill in Mittelberg, that's that latitude. So you can kind of do it across, but that's where it was found. So on top of this hill, you can see that there's an angle. It's about an 82 degree angle on the disk itself on either side where these horizon arcs are.

• 20:26Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  These are the horizons. One lines up with the sunrise of the solstice of the the summer solstice. One lines up with the winter solstice. And so you're standing on the hill and you can go, oh, I know what day it is. It's the winter solstice because the sun is over here based off of the stars.

• 20:44Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  And then you can sort of just orient yourself as well. It's really good at nighttime, right? Because during the day you can't see anything. So if you see the Pleiades, you see where it is within this this area. You can just orient yourself where it is. You know what day it is, or just maybe, you know, within a few bits. But you're able to kind of tell what's happening, what to expect with the upcoming months, what week you are, for example. And then that also is great for regulating ceremonies for people to, especially in a state society, which the UNA teacher were sort of in, where someone needs to continually sort of just like renew their power and kind of go, I'm still the boss. I'm still in charge, sort of have these ceremonies.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Think about like the Hebesed festival, for example, in ancient Egypt, where after a few years, they do this whole thing again to renew their kingship. It could be something like that here.

• 21:33Tristan Hughes?

  But you could almost imagine someone who understood what this was, going up to the top of that hill, almost like every day as the solstice neared and figuring out how close it was to the solstice by looking at the angle of the sunrise and comparing it to this map and the bands that you have surviving on it.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  There would have had to be someone who was very skilled at knowing how to read the stars and use this. And also just to create this in general, it would have taken decades of just observing the sky, just to get this sort of knowledge, to create this very amazing. Portable piece of of a map essentially.

• 22:06Tristan Hughes?

  And the portable thing about it is also really interesting. So can we imagine even though it's fixed on that particular latitude, that it could have been carried far and wide and used, you know, for that purpose on a on a number of hills in the nearby area and still have the same result?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Definitely. It is one of those really fun things where, you know, we see Stonehenge, we see these other stone circles that have the same sort of functionality, but they are big monumental things that you have to go to. This, you can pull out your backpack and just kind of, oh, what day is it? Got it. Good. And then you can also, that way you don't have to maybe go all the way up to the hill every night. It has maybe a different purpose or function when it's not in use as well. It could be on display somewhere, as you said, or sort of carried around or have this sort of maybe religious connotation or spiritual connotation, which we will get into in a little bit.

• 22:53Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, yes. Well, shall we do that now? Because

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 22:56Tristan Hughes?

  We mentioned earlier that that solar bark thing on the bottom, but that doesn't really seem to fit in. So what's the purpose of then having this happy face, this solar bark at the bottom?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  So we've actually been able to figure out that this disc itself had about four different phases of use, four different lifetimes. So the first iteration, when it was first made, we just see a lovely, very clean bronze disc. So they don't have those perforations around the edges.

• 23:27Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Like you see it today. It has the 32 stars. It has the crescent moon and the sun.

• 23:33Tristan Hughes?

  What we think is the sun. Okay.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Yes. That is, all that's there the first bit.

• 23:37Tristan Hughes?

  No bands, no solar bark at this time?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  No, nothing. So the thought for this one is someone who is very skilled, who understands what they're looking at, will be able to use it. This is a very functional piece of kit. It's not, you know, any sort of potentially a religious thing or spiritual thing. It is someone's tool. It's like a map. It is a map. So that's the first iteration.

• 24:01Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, got it. Next iteration.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Next iteration. A little bit later, we can tell that the Unatisha are expanding their knowledge. They're studying the sky more. They're getting a better understanding of the world around them. So we get these horizon arcs, which is where you can see the angles of the sun during the solstices. And they were able to modify their map, update it, you know, like an app update on Google Maps, for example, a new feature. So that's that, those two bands that we have on either side. That's the second phase. It's becoming a little bit more complex.

• 24:36Tristan Hughes?

  And then the next phase?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Third phase. So to preface this, we do think the Nebra Sky Disc was in use for about a few hundred years before it was buried.

• 24:45Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  So think about this over a longer period of time. It's not just, you know, next year, we found out this bit.

• 24:51Tristan Hughes?

  So maybe let's say the first phase where you just have that star map and no horizon bands, it could be as almost 4,000 years old.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:58Tristan Hughes?

  And then it evolves a bit over time.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, you know, maybe 50 years later, they go, oh, we figured out the the solstices.

• 25:05Tristan Hughes?

  The horizon, the solstices.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  But then we see that maybe things sort of get lost in translation over time, or there's a shift in culture or values or things that are happening within society. And so this needs to evolve a bit or change because either of what how we look at it, or maybe a knowledge was lost, or it just has a new meaning, we get the solar bark.

• 25:29Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And we know that that is a very spiritual, religious thing. We see it in Egypt. We see it in other parts of Europe as well. And so now we can, we can tell that this is changing from this very functional piece of kit to something that has a little bit more of a ritual meaning to the people who are using it.

• 25:50Tristan Hughes?

  Potentially mythology there as well. Solar bark, you think someone also is going to be a god is going to be in command of that bark going across the sky.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Exactly. So there's something about, you know, a shepherding, for example, or something is happening that is not just purely scientific. We also see that there have been some comparisons made to Mycenaean imagery, where we have this sun and the moon on like a very, pretty much in that same sort of design on a ring where it is very mythological type of scene. So maybe there could be some influence on that side.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Horizon arcs as well could be potentially like the double sided axe.

• 26:33Tristan Hughes?

  The labirus.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Exactly, right? So we do see that there is potential for some of this spiritual, religious, or not religious maybe, but ritual practice sort of getting incorporated into the disc as time goes on.

• 26:49Tristan Hughes?

  And Mycenae in Greece, that's Bronze Age Greece, isn't it?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Bronze Age Greece, exactly. So same time period.

• 26:53Tristan Hughes?

  Same time period. And then a bit further on, you do, you get it with that, there's that perforation on the left hand side, actually a bit all the way around the disc as well.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yes, so what we can see in this final iteration of it, we have these perforations all around the disc. We don't know how many there were, but it is indicative that it was mounted to something, maybe an organic backing, like a piece of wood or a piece of fabric. And so that means maybe it could be almost like a totem, something that was put on a stand or a pole, kind of paraded around. Think of it almost like a standard for Rome. You know, they have the eagle kind of going around and it's something that people put, ascribe some sort of meaning to. That's what this could be later on. So that means it's completely lost ex-function as a star map, because if it was sort of

• 27:44Speaker 02

  attached to something, some of the bits would be covered. You wouldn't be able to see it all completely. And so we have this complete transformation into something that was very practical, to something that is just very, kind of, yeah, ritual in a sense, where it is something that has no practical purpose, other than for whatever meaning that someone has ascribed to it.

• 28:05Tristan Hughes?

  So could it be that that practical knowledge, you know, that this use of the star map and the, the individuals who presumably would have been able to, to read it and understand it? Is this a case of lost Bronze Age knowledge that, you know, over those centuries, it goes from a functional object to more linked to mythology and ritual, to ultimately becoming some sort of standard or totem, that the original meaning of it and this knowledge is lost?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Pretty much, yeah. Like it is something that, you know, no, someone that age has died out, you don't need a use for it anymore. And so they've decided to put something else onto it. And we do know that the second horizon arc, the one that's missing on the left hand side, was taken off before it was buried. So that means that it even at some point when it was buried, it was sort of ritually destroyed. There was no, they took away its power. That's what a lot of cultures do is before you bury something that is some that holds power, you have to break it a little bit to release that energy or that power that it has. And so we do know that it was very ritual for the famous archaeological word at some

• 29:14Speaker 02

  point, especially towards the end of its life.

• 29:16Tristan Hughes?

  The fact that you also mentioned how between the first and second stage of this object, you have the original gold bits for the stars, what we think is the sun and the crescent moon. And all that gold comes from a similar source, we believe. And is it the bands that are added later that the gold seems to have come from a different source?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:33Tristan Hughes?

  Which once again indicates how it's likely that that bit was added slightly later on.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes. So that was, we do know that that was added on a second time and we do have that local gold more from around the neighborhood essentially, rather than something from so far away.

• 29:46Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting. So the original gold was from further away, which might also indicate that at the time of that original knowledge, you know, they had more extensive trade routes at that time, or they just hadn't discovered the gold sources that were nearer them at that time.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. So there's all these different options that we have for what they could do. But we do see that eventually there is sort of that breaking down of the trade networks, the communication networks. The Unatia are this cool sort of amalgam of two different cultures. You've got the bell beaker culture and the corded ware culture.

• 30:21Tristan Hughes?

  Okay. So what are these cultures?

• 30:23Speaker 02

  They are, again, these archaeological cultures where we have no proper name for them. So we've decided to name them after the pottery.

• 30:29Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Very arbitrary names. If you can guess, the bell beaker culture had beakers that looked kind of bell shaped. The pottery was sort of had this bell bit to it. Corded ware, they sort of implanted this cord around it as decoration. So they would like kind of push the cord into the pottery, take it off. It has a nice little applique decoration now and then they'd fire it. And we can see that these cultures were all over Europe. Okay. They were very widespread. Again, we'd, it is an archaeological construct. So if you ask someone who's from the bell beaker culture from one part of Europe and someone from another part of Europe, they're going to be like, no, we're very different people. But from an archaeological context, we go, no, you were all the same.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  So we can see that there was a large spread of these previous cultures. And that's where we get this amazing sort of interaction where we can see potentially that, yeah, if they were sort of related, quote unquote, to each other in this different, same sort of group, we could have this amazing network of trade, of interaction, of sharing of ideas and goods as well.

• 31:36Tristan Hughes?

  And the unitiche in particular, when it comes to bronze working and metal working, are they almost the premium group that we associate with the best metalwork at the time? It's not just this disc. This disc is one of many amazing artifacts. It's a product of their brilliant work with bronze.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Yes, they were, I like to call them the bronze masters of early Europe because they sort of were the ones who first took advantage of all of the mining that they had there, all the rich copper resources and the tin and the gold. And they became very good at what they did with making these bronze daggers specifically. We can find these bronze daggers very unitiche coded. You know, they're a very specific style. You find them all over Europe. They were traded all over the place. And their switch over to this tin bronze, obviously, we know the Bronze Age, big deal. You need that to be a successful anything in the Bronze Age at the time.

• 32:38Tristan Hughes?

  And tin bronze, like copper and tin together.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Copper and tin together, yes. And having that might be much stronger as a metal, right? If we're going from copper with those sort of weapons and tools, we get this bronze, which is very strong, very robust. It changes everything. And so they were the first ones in that area to exploit those resources. They were then able to control those resources and then trade with other people for other goods.

• 33:05Tristan Hughes?

  And how does that then lead to them of all cultures, do we think, creating something as sophisticated as the Nebra Sky Disc and, you know, having this really good knowledge of the celestial world above them and how to read the stars and the, ultimately, the solstices as well?

• 33:24Speaker 02

  I always like to think of it as if you have a very high demand good, you will then get to meet a lot of different people and you'll be able to have this great reach of trade, but also for ideas and technology. And then you're able to sort of share these ideas with each other. And especially if you are the top dog right now, like the Unatia were in Central Europe at the time, then you're able to amass all of that knowledge together. You're able to sort of collect it all and be that hub for this knowledge. You're able to organize better as a society as well and have different opportunities for different people to maybe take a break from farming or trading and you'll have this

• 34:08Speaker 02

  different type of class of people that can, that can look at the stars. They have time, they have energy to kind of just look up and go, what's this? Rather than just having to fight for your survival all of the time. And so I think the Unatia positioned themselves really well to take advantage of this bronze. They also ended up controlling a lot of the amber road, which was amber beads from the Baltic especially.

• 34:30Tristan Hughes?

  Scandinavia in that area, yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. And they were traded everywhere. We found amber beads from the Baltic in Mesopotamia. So, you know, we do know that there was at least some sort of interaction or crossover with the Unatia and places as far as Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia. So they were able to gather all this information and talk about it and share it and eventually create something. Like the Nebra sky disc, it's fantastic.

• 34:58Tristan Hughes?

  So is it almost a case that it's a result of the unitiche being top dogs at this time and the extensive connections that they have, that the nature of their society that ultimately allows certain people to almost, I know it's theory, but like commit themselves to an intellectual life and to learn, to travel and learn more about the celestial world and then actually compile something like this with the bronze mastery, with the use of gold as well.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  It's definitely plausible, yes. Yeah, something like that. Or, you know, as well, when you get to a statehood type of, again, these are more archaeological constructs of what we're defining as what it is, and it's potentially a state. And within that, there's hierarchy, social hierarchy, you get different classes of people. You see that all different, in all different ancient civilizations where you have the ruling class, the priestly class and so on. And so when you're able to then sort of separate those two, then someone can specialize, as we said, in, I am the priest or the shaman or someone who is very concerned with the ongoings of the spiritual world, the supernatural world, the sky, the cosmos, I'm going to be

• 36:09Speaker 02

  able to study all of this and then I can become chief advisor to the, to the prince or whoever. And then that's how these sort of become standardized roles in society.

• 36:21Tristan Hughes?

  So do we think it is probably the Bronze Age equivalent of priests or something like that, that are, that would have been the ones who were able to use that disc, that object?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  It could have been for sure. I don't want to like, you know, completely put that on, on that person who was using it because it could have been the, the prince, for example, in conjunction with the priests or with, you know, we don't know what they called themselves either. So it was definitely, I believe there was at least a definitely specialized person or groups of people who were dedicated to that. Maybe at the beginning, they were just sort of like. The scientists of the day, but they could also have had a spiritual faction to their role, as with most people in the Bronze Age and the ancient world.

• 37:05Tristan Hughes?

  Do we know much about these princes, these rulers at the top of the Uniti Chee? I mean, from the archaeology, the people who presumably would have been learning about all of this, or would have been very much involved in that wider process?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  We have a few, what we call princely burials. So again, it's like just the word that we put on it, but there's really amazing ones. There's one in Lobingin that was really cool. They've done a reconstruction of that one. You can find images online of it. And you get these hordes, really, again, similar to the Nebra Sky Discord, but bigger, better with an actual body. And they were, think of, for example, Sutton Hoo, where you have that tumulus over top of it. And those were these big monumental tombs where someone is buried inside. There's a bit of a wooden structure. It's then covered in rock, and then that's covered in dirt. So

• 37:59Speaker 02

  someone was very important. They could have been a chief, or, you know, a prince, as we call them. And they had these amazing stately burials where they were buried with just so much stuff and goods. And we also have in one of them, in the Lobingin one, there was a skeleton found on top of the prince, quote unquote. And we're not sure if they were related, or if it was potentially a sacrifice, because we do have evidence of human sacrifice with the Uniti Chee. The human remains are now gone, so we can't actually do any testing on it. But there is this very interesting way that they're burying their dead in this time.

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• 40:04Speaker 03

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• 40:23Tristan Hughes?

  What types of grave goods are found in in those burials? Is there any others that have like something to do with the stars? Or what types of objects are we thinking about?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Would I surprise you if I said bronze?

• 40:34Tristan Hughes?

  No.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Because it's mostly just bronze. So nothing, from what I know, there is nothing else that's really like astronomical.

• 40:43Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  So the Nebro Sky Disc is an anomaly. It's one of those one offs that, you know, it's it's a miracle that we have it. It's a miracle that we found it. When it did come out, a lot of people thought it was a fake. They were just like, this, this is impossible. No one could make that at that time. What do you mean? And some people just flat out refused to believe that it existed.

• 41:05Tristan Hughes?

  And a wild question about astronomy in that area of the world at the time, let's say, 3,500 years ago. You mentioned earlier the German Stonehenge equivalent or Woodhenge equivalent. Now, what is this? And how does this also reveal more about how they viewed astronomy and the world, the heavens above them?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  So this is Pomelte. There's also a smaller one called Schunbeck or Schunbeck, not too far from Pomelte. So there's this, this area that.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Had really good, I guess, viewpoints for the sun. And it is similar to Stonehenge in the sense that it was circular, but there were different sort of different circles within it essentially. And it lined up to different astronomical events. So the solstices, but also different times throughout the year, the sun would hit a certain area of this wooden ring, for example. We do have some burials there as well. So some men have been buried there, again, in these, you know, really good grave goods. And then we do have evidence of females and children being sacrificed in the area.

• 42:10Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  So there was, this was this very charged spiritual, religious ritual place that they would often come to. It was actually abandoned and destroyed, I would say, before the Nebroskaidis or just around when the Nebroskaidis was being created. So there is, it may be a potential shift. Who knows? Again, it is, there are these two anomalies that we have that we don't really see a pattern.

• 42:34Tristan Hughes?

  There's no real chance of them actually using something like the Nebroskaidis in the center of that monument along with the solstice to kind of see if they all align.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  That would have been really cool. I don't think so now because it is around that time where, when it does get destroyed and sort of abandoned, there could be, you know, who knows, maybe a few years of overlap, but it would, it is something really cool to think about and imagine of someone standing in the center of Pumelta with that disk.

• 43:00Tristan Hughes?

  Just to confirm that, you know, they've got all the angles right.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Right. It would be good to just check your work, right?

• 43:05Tristan Hughes?

  So the Nebroskaidis, is it fair to say it's created, we think, at the height, the zenith of the Unateche, of the Unateche culture?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Definitely. So there's what we call like the classical period of the Unateche, which just means the height of it. And that is around that 1900 B.C. And then it sort of, it then, the Nebroskaidis sort of lasts and is in use right until the end of the Unateche culture as well. So it did sort of come up at the zenith and we can see, sort of track the history of the Unateche through the evolutions of the Nebroskaidis, which I think is cool.

• 43:41Tristan Hughes?

  So when we get to the second stage, when they add the solstices, is that just? Should we get a sense of the unitiche, they're just learning a bit more by this time? They haven't collapsed at that time?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so.

• 43:51Tristan Hughes?

  Well, when we get to the third stage, where you see that loss of the original meaning and the solar bark, that more maybe mythological, that transformation in the disk, what do we think this aligns with?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  There could be maybe like a shrinking of the economy, or there could be a shift in how they are living. So we do see sort of this decline. The hard end of the unitiche is around that 1600 BCE mark. The date for burial of the Nebra Skydisk is around 1600 to about the mid 1500s BCE. So we do see it kind of right at that very end there. And we don't know what the end of the unitiche was caused by. It could have been overexploitation of natural resources because they're making a lot of bronze. And at times too, they're potentially even burying the bronze to make the prices go up and getting inflation and all of that. So they might have just gone too hard, too fast.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  It could be breaking down of internal systems. So they had a bunch of different, you know, chiefdoms and states and societies all around that were working together. They could be breaking apart and therefore we'd lose that centralized knowledge. We could then also have trade things deteriorating, right? We also have the infamous Bronze Age collapse around this time.

• 45:10Tristan Hughes?

  Well, yes, is this always an unitiche, like, like society collapse kind of idea?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Potentially, yes. So there is some, there was some thought of, oh, did the Accretiri?

• 45:20Tristan Hughes?

  That's the volcano on?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah, that everyone kind of ascribes the Bronze Age collapse to. Did that affect in any way? And some people say no, some people say maybe. So the unitiche end is quite mysterious and you can kind of see that with the Nebra Skydisk, where we get to that third stage of something's happening. Something's changing in their society where they need to maybe rely more heavily on ritual, on religion. And that is usually when something is going wrong.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  And you can see that a lot in different patterns throughout all of history with different cultures, different civilizations.

• 45:53Tristan Hughes?

  So they're praying for better harvests in the future. Maybe you can imagine that the rituals that they're involved in, like the local farmers, or if it's a smaller communities at that time, gathered around a warlord or a priest or whoever can, who says that they can understand this object that from a much older time. They're hoping that whatever ritual they do will give them a better harvest in the years ahead.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. You get the solar barks. So you think, give us more sun, give us better weather. Maybe there was a drought, maybe flash flooding was happening. We don't know particularly, but there could have been some sort of natural phenomenon where they needed to sort of look to the natural phenomenon to be like, please help.

• 46:31Tristan Hughes?

  So when we get to that, the ultimate burial of this Nebra Sky Disc, are the people who are, or the person being buried, the people who are doing overseeing the burial, are they still unitiche?

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Potentially still unitiche. If we have that 1600 date, again, these are dates that we put on these societies. We don't know if, you know, it for them, it still continued. Who knows? We do know that it was buried sort of smack dab in the middle of where all these other, these, there was a few borders of other unitiche, potentially like chiefs or these princely burials. So we can see there's different sites that were all around where it was. So was it potentially a few chiefs coming together and doing something to bury the horde to maybe strengthen ties or try and re bring back together something

• 47:25Speaker 02

  that had collapsed? Is it potentially, one theory is that it's a replacement for one of the princes. It's a princely burial, but the Nebra Sky Disc is a proxy for the prince because we have no human remains. So I still think it is very much the unitiche is still burying it and using it, especially because they have all of the amazing bronze that they have with them. The swords and the, the armbands, it's all very quintessential unitiche craftsmanship.

• 47:57Tristan Hughes?

  So ritual deposit or grave goods, is that kind of the debate running around? Interesting. And so what do you think all of this that we talked about today, like the original clear knowledge that they did, that they had to create this object and then the development, what do you think the discovery of the Nebra Sky Disc and the revelations of the how clever the Unatjia were, what do you think this all reveals about Bronze Age society in Central Europe and how we should view the Bronze Age beyond the big names like Assyria, Egypt, Hittites and so on?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  I definitely think we need to give Bronze Age Europe, especially Central Europe, Europe in general, a lot of it gets overshadowed by the Mediterranean and everything that was going on there with all this interaction and

• 48:43Tristan Hughes?

  And writing.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Right, exactly, right. We had writing. So usually anything with writing gets put up the tier. And then the things without writing, people just kind of push aside. You don't need to look at it. Oh, it's not important enough. As a Neolithic person, I am all for the places that don't have writing because you get to learn, I think you get to learn so much more because you have to look closer at the material culture and the technology, the knowledge, and just how these societies were able to function and thrive and become these powerhouses like the Unatjia where they were, you know, helping major players on the amber road. They were major players with the bronze. They were controlling that

• 49:25Speaker 02

  without writing. How fantastic, right? I think that's more of a feat than just someone going, okay, I can write this down. We can figure it out.

• 49:33Tristan Hughes?

  Well, and also they were plotting all these ideas about, you know, the world and all the things they could see in the sky. They were plotting it all down as well in their own system. And I guess this is, this is an example of their own system, how they're plotting those ideas onto metal and not just any metals, with precious metals at the same time.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  This was a big deal for them. And this was something that they felt was important enough to create and to make something that was both portable, but also just like almost monumental, right? They didn't do this big monumental architecture. They had, they all lived in long houses and these like wooden Structures. So for them making something like this in precious metals that they were, you know, big on trading, they could have made more daggers, they could have traded that metal for a lot more goods. They thought this was important enough because something, when they looked up at the sky, they said, that's a big deal. That's important to us as a culture.

• 50:29Tristan Hughes?

  They see the Pleiades or whatever.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 50:31Tristan Hughes?

  Know that down here.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  That's, that's something that is so important to us that we need to make a physical representation of it. So that way we can use that as a society, as something that we can function with really, right? And we can thrive better with this knowledge. And people need to look more at the Bronze Age in Europe specifically.

• 50:53Tristan Hughes?

  Is there also understanding, you know, kind of, and you see with other cultures as well, but you know, that link between astronomy and agriculture or just, you know, general survival, full stop. You know, we need to understand fully more about how closely connected they can be for certain societies.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Definitely. We are so reliant, especially at that time, on just the planet and the astronomy and where we sit within the universe. And I know we have, you know, a lot of the space exploration today and all of that. But I think sometimes we as a general population forget how vital just the movement of the stars and the planets was to us becoming who we are today. And with the Nebra Sky Disc and the Una Teacher being able to, you know, recognize that importance, it kind of reminds us all to kind of look back up again.

• 51:41Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think there could be other Nebra Sky Discs out there in other graves and all in other, you know, beneath hills elsewhere in Central Europe and beyond? If we think that this knowledge is there, well, evidently it was there, could they have replicated it in other objects?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I really hope so. I really want more to be found. If I almost sometimes reckon it to or compare it to the Antikythera mechanism.

• 52:03Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, the world's first computers, it's called.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Right? And that is around the same time period. It's this technology that we couldn't even fathom a Bronze Age society having. It also tracks the movement of the planets, the sun and the moon. So a lot was going on astronomically within technology and metal working and all this stuff that we probably won't even be able to understand fully. And I really hope we can find some more to kind of add more pieces to that puzzle.

• 52:31Tristan Hughes?

  And talking about space, this object or replica of it did actually go to space recently.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  It did. I believe it was 2021 that it went to space, a replica up to the International Space Station. There was also a German astronaut on the team or a project called Cosmic Kiss. And on their patch, he sort of inspired, there was a Nebrodisk-inspired design on the patch, which was quite cool. So there were two little iterations now gone up to space, very similar to, isn't that the space record or something that brought the gold record that's kind of out floating in space right now?

• 53:03Tristan Hughes?

  I've no idea, is it?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  There's something, I can't remember, but it's gold and it has like information coded into it. And it's floating off in space, just in case any aliens grab it and learn how to use our technology to read it.

• 53:15Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  So that's what it reminds me of. We've put already a disc in space. And now the actual disc of space has gone into space. And I think that's really poetic.

• 53:25Tristan Hughes?

  Bronze Age disc of space?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:26Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Even for someone like me, who with science and stuff is quite slow to get the hang of it. But you've been able to explain it brilliantly.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 53:34Tristan Hughes?

  And to shine a light on such a fascinating object, more than 3,000 years old. The world's oldest known star map and it's from central Europe of all places. Raven, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Anytime. Thank you for having me.

• 53:54Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was my good friend and brilliant expert, Raven Todds de Silva, the archaeologist and art conservator, returning to the podcast to talk all the things to this extraordinary Bronze Age object, the Nebra Sky Disc. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Now, if you enjoy the show, please make sure that you're following it on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It really helps us and you'd be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 54:41Speaker 01

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