Is the Nebra Sky Disc a millennium younger than we thought? | The Art Newspaper

The Nebra Sky Disc
Photo: Hildegard Burri-Bayer

The Nebra Sky Disc, the world’s oldest known depiction of the cosmos, might not be as old as previously thought. The disc was discovered during an illegal excavation in 1999 and is regarded as one of Germany’s most significant archaeological finds. The looters said that they had unearthed the disc at a hill fort called the Mittelberg, near Nebra in Germany, along with various other artefacts, including swords, axes and bracelets. Experts dated these objects to around 1600BC— in the Early Bronze Age— and assigned the disc the same date because it was found alongside them.

Now, Rupert Gebhard, the director of the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection in Munich, and Rüdiger Krause, the professor for prehistory and early European history at Goethe University Frankfurt, have questioned whether the disc dates to the same period as the other artefacts. Writing in the journal Archäologische Informationen, the archaeologists re-evaluated previous research, including the results of soil studies and geochemical analyses of the artefacts’ metals, and what was known about the Mittelberg site.

To read the full article, click here: Is the Nebra Sky Disc a millennium younger than we thought?