Bronze Age Star Map: The Nebra Sky Disk

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A 3,600-year-old bronze and gold disc created at a time when stone hinge 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 Nebris Skydisk, 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 entrance. I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and this is the story of the Nebris Skydisk, a Bronze Age star map, our guest is the award-winning archaeologist and art conservator, Raven Todd Disselva.

Raven, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the show. It is so great to be back. To go back to the Bronze Age and Bronze Age Europe, this is the oldest known star map in the world. It is, yes.

Wow, so this is the Nebris Skydisk, 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 something like any object I've ever seen. 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 like ever existed,

“but it is also the most amazing thing that I think I've seen in a very long time.”

And how old are we talking about with this object? We're talking around 1800 to 1600 BCE. So around that nice really good Bronze Age period.

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 this discovery because this story in itself, it's quite the roller coaster. Yes, I love the story, I think a movie should be made about this. Okay, great.

So to set the scene, the year is 1999, why to K Madness, and there are these two metal detectors in the region of Saxony, Unhalt in Germany, doing, during their thing, illegally without a problem. Oh dear, okay, right here. Oh, it's had one of these stories, goes.

And they're on the Middleburg Hill near the village of Nebra in Germany. And they uncover this hoard. This hoard has a 30 centimeter round disc, made of bronze with this gold and lays on it. It's very mysterious.

Also, some sorts, there's some axes, a chisel, some spiral arm bands, 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 hoard to a, to the black market in Kloom for, I think it was around 35,000 Deutschmarks.

Wow, they sold it quick. They knew they had to get rid of that. 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 hoard, the Middleburg hoard becomes widespread. And this is the best part. This is such an Indiana Jones type moment.

There's an archaeologist, his name is Harold Miller. He is the Nebra Skydisk guy, okay. He is the expert. 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. And they do it. They capture the hoard. I'm not sure it's that super high stakes, but they do get their hands on this hoard.

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 detectors who found it. Wow. Go for a circle. They did. It was great.

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.

So that's the justice system for you. But they were helpful actually in a sense that they led the archaeologist to the exact spot that they found the hoard, and that helped us, obviously, it's been a few years, but it did help kind of understand the context of the hoard. So that is the discovery of the nebrisguides, plus to all this other amazing bronze material

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

Especially the nebrisguides has gone under a lot of scientific analysis, because it had this very tabloid, esk, discovery, and retrieval, and also just because of how fantastic and anomalous it is. And did this disc, 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.

I definitely think so, because you, 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 back seat, 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, so all these barbarians, because you hear about the Romans that coming in after, right, and oh, we're going to 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. And we've got a sense already about each shape given it's called a disc, but give us a sense

“of the size first of all, how big an object are we talking about?”

30 centimeters round, essentially, very, very thin, though. It is just a little disc, and it has a few perforations around the edge at the moment that we're made in previous time story. And so that's sort of the generic shape, it's just a round disc, 30 centimeters, like a dinner plate.

Right, and the material is it bronze? It is bronze, and it's also got some gold inlay on it. Because when you look at pictures of it, it's got that kind of that greenish look to it. And is that just bronze that has become oxidized over those thousands of years, right? Yes, it's that lovely patina that we get with age.

Right. Well, we're going to focus in on this artifact, and we're going to, well, your job is to describe this artifact through the different parts of it, is 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 30 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? 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 far reaching interactions fear there, and we also have a little bit more local gold as well. So there's mixed in the two, where 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 spend big distances, same in central Germany. Exactly, yes. Well, let's look at the different parts of it now.

So the first thing that draws my is there's a big gold circle, just left of the center

of it here. What is this? 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.

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 changes it.”

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. And then finally, well, before we get to those bands around the edge, you also have these lovely little clusters of small yellow circles.

So what are all of these that you have everywhere? Are they? These are stars. These are the stars. Only two stars on the desk, 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 Pleiades. 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. Exactly.

Wow. And then finally, well, we have a band on the far right and then a band at the bottom.

“Should we start with the one on the right, first of all, what do we think this is?”

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 darker area there.

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

That's interesting because, but this is found in Germany and solar barks you think of bronze age Egypt, you know, more than 1,000 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. Potentially, there is a lot, we're going to 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 nebrisky

disk. So how would we know that this disk, 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? 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 unatecha, this archaeological culture that we have described this name unatecha too, and this is very reminiscent, especially as well with the rest of the hoard, that we found.

So the bronze swords and the spiral arm bends, it's all very indicative of this archaeological culture that was thriving around, let's say, 2000 to 2300 BCE to about 1800, 1600 BCE. And that was all within this area of Central Europe.

“So I think Germany, Poland, a little bit of Ukraine, Austria, Czech Republic, that area.”

And so this is part of that culture, and the materials are from the nearby area, the metals and so on, and of course, the gold from even further afield. But can we also get a sense with the whole creation of this object, and the placement of this are 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 3,000, 4000 years ago? Yes, in fact, they've done some studies where if you're at the top of Middleberg Hill, that latitude on the earth, this, everything lines up, it's fantastic. So they know that this is where you were standing on the top of the hill, and you'd have the disc with you, for example, and then you'd be able to see how the solar movements

are exactly lined up to this neighbor sky desk, but the angles of the sun during the solstice is, so what do we mean by this? So the winter solstice and the summer solstice, so the winter solstice is about December 21st, and then the summer solstice is in June, and that is 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 the 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, in a teacher culture as well, where there's

a lot of amazing site in Germany called Pamelta, 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 are these concentric wooden rings, and that also 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.

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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. The shortest day of the year, or the longest day of the year, they'd be standing up there at the top, and what they would see above them at night, 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 the player these constellation and where those other stars are, so they can kind of line themselves up. Yeah, you can sort of orient yourself within the cosmos whilst you're on the hill with this disc.

There are some theories that because we have a sun and a moon and 32 stars, there could

be a way 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 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, 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 in a teacher, 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 that's something like that. And if there's that particular constellation, which is the Pleiades in it as well, why will constellations do they show that particular one?

The Pleiades seems to be quite an important constellation in multiple cultures, especially during the Bronze Age, again, this is that time when 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

Mule Ape in text, and it is a little bit later, it dates to a little bit later, so there

is the debate of who came up with the idea first, 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. Right. So that's them again, the counting of the days, understanding the year, and the whole cycle because it's great for farming and regulation, for 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. And does this also one skinning back to why the self-dicis were so important to these people? Yes. Because it's very much centered to their livelihood and to the agriculture and to their survival.

Definitely, 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.”

When you explain once again, the particular layouts 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 will that aligns up with the particular latitude that you have in the area was discovered in Germany? So if you're on the hill in Middleberg, that's that latitude. So you can kind of do it across, but that's where it was found.

So the long 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. Right. So these are the horizons.

One lines up with the sunrise of the solstice of 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. And then you can sort of just orient yourself as well.

It's really good at night time, right? And during the day, you can't see anything. So if you see the Pleiades, you see where it is within 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 the state

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 think about like the head said festival,”

for example, an ancient Egypt where after a few years, they do this whole thing and to renew their kingship. It could be something like that here.

But you could always imagine someone who understood what this was going up to the top

of that hill, almost like every day is the solstice near it and figuring out how close it was. Just by looking at the angle of the sunrise and comparing it to this map and the bands that you have surviving on it. 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 generally. 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 map essentially. 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 for that purpose on a number of hills in the nearby area and still have the same result. Definitely, it is one of those really fun things where we see Stonehenge, we see these other Stonecircles that have the same sort of functionality, but they are big monumental things that you have to go to.

This can pull out your backpack and just kind of, oh, a 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. Yes, yes. Well, should we do that now? Because we mentioned earlier 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 is solar bark at the bottom?”

So we've actually been able to figure out that this disk 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

disks. They don't have those perforations around the edges like you see it today. It has the 32 stars, it has the crescent moon and the sun. What do you think is the sun? Yes.

That is all that's there. The first bit. The bands no solar bark at this time. 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 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. Got it. Next iteration. Next iteration.

“A little bit later, we can tell that the unit teacher 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, like an app update on Google Maps, for

example, a new feature. So that's those two bands that we have on either side. That's the second phase, it's becoming a little bit more complex. And in the next phase. Third phase.

So to preface this, we do think the never skydisk was in use for about a few hundred years

before it was buried. OK. So think about this over a longer period of time. It's not just, you know, next year we found out this bit. So maybe let's say the first phase where you just have that star map and no horizon bands

it could be is almost 4,000 years old. Yes. And it evolved a bit over time. Exactly. You know, maybe 50 years later, they go, oh, we figured out the solstices.

Otherwise, but that is going to happen. 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 with in society. And so this needs to evolve a bit or change because either of how we look at it or maybe a knowledge was lost or it just hasn't new meaning, we get the solar bark right.

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.

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. Exactly. 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 Mycenian imagery where we have

where it is a very mythological type of seam.

So maybe there could be some influence on that side, the horizon arcs as well, could be potentially like the double sided X, that's the other thing. That's the other one. Exactly. Right.

So we do see that there is potential for some of this spiritual religious or my religious maybe but ritual practice sort of getting incorporated into the disc as time goes on.

“And Mycenian Greece, that's Bronze Age Greece, isn't it?”

That's exactly. So same time period. Same time period. A bit further on, you do, you get it with that, there's that perforation on the left hand side.

Actually, a bit of all the way round the disc as well. 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 parade it 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 a scribe some sort of meaning to. That's what this could be later on. So that means it's completely lost, dysfunction as a star map because if it was

“sort of 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, just something that is just very kind of ritual in a sense where it is something that has no practical purpose other than for whatever meaning that someone has described to it.

So could it be that that practical knowledge, you know, that this use of the star map and the individuals who presumably would have been able to read it and understand it, is this a case of lost Bronze Age knowledge that, you know, over those centuries, it

carries 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. Pretty much, yeah. It is something that, you know, someone that ages died out, you don't need to 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 ritualy destroyed. They took away its power.

“That's what a lot of cultures do is before you bury something 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 work at some point, especially towards the end of its life. In 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? Yes. Which once again indicates how it's likely that that it was added a slightly later on?

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. Interesting. So the original gold was from further away, which might also indicate that at the time of that original knowledge, they had more extensive traduits at that time.

Or they just hadn't discovered the gold sources that were nearer than that time. 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 UNA teacher are this cool sort of a Malcolm of two different cultures. You've got the Bell Beaker culture and the corded wear culture. Okay. So what are these cultures?

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

And we can see that these cultures were all over Europe. Okay. They were very widespread. Again, 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. So we can see that there was a large spread of these previous cultures.

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. And the unit teaching in particular, when it comes to bronze working and metal working,

“are they almost the premium group that we associate with the best metal work at the time?”

It's not just this disc, like this disc is one of many amazing artifacts. It's a product of their brilliant work with bronze. 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. They're 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 unattichic coded, you know, they're a very specific style. You find them all over Europe. They were traded all over the place.

And they're 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.

“And the bronze suit that copper and tin together, yes.”

And having that might be much stronger as a metal, right, for 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 able to control those resources and then trade with other people for other goods.

And how does that then lead to them of all cultures to anything, creating something is sophisticated as the nebrisky disk. And you know, having this really good knowledge of the celestial world above them and how to read the stars and the soul ultimately the sources as well.

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 UNI teacher 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 have this different type of class of people 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 UNI teacher 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 Baltics specialty. 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 across over with the UNI teacher 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 number skydisk.

It's fantastic. So is it almost a case that it's a result of the UNI teacher being top dogs at this

time and the extensive connections that they have, the nature of their society that ultimately

allows certain people to almost, I know it's there, but like commit themselves to an intellectual life and to learn, to travel and learn more about this list of world and then actually compile something like this with the bronze mastery with the use of gold as well. It's definitely plausible, yes, 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 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.

that would have been the ones who were able to use that disk, that object? 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 prince, for example, in conjunction with the priests or with, you know, we don't know what they call 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 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. Do you know much about these princes, these rulers at the top of the unity chair? I mean, from the archaeology, the people who presumably would have been learning about all of

this, who would have been very much involved in that wider process. 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 lobing in, 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 Nebroscide Discord, but bigger, better with an actual body.”

And they were think of, for example, Sutton who, where you have that tumulus over top of it. And those were these big monumental tomes 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 someone was very important. They could have been a chief or a, 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 lobing in one, there was a skeleton found on top of the, 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 unit teacher.

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 bearing their dead in this time. [MUSIC] Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History at Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is

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“What types of grave goods are found in those burials?”

Is there any others that have something to do with the stars or what types of objects we're thinking about? What I surprised you if I said bronze? No, because it's mostly just bronze. So nothing from what I know, there is nothing else that's really like astronomical. Interesting, okay.

So the nebris guide is an anomaly. It's one of those one-offs that, you know, 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 is impossible and no one could make that at that time. What do you mean and some people just flat out refused to believe that it existed?

And why do question about astronomy in that area of the world at the time? Let's see, 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? So this is Pamelta. There's also a smaller one called Schunabek or Schunabek, not too far from

Pamelta. So there's this area that had really good, I guess, a 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.

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 really good grave goods. And then we do have”

evidence of females and children being sacrificed in the area. 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 Nebris guide us, go just around when the Nebris guide us was being created. So there isn't maybe a potential shift who knows again it is. There are these two anomalies that we have that we don't really see a pattern. But there's no real chance of they're

actually using something like the Nebris guide is in the center of that monument along with the solstice to kind of see if they all align. 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

does. Just to confirm that they got all the angles right. Right. It would be good to just check your work. So the Nebris guide is if let's say it's created, we think at the height, the zenith of the Unitechia of the Unitechia culture. Definitely so there's what we call like the classical period of the Unitechia which just means the height of it and that is around that 1900 BC and then it sort of then the Nebris guide is sort of last and is in use right until the end of the Unitechia culture

as well. So it did sort of come up at the zenith and we can see sort of track the history of the

Unitechia through the evolutions of the Nebris guide. So when we get to the second stage when

they add the solstices, is that just should we get the sense of the Unitechia, they're just learning

“a bit more by this time. They haven't collapsed at that time. Yes, I think so. Well when we get to”

third stage where you see that loss of the original meaning and the solar bark that won't maybe methodological that transformation in the disc. What do we think this aligns with? 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 Unitechia is around that 1600 BC E mark. The date for burial of the Nebris guide is around 1600 to about the mid 1500s BC E. So

we do see it kind of right at that very end there and we don't know what the end of the Unitechia was caused by. It could have been over exploitation 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 all that. So they might have just gone too hard too fast. It could be breaking down of internal systems. So they had a bunch of different

you know, chief dumps and states and societies all around that we're 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 story. Oh yes, is this an Unitechia like society collapse kind of idea?”

Potentially yes. So there is some, there was some thought of, oh did the acritary. That's the volcano on exactly. Yeah, that everyone kind of describes the Bronze Age collapse to did that effect in any way. And some people say no, some people say maybe.

So the Unitechia end is quite mysterious and you can kind of see that with the never skydest

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. And you can see that a lot in different patterns throughout all of history with different cultures, different civilizations. So they're praying for better harvests in the future. Maybe you can imagine that the rituals that they're involved in.

And like the local farmers or if it's a smaller community at that time gathered around a warlord or a priest or whoever who says that they can understand this object or that from a much older time. And they're hoping that whatever ritual they do will give them a better harvest in the years ahead. Exactly. Yeah, you get the solar bark. So you think we'll 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. So when we get to that the ultimate burial of this nebrisky disc, other people who are or the person being buried, the people who are doing overseeing the burial, are they still in a future? Potentially still going to teach her. If we have that 1,600 date again, these are dates

that we put on these societies. We don't know if you know it for them. It's still continued who knows.

these, there was a few borders of other unit teacher 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 hoard to maybe strengthen ties or try and re-bring back together? Something that had collapsed. Is it potentially one theory is that it's a replacement for one of the princess? It's a princely

burial, but the nebrisky disc is a proxy for the prince because we have no human remains. So I still think it is very much that unity just still burying it and using it especially because

they have all of the amazing bronze that they have with the swords and the the arm bands. It's all

very quintessential unit teacher craftsmanship. So ritual deposit will grave goods. Is that kind of the vivid debate around that? I'm really 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 nebrisky disc and the revelations of how clever the NCHA were? What do you think this will reveal was about that bronze age society

in central Europe and how we should view the Bronze Age beyond the big names like Assyria, Egypts, Utah, it's in civil. 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 writing. Right exactly, right? We had writing so usually anything with writing gets put up the tear and then the things without writing people just kind of push aside. You don't need to look at it. 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 unit teacher where they were helping major players on the

Amber Road. They were major players with the bronze. They were controlling that 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. 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. 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. 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 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 about the sky, they said, that's a big deal. That's important to us as a culture. They see the Pleiades or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. 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.

Is it 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. We need to understand fully more about how closely connected they can be for certain societies. 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 nebriscusitis and the unity to being able to, you know, recognize that importance. It kind of reminds us all to kind of look back up again. Do you think there could be other nebriscusitis 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

reckoned it to or compared it to the antikothera mechanism. Yes, the world's first computer as

“it's cool. 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. And talking about space, this object or

replica of it did actually go to space recently. It did, but if it was 2021, that it went to space,

“the replica, up to the international space station. There was also a German astronaut”

on the team, a project called Cosmic Kiss. And on their patch, he sort of inspired, there was a nebriscus inspired design on the patch, which was quite cool. So there were two little

iterations now gone up to space, very similar to, it's not about the space record or something,

the gold record. That's that kind of floating in space right now. So what I do is it. There's something, I can't remember what 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.

“Why? So that's what it reminds me of. We've put already a disk in space and now the actual”

disk of space has gone into space and I think that's really poetic. The Bronze Age disk of space, absolutely. Even for someone like me who have signed this stuff, it's quite slow to get the hang of it, but you've been able to explain it brilliantly and to shine a light on such a fascinating object more than 3000 years old. The world's oldest known star map and it's from central Europe of all places. Ravenny just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on

the show anytime. Thank you for having me. Well there you go there was my good friend and bringing to expert Raven Toddz to silver, the archaeologist and art conservator returned to the podcast to talk all the things this extraordinary Bronze Age object then their bra sky disk. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Angels. 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 be doing us a big favour. If you be kind enough to leave us a rating as well but we 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.