Sept 14th, 2015: Nebra Sky Disk

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Nebra Sky Disk is the oldest know map of the sky, having been dated to 1600 BC, by scientists studying it since it’s 1999 discovery. Some web sites say disc, but Amusingplanet, and Wiki, say disk, which I'm going with.

Perhaps the Nebra Sky Disk wouldn’t have aroused so much curiosity if it was found in Egypt or in Greece where civilization had attained a certain degree of sophistication during the Bronze Age. But the disk was found in the dark heart of Northern Europe which had a reputation of savagery. Here there were no great cities, no early forms of writing, no signs of philosophy. Instead, there are crude lumps of rocks arranged in mystifying monuments whose true purpose has not survived. Everything that archeologists had found here including swords, spears and axes indicate a primitive society. But the discovery of the Nebra Sky Disk forces us to change our understanding of how civilization may have come to ancient Europe.

Those same scientists speculate the disk was completed in four stages.



Pretty smart cave men.