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The Story Of The Nebra Sky Disk
By rickyjames, Section News Posted on Sat Jan 03, 2004 at 03:24:32 PM PST
National Geographic has a really neat print article in the January 2004 issue on the Nebra Sky Disk. It's a facinating story about a sort of Bronze Age German Stonehenge, a 3600-year-old human artifact meant to unlock the secrets of the sky. But if Stonehenge in England can be thought of as a huge mainframe or desktop computer meant to stay in one place, the Nebra sky disk in Germany was the equivalent of a laptop computer - small, light, portable. Actually, too portable; it was stolen upon discovery in the mid 1990s during the confusion of German reunification and has been up for sale on the black market for years at an asking price of up to $10 million. Recovering the Nebra sky disk for science has been a real-life Indiana Jones adventure. Photographs of the disk were published in the German magazine Focus to drive up the black-market price for the artifact. The current National Geographic article is written by Harald Meller, museum director of the State Museum for Prehistory of Halle in the former East German zone where the artifact was originally discovered. He recovered the disk during a sting set up by Swiss police where the deal went down. The Swiss cop in charge told Meller during the mission briefing, "The most important thing is that you survive. We lose people in some of these transactions."

So, just what IS the Nebra disk? It's a bronze plate about 12 inches / 30 centimeters in diameter with 32 pure gold studs in it that represent stars. In the middle of the disk are an obvious gold crescent moon and a large gold circle that is thought to represent a moon in total eclipse. Seven of the 32 studs appear to be arranged to represent the Pleiades or "Seven Sisters" constellation. Not coincidentally, when a crescent moon is seen near the Pleiades in that part of Germany, a total lunar eclipse follows in a matter of weeks.
When you lack the internet, books and computers, a bronze disk reminding you of this astronomical discovery is a ticket to predict the future - and be seen as having supernatural powers. Indeed, the Mittelberg mountain where Nebra disk was found is reputed even today to be the home of witches.
Three gold bands around the perimeter of the disk (one of which is missing and exists only as an imprint on the bronze metal) also are seen as having an astronomical meaning. By positioning the Nebra disk in the pit where it was found, the bands are thought to show the positions of the sun on the horizon at the equinoxes - crucial information to schedule crop planting and harvest and establish a calendar. Thus, the Nebra sky disk and the pit in which it was found may well mark humanity's oldest astronomical observatory - from 3600 years ago.

The Story Of The Nebra Sky Disk | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)

Nebra solar calendar (none / 0) (#1)
by Anonymous on Sat Jan 31, 2004 at 05:14:39 PM PST

The Nebra find is a variation of a solar calendar based on the movement of the sun along the horizon. The movement of the sun is measured by observing the change in the position of the shadow of a fixed object (gnomon).The shadow is cast upon a scale marked in days, weeks or two-week perliods as in the case of tibia unearthered by Drs. Mania at Bilzingsleben (my analysis). In the Nebra find, the seven stars represent the 7 days of the week. At Bilzingsleben the engravd marks on the tibia are done at two-week intervals The so-called "oars" of Nebra are part of the scale marking the number of days from the solstice. A Chinese calendar has names for each of the two-week periods describing the weather conditions for each of the 26 periods. What an interesting coincidence. For more info: My email is tennisfwb@aol.com

Nebra = 'Nibiru'? (none / 0) (#2)
by drphil on Mon Mar 01, 2004 at 08:40:03 AM PST

Granted, Nebra sounds like the geologic physical site the disk was found in, but the number 3,600 years for its age is also the purported orbital period for 'Nibiru' (the internet's name is Planet X, the biblical term is the star 'Wormwood', and most astronomers since Tombaugh call 'it' a transneptunian / kuiper belt object). Anyhoo, does anyone else have insight into any Sumerian mythologic relationships to this disk?

Nebra Sky Disc (none / 0) (#3)
by Anonymous on Thu Jul 29, 2004 at 10:18:33 PM PST

For those interested in the Nebra Sky Disc I give below my interpretation of what the disc was for (apart from setting out solstices and equinoxes)Think on this - in those days anyone who could accurately set out any plans,who could create accurate maps, and who could accurately navigate by maps, would have been veiwed as a magician. 1st e-mail sent to National Geographic: On page 87 it states "And a final modification was made when a series of holes along the perimiter were punched through the gold bands and the disk, perhaps to fasten the sky disk to fabric". As a surveyor I would suggest that this disk is an early surveying instrument - place the disk horizontally on top of a pole, and put wooden, bone or copper pegs into the holes to aid sight lines. This method was in use before theodolites were invented, and is surprisingly accurate in the right hands. From the pictures there would appear to be about 60 holes around the outside which would allow for around 1770 different sightlines, which would give an accuracy of around 0.2 of a degree. (I have since seen a better image of the disc from which I have estimated about 40 holes giving 1560 sight lines and an accuracy of around 0.25 of a degree. Can anyone tell me exactly how many holes there are?) 2nd e-mail sent to National Geographic: Further to my previous e-mail, copy above, something that I did not notice at the time, but noticed during a program called Horizon on BBC television here in England on 29th January, was the small markings around the so called "night ship". As a surveyor I should have looked for it, but I was so surprised that bronze age people should have a survey table at all, that I did not expect to see a much later refinement. The two grooves on this part show that it is a traverse bar that would have held a sightbar, which could have been adjusted to line up with any of what can only be described as micrometer adjustment lines on the sides of the bar. Fairly accurate survey tables, named Diopters by the Greeks, were described by them in the first century after Christ, but these did not have the micrometer traverse bars on them. This raises a very serious question. How did bronze age people come to have a survey table with a micrometer traverse bar some two thousand years earlier????????? (As a new thought: Where did the Greeks get the idea for their Diopters from, if not from the previous cultures? Perhaps we have lost more knowledge than we have gained over the intervening centuries..........)

Original Thinking by rickyjames, 07/30/2004 04:49:25 AM PST (none / 0)
Well, to me, by jxliv7, 07/30/2004 08:13:42 AM PST (none / 0)

The Story Of The Nebra Sky Disk | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)

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