DID THE ANCIENT GERMANS UNDERSTAND the secrets of the stars?

It is 0.2 inches thick, 12 inches in diameter, and weighs about 5 pounds but its value is incalculable: The mysterious bronze “sky disk” of Nebra (some 50 miles west of Leipzig, Germany) is considered one of the greatest archeological finds of the past century as well as the key to a lost culture in the heart of Europe. This first known depiction of cosmic phenomena illustrates how an early Germanic people understood the universe more than 3,500 years ago.

The disk was unearthed in 1999 by two men illegally using a metal detector to search on Mittelberg, a mountaintop near Nebra, Germany. When German authorities got wind of the discovery, they confiscated it in a sting operation, and now it is in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle. Museum director Harald Meller has been instrumental in interpreting the symbolism of the object, which depicts the Sun, Moon, and stars. It also indicates the angle between the rising and setting Sun at the summer and winter solstices. This calendarlike function would have been useful for determining the optimal times for sowing and harvesting. The materials used to make the disk had come from across Europe: The gold for the Sun, crescent Moon, and stars as well as the tin in the bronze is from Cornwall; the copper is from the area around

Bischofshofen in the Austrian Alps. The very existence of this disk is a testament to an advanced civilization that possessed knowledge of metal production and astronomy and that was able to maintain trade relations well beyond its borders. “Úne˘tice” is the name historians have given to a culture that existed between 2300 and 1600 BC in an area that ranged from modern Germany

and Austria to western Ukraine. “The first kings of Central Europe ruled for 400 years between the Harz mountains and the Elbe and Saale rivers,” says Meller. They organized their realms into principalities, had their own armies, and spoke a throaty Proto-germanic language. For a long time the prevailing historical view was that only barbarians were living in the region of what is now Central Germany in 2000 BC. That no longer withstands scrutiny, though. “Without the bronze disk, we would never have discovered this lost culture,” says Meller, who is certain he also knows where the man who commissioned the Nebra sky disk lies buried: within the German state of Saxony-anhalt under Bornhöck, the biggest Bronze Age burial mound in Central Europe. “It is highly probable that one of the princes of Bornhöck was the owner of the disk,” says Meller. Excavation of the site is now under way.