The Nebra sky disk is one of the most substantial archeological finds in German chronicle . Discovered by two looters in 1999 , the artefact was fashion by prehistoric mankind who inlaid on a patrician - commons patina gold symbols that act the Moon , the Sun , stars , and maybe even the Milky Way .
The State Museum of Prehistory in Halle ( Saale ) took over ownership of the magnetic disk in 2002and since then there ’s been a major argument about its age . The artifact itself ca n’t be dated and how the disk was find is cloudy : the looters claim they receive the phonograph record together with swords , axis , and armlets dated to the Bronze Age , some between 2200 and 1600 BCE . If this is right , the disk would be the oldest - know concrete depiction of the night sky .
However , two investigator do n’t consider the geological dating , say no point like the disc has been found in the Bronze Age . In the journalArchäologische Informationen , the team instead suggests the Nebra magnetic disk dates to the Iron Age , making it approximately 1,000 year younger than antecedently think .
The researchers render several reasons for their conclusion . The looters ' tale on how they found the disk ( and its subsequent damage ) does n’t match what can be reconstructed from the artifact itself . The scientists also compared the magnetic disc ’s metals with that of the other objects found in the same location . In other stash , there is often grounds that all the object were crafted from raw fabric collect from the same place . No such similarity is seen here . The artifacts were source from cloth propagate out across the Eastern Alps .
" In our view , the results obtained so far speak against the discovery belong together , " Professor Rüdiger Krause , co - writer and expert on metal analyses , said in astatement .
The team ’s recent oeuvre is raspingly rejected by the State Office for Archeology in Saxony - Anhalt , the region where the disk was line up .
" Gebhard and Krause put forward several key distributor point as a political platform for this dissertation , " thestatementreads . " The colleagues not only ignore the teemingness of published inquiry results in recent years , their various argumentation also are well refuted . In particular , the correlation coefficient of the Sky Disc with the other discoveries of the hoard , whose Bronze Age geezerhood is not in question , is put in doubt . Claims are that the soil attachments on the Sky Disc do not fit with those of the other finding and that the geochemical analyzes of the metals do not support their coherence . Both of these statement are demonstrably faulty . "
Although the squad say the disk ’s depictions are airless to artifact found in the fifth century BCE , such as the blade from Allach ( Munich ) , they do not doubt the disk is authentically prehistoric , unequaled , and of immense scientific value .
