The Nebra sky disc
A bronze disc with gold sun, moon and stars, and possibly the Pleiades.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Found by looters in Germany in 1999 and recovered in a sting operation, the disc is a bronze plate about 30 centimetres across inlaid with gold symbols including a cluster of seven that is generally read as the Pleiades. Its date is contested — the archaeological context suggests around 1600 BCE — and interpretations range from an astronomical instrument for reconciling lunar and solar years to a purely symbolic object. Its gold came from Cornwall.