This is the super cool Nebra Sky Disk, which most archaeologists think is the oldest picture of an actual astronomical scene. Looking at the bronze (the blue-green patina might have been deliberate) background with the gold ornamentation, ancient peoples could have been able to figure out when it was time to put an extra month into the solar calendar to line it up with the lunar calendar.
The cluster of seven dots represents the Pleiades constellation, and when the waxing crescent moon to the right appeared at the same time in the night sky, the calenders could be realigned. There is also a gold arc to the far right, and at one time it had a symmetrical arc opposite. Scholars think those represented horizons from the solstices in relationship to the mountain of Mittelberg, near the village of Nebra where the disk was found.
The bronze age date is 1600 BCE — that makes it the oldest star chart in existence. But dating metals is notoriously difficult — archaeologists have been able to figure out that some of the gold came from Cornwall, England, but looters who found the disk in 1999 disturbed the site where it was discovered in the Ziegelroda forest in Germany. In a recent paper from September 2020, two archaeologists challenged the dating and argued for an iron age date if about 600 BCE.
— which still puts the Nebra Sky Disk into the “amazingly awesome” category.
Source(s): Becky Ferreira, “How old is this Ancient vision of the stars?” _The New York Times_, Sept 13, 2020. _Archaeology_, “The Nebra Sky Disk_, May/June 2019, Jarrett A. Lobell.
