Original subtitles

July 4th, 1999.

Two men of dubious character were searching

in a German forest with a metal detector.

Yes.

They were trying to earn some pocket money

by selling valuables buried here in World War II,

but they also found something incredible.

Hey! There is something here.

Come on. Hurry up!

Where?

Here, here, here!

Okay. Okay.

Dig. Go.

Wow, wow, wow.

Hey, look this.

I don't know.

What is this, man?

I don't know.

Don't broke it, okay? Here.

More, more, more, please.

They sluiced off the mud with water,

revealing a metallic disc the likes of which

had never been seen before.

This is a photo of the disc

taken immediately after its discovery.

Its diameter was 30 centimeters

and it weighed about two kilograms.

It was made of bronze, a copper and tin alloy,

with beautiful gold emblems representing the moon

and stars.

It described the night sky.

The disc, found by chance and excavated illegally

now entered upon a shadowy journey.

Changing hands repeatedly on the black market,

it disappeared from public view.

But rumors of such a unique treasure

were bound to spread.

Eventually, an archaeologist appeared on the scene

determined to recover it.

The Nebra sky disc,

as the object came to be called,

was shrouded in mystery.

It gave rise to one riddle after another.

How old was it?

Research by archaeologists determined

that it dated back three and a half millennia.

Next was the question

whether the images of the moon and stars

reflected real astronomical knowledge.

This appeared to be the world's oldest astronomical disc.

A third mystery astonishing archaeologists

was the very existence of such a sophisticated

prehistoric European culture.

The many riddles posed by the Nebra sky disc

have attracted the passionate attentions

of astronomers, archaeologists, and historians.

It is the world's oldest sky map

and it encodes a message of vital importance.

The Nebra sky disc was liberated

from the clutches of black marketeers

thanks largely to the dedication of this man,

archaeologist Harald Meller.

Two years after its initial discovery,

the mysterious bronze disc resurfaced.

It came to Meller's attention when an acquaintance,

the director of a museum in Berlin,

was presented with a certain photograph.

If you display it in your museum,

you will certainly have a lot of guests.

The visitor gave his name simply as Achim.

You may purchase it at one million marks.

The problem is not the price,

it's where you obtained it.

I found it by accident on the mountain.

In Saxony-Anhalt.

Don't you know excavation is prohibited over there?

The remains underground belong to the German nation.

A few days later,

Meller was summoned by the museum director.

Have a seat.

Okay, thanks.

He was shown the photo of the disc.

He left in a haste, leaving this picture,

and he has never been back anymore.

From that day onward,

Meller searched for the bronze disc,

but to no avail.

Until one day...

Hello? Meller speaking.

I received a picture of the bronze disc

from the publisher of a journal titled "Focus."

They asked me to verify the authenticity of the disc.

I wonder if it is the disc you are looking for.

The call was from a fellow researcher.

Hello? Is that the police?

Yes, I've got some information

about that stolen bronze disc.

A fortnight later,

Meller was able to meet with the person

who had the disc.

Miss Hildegard?

Hi.

I'm Harald Meller.

I'm an archaeologist.

I'm glad to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

I had an expert verify the authenticity

of the disc.

However, I was surprised to learn

that your friend wished to purchase it.

She gave her name as Hildegard.

She was an art collector, she said.

I would like to research the disc.

Could you kindly sell it to me?

Yeah, no problem.

But, because you're buying it for science,

I'll let you have it for 700,00 marks.

Okay, could you let me look at it?

I can't show it to you here.

But please come to Basel, Switzerland

and I'll exchange the disc for 700,000 marks.

Located at the Swiss borders

with both France and Germany,

Basel provided easy access and easy escape,

making it attractive to black marketeers.

When the German police requested assistance,

Basel prosecutors decided to use Meller

in a sting operation to send a message

to all would-be black marketeers.

Detective Peter Gill was in charge.

Meller got word from the sellers

that they had taken a room at a hotel.

When he arrived, he was greeted by Hildegard

and a man he hadn't met before.

The man was Achim,

who had initially shown the picture of the disc

to that museum director.

When Meller refused to go up to their room,

they took him to a bar in the hotel's basement.

The location for the sale had been changed

on the spur of the moment

and there was no one in the bar

who looked to Meller like plainclothes police.

Did you bring the 700,000 marks?

Yes. Yes.

Actually, under police instructions,

Meller was not carrying any money.

Show me the 700,00 marks.

I-I'm...

I need to verify the authenticity of the disc so...

I-I-I need you to show me the disc first.

This sword was found with the disc.

Can you use it to verify the authenticity

of the disc?

Meller could not let this chance

to recover the bronze disc slip through his fingers.

To buy time until the police were ready to pounce,

he played along with Hildegard's offer

to test the sword.

Was it authentic?

Yes.

I'm happy you think that.

Concerned that the two criminals

might not have the disc with them,

Meller forced their hand.

Can we do the transaction another day?

Because you don't seem to have the disc.

I have the disc.

Is this what you want?

Yes.

Just then... Come on!

Hold it!

Get off of me!

I didn't do it! Get off!

I didn't do it!

Me? Me too?

Me too?

All of you!

It turned out that almost all the bar's customers

were plainclothes police, about 30 of them.

And so, after many vicissitudes,

the bronze disc was recovered.

Research showed that it was truly a unique artifact.

Testimony by the black marketeers

established the excavation site.

It was near the small village of Nebra,

in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

It's a tranquil farming area

in what used to be part of East Germany.

The mysterious bronze object was named

after this nearby town.

At 250 meters elevation,

Mittelberg is the tallest hill in the area

around Nebra.

It was in the dense forest,

near the summit of that hill,

that the Nebra sky disc was unearthed.

Nearby trees were felled

and a thorough investigation conducted,

but nothing similar to the sky disc was discovered.

Further testimony by the traffickers

described the disposition of objects as excavated.

The disc was flanked by bronze swords and axes

and other artifacts buried along with it.

Nothing like this bronze disc had ever been seen before.

Some even doubted its authenticity.

The Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum in Mannheim, Germany,

Here, there is a specialized laboratory

that can determine whether unearthed artifacts

are genuine or not.

Meller asked for the expert opinion

of the lab's director, Ernst Pernicka.

The latest technology is used

to ascertain the composition of an object.

Director Pernicka is absolutely confident

that he would not miss a fake.

Ancient bronze develops a blue-green film,

or patina, on its surface.

It is possible, however, to simulate this patina

with a chemically-induced oxidation.

A special camera obtained this image

of the crystals forming the patina

on the Nebra sky disc.

By comparison, this is the crystalline structure

of an artificial patina.

The longer a patina takes to form,

the larger its crystals grow.

The crystal size of the sky disc's patina

proved that it was very old, indeed.

It was the real thing.

Metallurgical analysis alone, however,

could not determine the disc's exact age.

What era did this object come from?

Efforts to date the disc continued.

One day, a clue came from a surprising source.

In order to preserve the disc properly,

it was thoroughly examined and partially restored.

That included analysis of the methods used

to fabricate it.

The swords found with the disc

were actually dismantled.

From their hilts, small, thin chips fell out.

What could they be?

To find out, they were first heated in a test tube.

The goal? To smell the fumes.

Analysis showed the chips

to be indeed white birchbark.

Just slivers of plant matter,

they were invaluable aids in dating the objects.

Carbon-14 atoms,

which occur in a fixed proportion in the atmosphere,

are absorbed by living plants.

But when the plants die,

the carbon-14 atoms inside them decrease.

The rate is such that they will decrease

by approximately half every 5,730 years.

So if carbon-14 is present in an object,

and can be assessed, the object can be dated.

The white birchbark from the sword hilts

was found to be 3,600 years old.

This meant that the Nebra sky disc itself

dated back some three and a half millenia

to 1600 B.C.

3,600 years ago,

the great river-based civilizations of Egypt,

Mesopotamia, and the Indus, were all flourishing.

In Europe, no high-level civilization existed

at the time.

Or so it was thought.

It was, in Europe, the end of the Stone Age

and the beginning of the Bronze Age.

The disc must have been created

by people who had only just acquired

metal-working technology.

The researchers proceeded with restoration

of the Nebra sky disc.

This CT scan reveals the disc's insides.

The darker portions indicate corrosion.

The patina acted as a protective film,

so the metal is in relatively good shape.

One area requiring restoration

was the inlaid gold circle,

a portion of which had ripped away.

Fortunately, the missing bit was discovered

at the excavation site,

so experts were able to put it back in place.

Analysis of the bronze also enabled them

to visualize its pre-tarnished appearance.

When the bronze in the disc was new,

it had a coppery color.

The gold decorations would not have stood out much.

But what experts realized was that the bronze

had then been subjected to special processing.

Researchers turned back the clock

on 3,600 years to visualize the original appearance

of the finished Nebra sky disc.

On a dark disc, golden emblems of the moon and stars

shone brightly.

The disc beautifully captured key figures

of the night sky.

Over time, it also became apparent

that these were no mere decorations.

They were a way of encoding astronomical knowledge.

Saxony-Anhalt,

the German state in which the Nebra sky disc

was discovered, maintains a museum for prehistory

in the city of Halle.

Artifacts from ancient Europe are on display here.

Since restoration, the Nebra sky disc has been kept here

under strict security.

It has been displayed in its own exhibition space.

Many people have viewed it.

In fact, as soon as it went on public display,

the museum was inundated with visitors

wanting a glimpse.

Harald Meller, the archaeologist who was so instrumental

in recovering the bronze disc,

suspected that the moon and star emblems

were not just design elements.

So Meller asked the opinion

of astronomer Wolfhard Schlosser.

As an expert on ancient astronomy,

it took Schlosser only one look

to note a feature of great interest.

What caught Schlosser's attention

was the broad, gold arc on the rim

and the traces of a similar arc

on the opposite side of the disc.

Once, there had been gold arcs on both sides.

If diagonals are extended

toward the disc's center from the tips

of the arc on the left,

they meet at an angle of 82 degrees.

Schlosser believed this to be significant.

The Nebra sky disc was found at the top

of a densely forested hill called Mittelberg.

On its summit, a tall tower has been erected

to commemorate the find.

A curved disc in the ground beyond it

marks the excavation site proper.

The hole was filled with resin

and is now well protected

by this polished, stainless steel disc.

Schlosser thought that the location on this summit

would explain the 82 degree angle on the sky disc.

He ascertained the arc traced by the sun

during the winter and summer solstices,

as seen from the summit of Mittelberg.

At Nebra's high latitude,

the sun's path on the winter solstice is low

and the day is short.

On the summer solstice, however,

the sun's path is high.

From sunrise to sunset, the day lasts for 16 hours.

The endpoints of the two arcs on the sky disc,

thought Schlosser, might represent sunrise and sunset

for the summer and winter solstices.

And indeed the actual angles,

measured with a compass, are 82 degrees.

The same as the sky disc.

The Nebra sky disc thus indicated

the winter and summer solstices at Mittelberg.

It is the world's most ancient astronomical disc.

Ancient peoples used the solstices

as seasonal markers.

Other ruins were found near Nebra,

serving a similar purpose.

Surrounded by stout trees,

this is known as the Goseck circle.

The circle has been dated back 6,600 years.

That's three millennia older than the Nebra sky disc.

The timber palisades are a recreation,

but gaps in them point precisely to the endpoints

of the sun's path on the winter and summer solstices.

Standing in the center of the circle,

one can foretell the advent of the seasons.

From the air, it is clear

that the Goseck circle is as round

as the Nebra sky disc.

One also notes an 82 degree angle between the lines,

connecting the endpoints of the sun's path

on the two solstices, just like the Nebra sky disc.

It was a gigantic set of guideposts to the seasons,

transformed 3,000 years later into the mobile

Nebra sky disc.

A star chart, dramatically reduced in size.

With that portability came new possibilities.

The Nebra sky disc

is the oldest celestial chart in the world

and its apparently simple design

concealed a high level of knowledge.

Ralph Hansen examined the sky disc.

Hansen was then at the Institute for History of Science,

Mathematics, and Technology at the University of Hamburg.

He delved into the mystery of the crescent moon

pictured on the sky disc.

In fulfilling that calendrical role,

Hansen says, the sky disc's incorporation

of a full moon and a crescent moon

is of great significance.

The phases of the moon had been used calendrically

since time immemorial.

The moon completes one revolution around the earth

in just under a month.

For that reason, its shape as seen from Earth,

changes periodically.

Since the moon could be seen by everybody,

it was convenient to base a common calendar on it.

The earth completes one circuit

around the sun every 365 days.

But it takes 29.5 days to go from new moon

to full moon and the on to the next new moon.

So 12 full lunar months only add up

to 354 solar days.

That's 11 days short of a solar year.

By the end of the next year,

the discrepancy would be 22 days.

After three years, it would be a 33-day deficit,

about a whole month.

The discrepancy between the lunar calendar

and the actual seasons would only increase.

Reconciling the solar and lunar periods

required inserting an intercalary month

about once every three years.

Hansen discovered that knowledge

of these intercalary months

was encoded in the symbology of the sky disc.

There were 32 stars scattered over the surface

of the sky disc.

He noticed in particular a unique cluster

of seven stars, hardly a random grouping.

Ancient drawings have been discovered elsewhere

with just such a cluster of seven stars.

They are the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades.

In the northern hemisphere,

the Pleiades star cluster shines most visibly

in winter, in the constellation Taurus.

With the naked eye, one can detect

only five to seven stars,

but actually there are dozens of young stars

in the cluster.

In Nebra, it is visible from autumn to spring.

The sky disc used concrete symbols

based on observation, such as the Pleiades

and a crescent moon.

The positions of the actual celestial objects in the sky

indicated when to interpolate intercalary months.

Starting in October, the Pleiades rise

in the east after sundown, illuminating the night sky

for half a year, until the following March.

During that period, the moon,

as it revolves around the earth,

approaches the Pleiades once a month.

As the earth revolves around the sun,

the location of that closest passage

between the moon and the Pleiades

changes from month to month.

The shape of the moon in that position

changes with it.

A full moon in October diminishing

to a crescent moon in March.

One thing that caught Hansen's attention

was that the crescent moon on the Nebra sky disc

is not the youngest visible moon.

It's fatter, closer to a four or five-day moon.

Starting in October, with the full moon near the Pleiades,

spring can be expected the month after

the thinnest crescent moon appears

in the same vicinity.

But the next year,

the crescent moon announcing the advent of spring

will be somewhat fatter.

And in the third year it will be

a substantial four or five-day crescent moon.

By the solar calendar, however,

the month will still be February.

Hansen's hypothesis is that the four

or five-day moon pictured on the sky disc

indicates that when a crescent moon of that thickness

approaches the Pleiades, an intercalary month

should be interpolated.

Babylon was a great center

of ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

A Babylonian cuneiform tablet

on the stars and constellations

discusses inserting an intercalary month

based on the proximity of the crescent moon

to the Pleiades.

The Babylonian tablet was written around 600 B.C.

The emblems of the Nebra sky disc

show a similar grasp of astronomical phenomena

and a similar calendrical sophistication

a millenium earlier.

There is no question that fabricating the disc

required both a knowledge of astronomy

and a high level of metalworking technology.

How were the people of Nebra able to produce

such an object 3,600 years ago?

Ernst Pernicka, who had analyzed the sky disc's patina,

also looked into the origins of its bronze.

Analyzing the alloy's constituent metals,

Pernicka and his staff identified

even the most minute quantities

of a range of substances.

The combination and proportions of those substances

act like a fingerprint to identify

the alloy's origins.

The result of chemical analysis of the copper

was a match not with copper obtainable locally,

near Nebra, but with copper mined in the middle

of the Austrian Alps.

From that copper source to Nebra

is 500 kilometers as the crow flies.

The sky disc's copper was a long-distance import.

This was an unexpected discovery.

As for the origin of the gold,

that produced another shock.

A survey was conducted by Gregor Borg

of the University of Halle - Wittenberg.

Gold was typically obtained back then

by panning in rivers rather than through the shaft mining

done to obtain copper.

Relying on old records and other data,

Borg sampled gold deposits and sediments

all over Europe.

But the gold in most such locations has,

by now, been exhausted.

Even samples are hard to come by.

The gold used in the Nebra sky disc

amounted to about 50 grams all together,

equivalent to just a few nuggets.

But even in those days,

it would have been extremely difficult to scrape together

so much of such a precious substance.

But none of the gold was a match.

Having almost run out of possibilities,

the research seemed to be coming to a dead end.

Six years later, Borg finally found some gold

with a similar chemical profile.

It was on the peninsula of Cornwall, in England.

That's more than 1,000 kilometers from Nebra.

The River Carnon flows through Cornwall

for about ten kilometers.

In the Bronze Age, it was widely known

as a gold-producing area.

The gold in the Nebra sky disc was specially imported

from this faraway location.

One of Cornwall's remarkable sights

is a strange rock arrangement on a moor.

It's a set of three circles made with giant stones.

They were used, it is thought,

to track the movements of the sun,

and thus to tell time and follow the seasons.

Perhaps by coincidence,

they date from very much the same period

as the Nebra sky disc, about 1500 B.C.

Why was Cornwall's gold taken across the ocean

to faraway Nebra?

And why were the disc's gold and copper

obtained from different sources?

Bernd Zich is an expert in ancient European history.

He tried to solve the mystery

of why the Nebra sky disc incorporated metals

from such disparate locations.

Apart from agricultural produce,

Nebra has one other major local industry.

This white mountain is a site

for mining potassium chloride, a kind of salt.

Long ago, the Nebra area had been under the sea.

For that reason, high quality salt was available

in abundance.

And in the Bronze Age,

salt was as vitally important as gold.

3,600 years ago, people got what they needed

by bartering.

Gold and copper were traded and re-traded,

making their way to Nebra.

These high-value metals were brought to Nebra

to be traded for high-quality salt

and other foodstuffs.

But transactions were not limited to things.

No doubt, knowledge was exchanged as well.

Certainly, astronomical knowledge

would have been highly prized

by an agricultural people.

The Nebra sky disc emerged when and where it did

thanks to ancient trading practices.

From England in the West,

to as far as Egypt in the south,

trade thrived in ancient Europe.

That trade gave birth to a flourishing civilization.

The Nebra sky disc constitutes proof

of this hitherto unknown civilization.

The sky disc was found just 10 centimeters

below the surface of the earth.

This is the grave

of one of the leaders of that era.

A number of precious items were buried

next to the body.

Sword blades, axe heads, and other items

were buried there in pairs.

Similar mortuary items were buried

next to the sky disc as well.

Two axes, two swords, and two spiral armlets.

The sky disc had not simply been buried in the ground,

it had been interred in ritual fashion

as if it had been some august personage.

It is also possible that some better sky disc

had been created, rendering this one obsolete.

Some scholars speculate that even an obsolete disc

could still have been offered up to the gods in gratitude,

but there has been no final answer here.

In June of 2013,

the Nebra sky disc was inscribed

on UNESCO's Memory of the World Registry

of documentary heritage objects.

Deciphering the code of its complex symbology continues.

That arc that so resembles a smile,

what does it signify?

And what about the total of 32 stars

pictured on the disc?

What do they mean?

3,600 years ago, the people gazing

at the Pleiades and the crescent moon

discovered marvelous laws of the cosmos.

Inscribed symbolically on this small disc,

that precious knowledge could be shared

by a broad group of people.

When the Nebra sky disc was buried,

it was lost to history.

But the knowledge it represents survived

and spread around the world.

That knowledge lives on even today,

transcending time.