In 1999, two men went hunting for buried treasure in the Seigelroda Forest in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany near a town called Nebra. Though they didn’t find traditional treasure, their metal detectors led the unlicensed artifact hunters to an equally unbelievable find: a collection of two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel, bracelet fragments, and, according to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, “one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century.”
That find was the Nebra sky disk, a bronze disk with a blue-green patina and inlaid gold shapes. These symbols appear to be a full moon (or possibly sun), a crescent moon, and stars, including a cluster that likely represents Pleiades. That might not seem so remarkable, but the Bronze Age artifact has since been dated to 1600 B.C. and is the oldest-known depiction of cosmic objects in all of human history, as well as the first known portable astronomical instrument.
via Mental Floss
