Horizon (1964–…): Season 40, Episode 10 - Secrets of the Star Disc - full transcript

Deep inside this ancient mine

is the key to one of Europe's
biggest archaeological mysteries.

It's a story that begins with a robbery

from a burial site in the
dark heart of Europe.

It's hero is an archaeologist
with a taste for adventure.

There's even an international police hunt,

an undercover sting involving
agents from two countries.

At it's heart is one small piece of bronze.

It's the find of a lifetime, indeed
the find of several lifetimes.

What it's doing is making
people think for the first time,

a society that can make this is,



is complex, is sophisticated, it's intellectual.

This is the extraordinary tale

of how one small bronze disc

is rewriting the story of how civilisation

may have first come to ancient Europe.

This forest in Eastern Germany contains some
of Europe's oldest human settlements.

People have lived and died
here for thousands of years.

But now the tombs of these ancient dead

attract a modern breed to the forest,

grave robbers.

No one knows just how many
objects they have scavenged.

But archaeologists have
been powerless to prevent it.

When the Berlin Wall came down blackmarket
dealers flooded over from the west

and handed out metal detectors.



So now we've got the problem of people running
all over the forests looking for burial sites.

In 1999 three men came combing
through this forest with metal detectors.

After several hours they found themselves
in a small clearing near a hilltop.

Suddenly their detectors came alive.

With a pickaxe they tore in to the earth.

And after a brief struggle
the earth gave up a treasure

it had kept safe for over
three thousand years.

What these robbers didn't realise

was that they may have dug up one of the most
significant archaeological finds of the century.

For they had found an object

that would change how we think about one of
the most important times in all human history,

the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age dawned some
four and a half thousand years ago.

It was a time when the trappings
of true civilisation first appeared.

A full two and a half thousand
years before the birth of Christ

humankind took a giant stride forward.

At least so it was around the Mediterranean.

Here great architecture flourished.

If you think about the traditional
classical world in Mediterranean,

North Africa, the Near
East and Middle East.

You've got cultures which have
developed monumental architecture.

They developed sophisticated housing.

So urban civilisation is well established
in the Eastern Mediterranean.

With civilisation came
astronomy and philosophy.

And vitally they found ways
to record all this new knowledge

so that it could be preserved
for future generations.

By the Bronze Age writing is used
in every area of Egyptian culture.

It's used to record religious texts
in temples and in people's tombs.

But it's also being used by thinkers.

And every aspect of what it is to be human
today is talked about by the ancient Egyptians.

It's the means by which their ideas and values
can be passed on from generation to generation.

But in the dark heart of Northern Europe

it seemed to be an altogether different story.

Here there were no great cities,

no early forms of writing,

no signs of philosophy.

Instead crude lumps of rock were
arranged in to mystifying monuments.

They clearly meant something.

But knowledge of their true purpose has not survived.

What evidence archaeologists did find

pointed to an altogether
more primitive society.

Among these remains were spears

and axes,

and above all

swords.

And they have sealed Bronze
Age Europe's reputation

as a place of darkness and even savagery.

Swords appear, true swords appear

round about seventeen hundred BC,

over much of central and
north western Europe.

And we have thousands of swords.

A sword really only has one function.

Their design shows quite clearly

that they could not be
used for hunting animals

because you have to get so close
that the animal would run away.

And the only real purpose for them

is to be effective stabbing
or slashing weapons

against another person,
against a human being,

they're for killing men.

So this was the conventional
image for Bronze Age Europe.

An unsophisticated place
ruled by the sword.

Very different from the sophisticated
civilisations of Egypt and Greece,

but all that was before
the discovery of the disc.

In May 2001, Harald Meller had just
been appointed Head Archaeologist

at one of Europe's most important
Bronze Age museums,

the Museum of Halle in Eastern Germany.

One morning

a colleague took him aside and
showed him some photographs,

they would change his life.

These snapshots were taken by the gang who
had plundered the forest near his museum

just a couple of years earlier.

They showed a fantastic hoard of
what seemed to be bronze age treasure.

There were jewels, tools and swords.

But there was something else too,

a disc of exquisite design.

It was a thirty centimetre bronze
disc covered with golden decorations.

But the real sensation was that
the golden decorations formed a picture,

and this was something completely
unheard of from the Bronze Age.

It looked to me like the most significant
archaeological find I'd ever seen.

It was now that an extraordinary thought
formed in Harald Meller's mind.

By rights the disc should have
been safe in his museum.

Instead it was rumoured to be
circulating on the black market

with an asking price of a
quarter of a million pounds.

So he decided

he personally would track
down the criminals

and rescue this disc for science.

After a year of sleuthing

a meeting was arranged in one of
Europe's black market hot spots,

Basel in Switzerland.

Harald Meller thought he'd finally
tracked down the disc

and its sellers

to the Hilton Hotel.

But a third party was also
interested in this transaction,

the Swiss Police,

Meller had tipped them off.

When Dr Meller entered the Hilton Hotel

he was constantly observed.

We were observing entrances,

we knew who came in, who left.

We saw what Dr Meller was doing.

An elaborate sting was underway

and archaeologist Harald
Meller was the bait.

Thus inside the hotel I was
met by a blonde woman.

She asked me to accompany
her to a restaurant downstairs.

Sitting there was a
thin grey-haired man.

Meller asked to see the disc

but the couple seemed to be stalling.

I said I would have to verify
the authenticity of the disc,

could they please show me the disc.

He said nothing but produced
a sword from his bag,

and he handed me the sword and
asked me to analyse that instead.

Meller produced some chemicals
to test the bronze sword,

but the disc was still
nowhere to be seen,

and now he grew nervous.

I wasn't sure where the disc could be.

I didn't know, there was
nothing in the suitcase,

for all I knew maybe a gun.

But the disc was too big to be in there.

But finally the man opened
his coat and his shirt

and from underneath his shirt

produced something wrapped in a towel.

He opened the towel and inside was
the disc and he handed it to me.

In the room there were police officers

so we saw what was going on.

And with the disc now in Meller's
hands the police swooped.

They expect everything these two,

but they never expected the police.

The couple were arrested,

the man was handcuffed and
they were taken away.

And for the first time Harald
Meller really took in the disc.

There inlaid in gold was the reason
why it had been called magical.

An incredible picture of the sky,

with the sun, moon and
what seemed to be stars.

Nothing like this had
ever been seen before.

I was completely amazed and astounded,

and it was a very important
moment in my life.

Safely back in Harald Meller's
museum in Germany

the Nebra Sky disc, as
it had become known,

sent the archaeological
grapevine buzzing,

because it wasn't just a good find,

it was an incredible find.

And some archaeologists suspected
it was all just a little too incredible.

When I first heard about the Nebra Disc

I thought it was a joke,

indeed I thought it was a forgery.

Because it's such an extraordinary piece

that it wouldn't surprise any of us

that a clever forger had cooked this up in a
backroom and sold it for a lot of money.

So Dr Heinrich Wunderlich, the
Chief Scientist of the museum

was called in to determine the
authenticity of the Nebra Disc.

His laboratory is the first port of call

when Bronze Age artefacts are found.

He suspected verification would
depend on one thing alone,

corrosion.

Corrosion occurs when metal comes in
to contact with oxygen from the air.

The disc certainly looked corroded.

The green layer of corrosion
had formed on its surface.

But Dr Wunderlich knew

that that didn't mean
the disc was genuine.

The problem for archaeologists is that

corrosion can be faked.

Fake corrosion can fool all but
the most expert of specialists.

So now he began to analyse
the disc in forensic detail.

Corrosion forms in crystals.

The larger the crystals the
longer they had taken to form.

When I saw down the microscope

I saw structural which was like bubbles.

And these bubbles of corrosion were huge.

Much bigger than anything
a faker could produce.

This can not be made artificially.

You can't fake time.

While they couldn't give the exact age,

the giant corrosion crystals confirmed

that the disc was genuinely ancient.

It was a revelation that was about
to have even greater significance.

Because something was
about to be uncovered

that would transform the disc
from being merely a great find

in to a worldwide sensation.

It was all to do with the images on the disc.

The moon and the sun were clearly visible,

that in itself was stunning.

But between them were mystery dots,

what seemed to be stars.

So astronomer Professor Wolfhard Schlosser

was called in to try and identify them.

Were these just random images
or did they mean something more?

Could Bronze Age Europeans have been
advanced enough to have mapped the stars?

First Professor Schlosser isolated
the largest group of stars.

These were spread out in a
pattern across most of the disc.

Then he ran them against
the computer program

to see if they would match
with the stars in the night sky.

But there were no matches.

These stars it seemed
were just decorations.

The stars on the disc are only
meant to be a background,

a decoration in something like this.

Of course looking like the starry sky,

but nothing more, no consolations.

But then his attention turned
to the small cluster of seven stars

right between the sun and the moon.

It seemed to form a distinct
pattern like a constellation.

Professor Schlosser quickly realised

that of the constellations known
in the time of the Bronze Age

cluster resembled one above all others.

The Pleiades.

The Pleiades is very well known
in Greek, in Mesopotamia, in Russia,

it's a very important
star or star group.

And so the Pleiades are the
first candidate on our list.

The Pleiades is one of the most
mystery constellations in the cosmos.

With the benefit of telescopes we
now it consists of eleven main stars.

But several of these are barely
visible to the naked eye.

Usually only six or seven can be seen.

So Schlosser turned to the oldest images
of the Pleiades that he could find,

tablets and scrolls from the east.

And there he saw a wonder.

The Pleiades drawn
with just seven stars.

An image just like on the disc.

I nearly had tears in my eyes

because it came to as
a surprise to all of us

because we would imagine
such a find in Egypt

or Mesopotamia but
not in central Europe,

central Germany.

And so it was fantastic to all of us
and I nearly had tears in my eyes yes.

Mapping the stars

has been one of the great
achievements of humankind.

It is a task that has obsessed
scholars and scientists

for thousands of years.

But no one knows when or where

he first started to understand
their movement,

or write this knowledge down.

What is for sure

is that in the civilisations of the east

Egyptians and Babylonians

depicted their important
constellations as animals.

But realistic star images did not
appear until 1400 BC in Egypt.

These had always been considered
to be the oldest known to man.

But all that seemed
to have just changed.

Everything now hung on
the exact age of the disc.

Was it really older than
anything found before?

Could it really date
from before 1400 BC?

Because the disc was made of metal

they were unable to use the
most accurate technique,

carbon dating.

So they turned to another
method called associative dating.

The disc had been found in the same hole

and had the same soil
level as two swords.

Swords of a very particular design.

The idea was

that the age of these
swords and the disc

could be fixed.

By comparing them with similar objects

that had been successfully carbon dated.

So Meller examined the
swords in minute detail,

and then he compared those details with
every known type of Bronze Age sword.

Eventually he came across pictures of swords
that looked exactly like those from the hoard,

and the date was stunning.

Using the swords we could
securely date the disc to 1600 BC.

1600 BC,

it made the Nebra Sky disc the oldest
accurate picture of the night sky

in all history.

Two hundred years older than
the oldest images found in Egypt.

The disc is the earliest concrete astronomical
representation of the stars in the sky.

It's the first representation of
the universe in human history.

Suddenly an amazing
question began to loom.

Was early European man really
an astronomer more advanced

than his counterparts in the
great Mediterranean civilisations?

Or could there be an altogether
less dramatic explanation?

The disc contained not only
an image of the stars

but also a moon and an image of the sun.

And beneath it a curious golden curve.

And it was now that the
hard questions began.

It was Flemming Cowell who
threw a spanner in the works.

At the Danish National Museum

he has built up an incredible collection
of ancient images of ships,

carved in to rocks, all
over Northern Europe.

They're represented as curves,

often surrounded by tiny strokes.

But these are not images
of seafaring ships.

These ships we see carved
on the rocks of the north.

They are not ordinary ships
in our practical sense.

They are not sailing ships just
for fun or for transport.

No they are ships of
the religious world.

Flemming Kaul now made a vital connection
between these religious ship images

and the curve on the Nebra disc.

Both in the north and on the Nebra disc

we see the ship together with the sun,

helping the sun over the
hills or through the night,

through the underworld.

I believe that the ship on the
Nebra disc is the sun ship.

The sun ship

was one of the most potent and
enduring images of all pre-history.

And it originated not
in Europe but in Egypt.

Ancient Egyptians believed that
their most powerful deity Rah,

the sun god,

travelled through the
night sky on a boat

so that in the morning he
could be reborn at sunrise.

But what was an Egyptian idea doing
on this allegedly European disc?

There was now a new and disturbing
possibility for the archaeologists.

First there was the Pleiades,

an image known to be
important in the near East.

Now a sun ship,

a potent symbol from Egypt.

In other words perhaps the sky
disc itself wasn't European at all.

Perhaps the disc had simply been passed
by traders from the advanced East,

and had somehow wound up in the
hands of primitive Europeans.

The importance of the disc
now hung in the balance.

It was either the most sensational
find of the Bronze Age,

or more likely a trinket from the East.

Then along came Professor
Schlosser the astronomer,

he had noticed yet another
feature of the Nebra Sky disc.

As well as the sun ship there
was shallow curves on the side.

Again they seemed to
be very deliberate shapes.

I didn't know what they were
but I measured the angle

and it was eighty two degrees.

Eighty two degrees is
a very specific angle,

and it reminded him of
something that Europeans

had known since the earliest times.

For it is here that between
the high mid-summer sunset

and the low mid-winter sunset

the sun is seen to travel
around eighty degrees

along the horizon.

Since prehistoric times

ancient monuments have been aligned to mark
these solstices all across northern Europe.

But the precise angle
varies from place to place.

Further north it would be ninety degrees.

To the south just seventy degrees.

In just a tiny band of central Europe

would the suns journey measure
exactly eighty two degrees.

And as Professor Schlosser returned
to the site of Nebra, in Germany,

where the disc had been found,

he realised something

that was beyond coincidence.

That's where the sun sets mid-winter.

That's where the sun sets mid-summer.

The angle between both is
precisely eighty two degrees.

This angle responds to
the journey of the sun

between summer and winter

for this specific latitude
right here in Nebra.

In other words

if the golden horizon
bands did mark the solstices

then the disc really could
have been made in Europe,

right at the place where it was found.

But with so much at stake hard
scientific evidence was needed.

The archaeologists called in
Professor Ernst Pernicka.

He tests ancient metal to discover
where it has come from.

He had long nurtured doubts
of the origins of the disc.

I knew scientifically it was unique,

it was very interesting,

it was a sensation.

But when Harald Meller
and I myself sat together

we thought about various
aspects of the disc,

like the boat.

The questions come by themselves,

of course you want to know if
the disc came as a souvenir

from the Mediterranean.

But to know this it is important to
know where the metal comes from.

So Pernicka's task was to determine if
the disc was actually made from European

or Mediterranean metal ore.

Five hundreds metres inside this
mountain, deep in the Austrian Alps,

an expert guide eventually led him to
the remains of Bronze Age copper mines.

It is important to try and
get as, come as close to

to the spots, to the locations where the
ancient miners actually obtained their ore.

This is, this is the material that we can compare
with the copper that was found in Nebra.

But would this metal match
the metal of the Star disc?

Back in Professor Pernicka's lab

the origins of the Nebra disc

could finally be revealed
by scientific analysis.

Copper contains a unique fingerprint
by which it can be identified.

This fingerprint is based on
something called lead isotopes.

These are radioactive atoms

and they vary from location to
location around the world.

Professor Pernicka now
used a mass spectrometer

to identify the different
fingerprints for ores

from the Mediterranean and Europe.

He then had to compare them
with a tiny chip from the disc.

First he registered the fingerprint
of the Mediterranean copper.

The Aegean would plot here,
and Cyprus would plot here.

Then he marked where the fingerprint
of the copper from the Alps came out.

The question is where
does the Nebra disc plot,

does it plot here or here?

And the result is it plots right up here.

The fingerprint of the Sky disc

was the same as the
fingerprint of the metal

from the very heart of Europe.

These deposits here

can not have provided the
copper here for this disc.

This is hundred percent sure.

There was now no doubt,

this ancient image of
the stars was European.

It seemed that in some ways
European Bronze Age man

really was as sophisticated as the
civilisations of Egypt and the East.

But now they had to figure out

what did the disc mean to those
Europeans who had made it?

Professor Miranda Aldhouse Green
thought she had the answer.

An expert in Bronze Age
religions, her starting point

was that in those ancient times most
pictures weren't for decoration alone.

They had a meaning,

often a sacred meaning.

And when she looked at the disc

she gradually began to
piece together a mosaic

of religious symbolism.

As we began to put the thing
together it gets better and better.

First there was the sun,

worshipped at Stonehenge
and all across Europe

as the bringer of life.

The sun is absolutely central to
northern European Bronze Age religion.

There's a clear connection
between the sun and life.

If the sun disappears
then life comes to an end.

The next piece in the
jigsaw, a crescent moon.

The moon had been associated
with cults from Germany to Scotland.

It was used as a symbol to
mark the passage of time.

Time is something very
inexplicable in the past.

And if you can control time
and if you understand time

then you are a powerful,
a powerful human being.

And then of course there
was the horizon band

marking the sun's sacred
solstices in central Europe.

We can see that what is represented

is something which marks the
summer and the little solstices

at sunrise and sunset.

So an immensely complex
picture is beginning to build up.

Alongside all these symbols
from north and central Europe

there was also the sun boat,

found as far away as Egypt.

We have mythologies from this period

which tell us that the
sun during the night

travelled by means of a solar boat.

And lastly of course
there were the stars.

Perhaps the most spectacular thing to see

is the final piece in the jigsaw.

And these are the Pleiades.

The Pleiades was important in the ancient
civilisations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Greece.

It appeared in March

and disappeared in October,

vital dates for Bronze Age farmers.

We know from Greek writers that the Pleiades
were used as an agricultural marker,

so that farmers knew when they
should do certain agricultural activities.

So what the Nebra disc
does is to tell people

not only the right time to do it

but it is the blessed time to do it.

The sun, the moon, solstices,
a sun ship, the Pleiades,

five great religious themes.

All had been glimpsed
before in isolation

or in ones or twos,

spread out across Europe
and the Middle East.

But now it seemed that
the makers of the disc

had them all together
for the very first time.

Seeing them all together,
that's the important thing,

I mean that was what was
so mind blowing for me.

You've got all together the
sun and the moon and that,

that by itself would have
been exciting enough.

But not only that but you've got symbol
upon symbol piling on to this disc.

In the dark heart of Europe

an area traditionally seen
as primitive and uncivilised,

three thousand six hundred years ago

it seems that a complex
religion had taken root.

Drawing on influences from
across the known world.

These symbols are all part of a
complex European wide belief system.

Whereby people looked at the
heavens, worshipped them,

worshipped the sun,
worshipped the moon,

aligned their monuments on
the sunrise or the moonrise.

And because Nebra has brought
all these symbols together

it tells us for the first time perhaps

what people were really seeing,
perceiving and believing.

It's not too presumptuous
to make a comparison

between this disc and a biblical
text, the Old Testament.

In a way the Nebra disc is a visible
of that version of that kind

of encoded sacred message
that we find in the bible.

So this was the great revelation
of the Nebra Sky disc,

it was a bible.

Bronze Age European man

had been able to codify
his entire religious belief

in a simple portable form.

This could not have been the work
of a primitive uncivilised people.

We're dealing with people
who had tremendous ability,

not only a technological skill,

but also immense intellectual ability.

They were able to conceive of their world,

they were able to represent it.

There is tremendous imagination here,

and there is an ability to encode
information and beliefs

and pass them down from
generation to generation.

Here in the supposed
dark heart of Europe

something profound and
complex was happening

three thousand five hundred years ago:

civilisation was dawning.