In 1999, two men with metal detectors illegally dug into a hilltop in rural Germany and found something that would shake up the world of archaeology. It wasn't a chest of coins or a pile of weapons, though those were present too. Tarnished and flecked with gold, it was a bronze disc, about the size of a vinyl record. They didn’t know what they were holding. At first, no one else did either.
This disc, now called the Nebra Sky Disc, is thought to be the oldest known depiction of the cosmos ever found. You can think of it as the first star map of humanity, created over 3,600 years ago by people living long before writing existed in central Europe.
