QUICK FACTS
Name: Nebra Sky Disc
What it is: A bronze disc with gold accents
Where it is from: Nebra, Germany
When it was made: Circa 1800 to 1600 B.C.
The Nebra Sky Disc was discovered in an artifact hoard in 1999, when metal detectorists illegally excavated it from an ancient religious site on a hill near Nebra, a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. After police recovered the disc in 2002, archaeologists studied the unique object, revealing it's up to 3,800 years old and the world's oldest depiction of astronomical phenomena. (The next oldest is a star map on the ceiling of an ancient Egyptian tomb from about 3,500 years ago.)
