from Hacker News

Archaeometallurgical investigation of the Nebra Sky Disc

by Archelaos on 11/29/24, 4:12 PM with 18 comments

• by optimalsolver on 11/30/24, 9:47 AM

  Would you have deduced that stars are distant suns if you'd lived in the ancient world?

  Apparently the only pre-modern people (i.e. pre-Giordano Bruno) recorded as making the claim were Anaxagoras, and Aristarchus of Samos, but their ideas were completely rejected by contemporaries.

  In retrospect, it just seems so blindingly obvious that I'm tempted to believe that I too would have seen through the Aristotelean BS. But surely there must be aspects of reality that will seem similarly obvious to future generations, and yet I don't feel any insights coming on.

  I should say, Aristarchus is the ideal of maximizing information from minimal data:

  >Aristarchus of Samos (Samos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea) lived from about 310 to 230 BC, about 2250 years ago. He measured the size and distance of the Sun and, though his observations were inaccurate, found that the Sun is much larger than the Earth. Aristarchus then suggested that the small Earth orbits around the big Sun rather than the other way around, and he also suspected that stars were nothing but distant suns, but his ideas were rejected and later forgotten, and he, too, was threatened for suggesting such things

  http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsunasstar.html

• by gdjskshh on 11/30/24, 4:00 PM

  > five-phase reconstruction of the development of the imagery on the disc seems to be the likeliest sequence for the disc’s development. In the earliest version, an elaborately encoded image reflects sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In subsequent stages this was forgotten and replaced by traditional knowledge, which was focused on the interaction of the heavenly bodies and the horizon; and finally, this reduced knowledge gave way to mythology

  It's interesting that the oldest part of the artifact has the most advanced astronomical information.

• by oezi on 11/30/24, 10:48 PM

  Definitely one of the most awe-inspiring museum visits for me in Germany.

  https://www.himmelsscheibe-erleben.de/

• by gedy on 11/30/24, 6:38 PM

  > The state of Saxony-Anhalt registered the disc as a trademark, which resulted in two lawsuits. In 2003, Saxony-Anhalt successfully sued the city of Querfurt for depicting the disc design on souvenirs. Saxony-Anhalt also successfully sued the publishing houses Piper and Heyne over an abstract depiction of the disc on book covers.

  > The defenders argued that as a cult object, the disc had already been "published" approximately 3,500 years earlier in the Bronze Age and that consequently, all protection of intellectual property associated with it has long expired.

  This is really silly, and disappointed if this is valid under DE/EU law. This is our shared history, not a trademark

• by JoeAltmaier on 11/30/24, 7:41 PM

  A modern person interprets this as a sky map. But it some round and cresent shapes on a field of dots. Not sure they drew the sky like that in the Bronze age? What evidence is there, that it's supposed to represent the sky?

  The stars are no evidence. A bunch of dots can be stretched to fit any star configuration you please.

  And there are way too many crescents. What, did we have three moons back then? And none of them are shaped anything like the actual moon looks at any time.

  Hm.

• by theginger on 11/30/24, 10:13 AM

  Archaeometallurgical, If we allow words with 94 bits of entropy why do we need some words with 3 or 4 different different meanings?