Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (31 page)

Some have pointed to the presence
of the Pleiades star cluster on the disc
as further evidence of Bronze Age astronomical knowledge. Although
nowadays there are only six stars in
the Pleiades visible to the naked eye,
in the Bronze Age one of the stars may
have been much brighter, thus accounting not only for the depiction of
seven stars on the disc, but also for the
ancient Greek name for the cluster:
the Seven Sisters. The Pleiades was
an important constellation for many
ancient civilizations, including those
of Mesopotamia and Greece. The constellation would have appeared in
their skies in the autumn, showing that
it was time to start bringing in the
harvest, and disappeared in the
spring, indicating the time for planting crops. This evidence for the importance of the disc in connection with
prehistoric agriculture may mean that
the (third) golden arc underneath the
crescent moon and golden disc represents a harvest sickle.

Others have suggested that the
disc actually represents the daytime
sky and that the unexplained arc depicts a rainbow. But the majority of
researchers believe this third arc to
be a sun ship. There are depictions of
a disc in a ship from Bronze Age
Scandinavia, and a Danish artifact dating to the 15th or 14th century B.C., the
Trundholm Sun Chariot, depicting a
horse drawing the sun in a chariot. But
the main source of the symbol and the

ancient belief that a ship carried the
sun across the night sky from the Western to Eastern horizon is Egypt. Their
belief was that Rah, the Sun God and
their most potent deity, journeyed
through the night sky on a ship in order that in the morning, at sunrise, he
could be reborn. If the golden arc at
the bottom of the Nebra Disk does in
fact represent a sun ship traveling
across the night sky, then it will be the
first evidence of such a belief in central Europe.

There is further proof of prehistoric celestial knowledge in the area,
a mere 15 miles distant from where the
Nebra Disc was discovered. Lying in a
wheat field near the town of Goseck,
and first identified from aerial photographs, is the remains of what is
thought to be Europe's oldest observatory. Germany's Stonehenge, as it
has become known, consists of a huge
a huge circle, 246 feet in diameter, and
was built by the earliest farming communities in the area around 4900 B.C.
Originally, the site consisted of four
concentric circles, a mound, a ditch,
and two wooden palisades about the
height of a person. Within the palisades were three sets of gates, facing
southeast, southwest, and north, respectively. The two southern gates
marked the sunrise and sunset at the
winter solstice. At the the winter solstice, watchers at the center of the
circles would have witnessed the sun
rise and set through the southeast and
southwest gates. It is surely safe to
assume that if these southern gates
marked the sunrise and sunset at the
winter and summer solstice, then the
inhabitants of Goseck were able to accurately determine the course of the
sun in its journey across the sky. In fact, the angle between the two solstice
gates in the Goseck circle corresponds
with the angle between the gilded arcs
on the rim of the Nebra Disk. Although
the Nebra Disk was created 2,400 years
later than the Goseck site, Professor
Wolfhard Schlosser believes there may
be some connection between the two
in the astronomical knowledge they
both display. Schlosser has even suggested that the details on the disc were
based on previous astrological observations, possibly made at the primitive
observatory at Goseck.

In late 2004, the Nebra Disc became
enmeshed in controversy. German archaeologist Professor Peter Schauer,
of Regensburg University, claimed that
the disc was a modern fake, and any
idea that it was a Bronze Age map of
the heavens was "a piece of fantasy."
Professor Schauer stated that the supposedly Bronze Age green patina on
the artifact had probably been artificially created in a workshop "using
acid, urine, and a blowtorch" and was
not ancient at all. The holes around the
edge of the disc, he insisted, were too
perfect to be ancient, and must have
been made by a relatively modern machine. His own conclusion was that the
object was a 19th century Siberian
Shaman's drum. However, it later
emerged that Schauer had never studied the artifact himself prior to making his claim, nor did he publish any of
his theories in a peer-reviewed journal.
But Schauer's objections still shocked
the German archaeological community
and raised some important questions
about the authenticity of the disc. The
first was that, because of the circumstances of its discovery, the Nebra Disc
had no secure archaeological context.
Thus, it was extremely difficult to date

accurately, especially as there was
nothing similar with which to compare
it. The dating that was done on the
object depended upon the typological
dating of the Bronze Age weapons that
had been offered for sale with it, and
were supposed to be from the same
site. These axes and swords were
dated to the middle of the second millennium B.C.

Solid evidence for the antiquity of
the disc was provided by the Halle Institute for Archaeological Research in
Germany. The Institute submitted the
artifact to an exhaustive series of tests
that confirm its authenticity. For example, the copper used on the disc has
been traced to a Bronze Age mine in
the Austrian Alps. Tests also discovered that a practically unique mixture
of hard crystal malachite covers the
artifact. In addition to this, microphotography of the corrosion on the
disc has also produced images that
proved that it was a genuinely ancient
artifact, and could not be have been
produced as a fake.

The latest examinations of the disc,
by a group of German scholars in early
2006, came to the conclusion that it was
indeed genuine, and had functioned as
a complex astronomical clock for the
synchronization of solar and lunar calendars. The Nebra Sky Disc is thus the
earliest known guide to the heavens,
and certainly, along with the Goseck
site, the first examples of detailed astronomical knowledge in Europe. But
perhaps that is not the end of the
story. Wolfhard Schlosser believes,
intriguingly, that the disc (currently
valued at $11.2 million) was one of a
pair, and that the other is still out
there waiting to be found.

A painting by the American artist Edward Hicks (1780-1849)
showing Noah's Ark.

The story of Noah's Ark and the
great flood is found in the book of Genesis in the Bible. According to the
story, when God saw the corruption in
the world, he decided to bring floodwaters to destroy His creation. Of all
human life, only the righteous Noah
and his family would be allowed to
survive. God instructed Noah to construct a huge ark, large enough so that
two of every living species on the
planet could be accommodated within
it. It is said that the rains sent by God

lashed the earth for 40 days and 40
nights, until the entire land surface of
the planet was submerged. When the
rains finally abated and the floodwaters began to recede, Noah's ark
came to ground in the area of Mount
Ararat (in modern Turkey). Noah sent
out a dove to see if there was anywhere
for it to land, but the dove returned.
After seven more days, Noah sent it
out again, and this time it returned
carrying an olive leaf. Waiting another
week, the dove was again sent out, and did not return. Noah now knew
there was dry land and it was time to
leave the ship. After disembarking,
Noah offered sacrifice. God approved,
and then concluded a covenant with
Noah, in which He agreed to never
again to flood the Earth because of the
sins of mankind, symbolizing his promise with a rainbow in the sky.

The ark itself, according to the
Bible, was akin to a huge barge, probably constructed of cypress wood and
sealed with bitumen to make it watertight. Genesis only mentions one window, though perhaps there would have
been more, and a door set in the side
of the ark; the vessel contained a number of rooms spread over three interior decks. The dimensions of the ark
were roughly 450 feet in length, 75 feet
in width, and 45 feet in height; proportions making it the largest seagoing ship prior to the 20th century,
with a displacement similar to that of
the Titanic. Its length surpasses that
of any other wooden vessel ever built.
A much debated question is whether
such a ship could possibly have carried
two specimens of every species of animal, not to mention how Noah and his
family could have collected them all
in the first place. The accepted theory
today is that if the Noah's Ark story is
to be taken literally, then the vessel
may have contained kinds instead of
species-so rather than every type
from the cat family (lions, tigers, and
leopards), there were perhaps a male
and female representing the whole cat
group.

The search for the remains of the
elusive ark has been going on for perhaps 2,000 years, and such a find, were
it ever made, would be extraordinary

proof for the literal reality of the Bible.
Genesis 8:4 states that the ark came
to rest on "the mountains of Ararat,"
which indicates not a particular mountain, but a region. Unfortunately, in
the modern era the search for the ark,
or arkaeology as it is sometimes
called, is peppered with dubious research and outright hoaxes. One of the
first claims to have seen the ark in the
20th century came from French explorer Fernand Navarra. In 1955,
Navarra apparently climbed more
than 2.5 miles up Ararat and discovered hand-hewn wood in a wall of ice.
He claimed he was able to remove a
sample of the wood, which he brought
back down with him. In a further expedition in 1969 he found more wood.
The samples of wood from the two expeditions were later submitted to six
different laboratories and produced
dates from 1,190 to 1,690 years ago. But
those dates are far too recent to have
any connection with Noah's Ark, even
if the material was genuinely found on
Ararat. There are, however, serious
reasons to doubt this. Navarra has
specified several different locations
where he was supposed to have discovered the wood, and it has also been
suggested, by one of his expedition
members and his guides, that he actually bought the wood from natives in
town and took it up the mountain himself. Ararat's position on the extremely
sensitive Turkish/Soviet (now Armenian) border has limited the number
of modern ark-hunting expeditions,
although it is becoming increasingly
likely that there is little to find up
there anyway. Beginning in 1973,
former NASA astronaut James Irwin
led several expeditions to Mount Ararat, but, as with scores of climbers
and explorers before and since, failed
to find any evidence of the ark. There
is, however, another possibility for the
final resting place of the Noah's Ark.
The site lies about 19 miles south of
the Greater Ararat summit, near the
city of Dogubayazit, just over 1.8 miles
north of the Iranian border. An aerial
photograph taken by a Turkish Air
Force pilot in 1959 (while on a NATO
mapping mission) revealed a canoe or
boat-shaped object sticking out of the
rock, 1.19 miles up in the Akyayla
mountain region. However, a subsequent expedition to the site in 1960,
which included the dynamiting of one
side of the supposed ark, discovered
no persuasive evidence that the object
was not a naturally formed feature.
Despite these negative conclusions,
adventurer and nurse anaesthetist
Ron Wyatt gained a huge amount of
publicity in the 1980s and 1990s when
he claimed that this geological feature
was in fact the true ark. During his
first trip to the summit, he managed
to discover an impressive-sounding
array of artifacts. Among these were
stone sea anchors marked with crosses
(which he believed were used by Noah
to steer the great vessel), iron rivets,
washers, and petrified timber belonging to the ark.