In 1999 two illegal metal detectorists in a German forest hacked a strange bronze disc out of the ground, damaging its edge with a spade and selling it on the black market for 31,000 Deutschmarks. Three years later an archaeologist recovered it in a police sting in a Basel bar. This episode explores the Nebra Sky Disc, a 30-centimeter, 2.2-kilogram object from around 1800 to 1600 BC that shatters assumptions about the scientific sophistication of Bronze Age Europe.

We walk through the disc's four phases of creation, from the 32 gold stars and Pleiades cluster to the 82-degree solstice arcs matched to the latitude of the Mittelberg hill, the crescent moon that encodes a leap-month rule later found in Babylonian texts, and the solar boat that ties it to Egyptian and Norse mythology. We also trace its Cornish gold and tin, its link to the Bush ...