![]() The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century AD Roman copy of a Hellenistic era Greek statue depicting the Titan Atlas holding the celestial sphere on his shoulder. The oldest Chinese graphical representation of the night sky is a lacquerware box from the 5th-century BC Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, although this depiction shows the positions of the Chinese constellations by name and does not show individual stars. The oldest records of Chinese astronomy date to the Warring States period (476–221 BC), but the earliest preserved Chinese star catalogues of astronomers Shi Shen and Gan De are found in the 2nd-century BC Shiji by the Western Han historian Sima Qian. The earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period ( ca. The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC. The Nebra sky disk, a 30 cm wide bronze disk dated to 1600 BC, bears gold symbols generally interpreted as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, several stars including the Pleiades cluster and possibly the Milky Way. Ī star chart drawn 5000 years ago by the Indians in Kashmir, which also depict a supernova for the first time in human history. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a pattern representing the Pleiades just above it. Īnother star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion cave ( fr). Rappenglueck also discovered a drawing of the Northern Crown constellation in the cave of El Castillo (North of Spain), made in the same period as the Lascaux chart. He also suggested a panel in the same caves depicting a charging bison, a man with a bird's head and the head of a bird on top of a piece of wood, together may depict the Summer Triangle, which at the time was a circumpolar formation. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. German researcher Dr Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich, has suggested that drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France could be a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. ![]() This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion, although it could not be confirmed and could also be a pregnancy chart. The oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk, drawn by early people from Asia who moved into Europe, that was discovered in Germany in 1979. This collection is Made in Australia under licence from The British Library.Farnese Atlas at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples Prehistory Ī variety of archaeological sites and artifacts found are thought to indicate ancient made star charts. Read more at our blog or visit the International Dunhuang Project page that has fully analysed the manuscript and others found in the cave. ![]() It shows a complete representation of the sky above China with over 1300 stars named and accurately presented. Found among them, was a manuscript containing the oldest star atlas known today from any civilisation, likely dating as far back as the year 700 A.D. This discovery has been compared with Tutankhamen’s tomb and even the Dead Sea Scrolls. When the room, (which has now become known as the Dunhuang Library) was finally opened in the year 1900, it was hailed as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. Within this chamber was over 14 cubic meters of bundled manuscripts from the Tang Dynasty. They sat there, hidden from the world for nine hundred years. Somebody, we don’t know who, sealed a cave just outside of town. The story of the manuscript is like something out of a movie – A little more than 1000 years ago in a small oasis town named “Dunhuang.” A frontier garrison of the silk road on the edge of the Gobi Desert in China. ![]() Welcome the the Dunhuang Star Chart Restoration Project – Our ultimate goal is to reproduce the entire 3.5 metre long manuscript, but until that goal is complete we are releasing the individual months as a poster series.
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