Unusual Corded Ware Culture burial discovered in Germany.

Archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology in Saxony-Anhalt, working on sites ahead of the planned construction of a power line project, have uncovered a burial associated with the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Corded Ware Culture near Gerstewitz in Burgenland district, according to a press release issued on 15 June 2026.

The burial, that of a man of about 25, was typical of the Corded Ware Culture in that he was placed in a crouched position lying on his left hand side and facing to the south (everyone was buried in this position and facing the same way, although women were always placed on their right sides while men were always placed on their left). 

The remains of a male individual excavated from a Chacolithic Corded Ware Culture burial near Gerstewitz in Saxony-Anhalt State, Germany. Christian Pabst/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology.

However, unlike other burials from the period, he was buried within a former kiln-pit, rather than beaneath a burial mound, as was typical of the Corded Ware Culture. Furthermore, his body seems to have slipped slightly from the original position in which he was placed, possibly due to his being placed on a layer of organic material which has since decayed.

This has led to suspicions that there may have been something irregular about the burial. The man appeared to have died as a result of damage to his skull, something which could indicate that he was a murder victim, or had been killed in battle (a group of chalcolithic tribesmen, having lost a battle, might conceivably feel the need to leave the area, leading to a burial being carried out in a hurry). 

There is also another possibility. While Human remains have never been found associated with a Corded Ware Culture kiln pit in the past, the remains of Horses and Dogs have been found in these settings. The assumption in those cases was that the Animals had been ritually sacrificed before being buried, raising the question as to whether the man buried in the Gerstewitz kiln pit had met the same fate.

An archaeologist examines the Gerstewitz kiln pit burial. Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

The Corded Ware Culture gains its name from the distinctive pottery which it produced, in which rope cords were used to mark the surface of pots. The Culture first appeared in Eastern Europe around 3000 BC, and may have migrated there from the Eurasian Steppes. Genetic studies of Corded Ware individuals have concluded that they were closely related to, if not directly descended from the Yamnaya people of that area. The Corded Ware people are thought to have been one of the first Indo-European groups to move into Europe, and at there peak they occupied much of north, central, and eastern Europe, as well as parts of Scandinavia and northern Italy, as well as parts of the Caucasus and Iran. 

Corded Ware pottery in the collection of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. Einsamer Schütze/Wikimedia Commons.

Like the Yamnaya people, the Corded Ware people kept both horses and cattle, consumed dairy products, and used wheeled vehicles, the first people in Europe to have done so. However, they were in many was culturally contiguous with the peoples who had lived in the area before, suggesting that they spread by intermixing with the local population as they introduced new technologies, rather than by conquest and driving the former occupants off the land.  The Corded Ware people were never really a single culture, but a series of linked cultures spread across a wide area. Over time these linked cultures evolved in different directions, and by about 2300 BC, had become distinctive enough that they are no longer referred to as Corded Ware Culture by archaeologists. 

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Does the Nebra Disc represent a Bronze Age supernova?

Discovered with a hoard of Bronze Aged weapons in 1999 by two metal-detectorists in a prehistoric enclosure in the Ziegelroda Forest, 60 km west of Leipzig in the German State of Saxony-Anhalt, and subsequently traded several times on the black market before coming to the notice of archaeologists, the Nebra Disc is now considered to be one of the oldest known depictions of celestial objects. 

The disc depicts a cluster of stars, which can be confidently identified as the Pleiades flanked by a disc interpreted as the Sun and a crescent interpreted as a waning Moon, against a starry background with a blue-green patina. Additional arcs are present on two edges of the disc, although these are now thought to have been added later. Organic material found with the disc has been carbon dated to 1600-2000 BC, while material adhered to one of the swords found with it has been dated to between 1600 and 1560 BC. This gives an estimated burial time for the object, although the disc is likely to be older. Its style of manufacture has been linked to the Unetice Culture, which was found in Central Europe between about 2300 and 1600 BC. 

X-ray fluorescence trace element analysis of the metals used in the disc has suggested that the copper used in its manufacture originated from  Bischofshofen in Austria, the gold of the outer crescents (thought to have been added later) probably came from the Carpathian Mountains, while the gold of the original stars and discs probably came from Cornwall. 

The disc was clearly a high value object, with considerable effort and resources going into its manufacture, and therefore is likely to have had specific meaning for its makers, but that meaning remains obscure to us today. The objects at its centre have clearly been chosen carefully, yet their conjunction is highly unlikely. A waning Moon would not occur close to a Sun-disc in nature; the Moon does occasionally pass close to, or even in front of, the Sun, but is always in the New Moon (invisible) phase, as all the phases of the Moon are driven by reflected sunlight. This has led to the conclusion that the selection of objects is purely symbolic in nature, not directly related to a specific observation.

In a paper published in the Journal of Anthropological and Archaeological Sciences on 24 March 2022, Rosario Gianluca Pizzone and Roberta Spartá of the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud at the Istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare, make the proposal that the large disc seen on the Nabra Disc does not in fact represent the Sun, but is instead a depiction of a supernova explosion.

The Nebra disc as it appears now (on display in Halle Museum of Prehistory). The Pleiades cluster shows up in the top part, amid the golden disc and the waning Moon. The solar arcs on the right and bottom of the picture were added in a post-construction phase (see text for details). Pizzone & Spartá (2022).

Pizzone and Spartá note that the large gold disc is depicted in a part of the sky (the Auriga-Taurus astersim) known to be very active in terms of stellar formation and supernova explosions (the two are connected, with the largest stars, which are the ones that undergo such explosions, having very short lives). This area contains a number of supernova remnants, and is home to the only historically recorded supernova explosion, which led to the formation of the Crab Nebula in 1054 and was recorded by Chinese scholars.

Armed with this knowledge, Pizzone and Spartá conducted a survey of the Auriga-Taurus asterism, looking for young supernova remnants which might be associated with the event depicted on the Nebra Disc. This survey uncovered five such young supernovae. The first of these, SH2 224, is estimated to be between 13 000 and 24 000 years old, and is located 4500 parsecs (1470 light years) from our Solar System. The second, SH2 221 (HB9) is estimated to be 4000-6600 years old and is roughly 800 parsecs (2600 light years) away. The third, Semeis 147, is thought to be 30 000-40 000 years old and is 1200-1500 parsecs (3900-4500 light years away). The fourth, the Crab Nebula, can be precisely dated at 966 years old, and is 2000 parsecs (6500 light years) away. The final object, IC443, is between 3000 and 30 000 years old, and located 1500 parsecs (4500 light years) from us.

Pizzone and Spartá observe that one of these supernovae, SH2 221 (HB9) has a lower age range which coincides roughly with the possible creation of the Nebra Disc. They estimate, from the size of this object and its estimated distance, that at its peak this explosion would have been as bright as the Full Moon, a striking event which would likely have been seen as being of great importance to any Bronze Age European observers. 

They further note that several stone carvings, of roughly the same age, in the Burzahom archaeological site in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, depict stick figures observing two light-emitting objects in the sky. The precise meaning of these has also been debated, with the objects possibly being the Sun and Moon or two stars, but could also conceivably represent a supernova explosion close in the sky to the Moon.

Photograph of a stone carving from Burzahom, and drawing of the same. Joglekar et al. (2007).

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'Hurricane' Niklas kills two in the UK and at least three in Germany.

Atlantic Storm Niklas, which has caused flooding and widespread disruption in the UK is reported to have reached hurricane force as it swept onto the European continent, with sustained winds in excess of  119 kilometers per hour (windspeeds recorded to be in excess of 119 kilometers per hour for periods of longer than a minute) reported in several parts of Germany. The storm is reported to have caused two fatalities in the UK, one in West Lothian and one in Nottinghamshire, as well as flooding in parts of England and Wales, disruption to rail services in England and Scotland, and loss of power to thousands of homes in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Environment Agency has reported the highest storm surge on the North Sea recorded since 1953.

Damage to a car in Norwich; fortunately it was not occupied at the time. ITV.

In Germany the storm is reported to have caused at least three further fatalities, with a man crushed by a falling wall near Magdeburg and more killed by a falling tree which struck their car in Rhineland-Palatinate. Rail services have been disrupted across much of Germany, and the main railway station in Munich was briefly evacuated after part of a glass ceiling collapsed. Germany has also suffered power outages, particularly in the southwest, and disruption to air traffic, with many flights cancelled due to unsafe conditions.

Damage to a train which struck a fallen tree in Lower Saxony. DPA.

The Netherlands have also suffered severe disruption to transport networks, with roads closed by fallen trees, cancellations of flights and rail journeys and a container ship running aground at Vlissingen. 

The MV Sealand Meteor which ran aground near Vlissingen in the Netherlands on 31 March 2015, while trying to make harbour in Antwerp. gCaptain.

Ocean storms form due to heating of air over the sea in tropical zones. As the air is heated the the air pressure drops and the air rises, causing new air to rush in from outside the forming storm zone. If this zone is sufficiently large, then it will be influenced by the Coriolis Effect, which loosely speaking means the winds closer to the equator will be faster than those further away, causing the storm to rotate, clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere.

Whilst the high winds associated these storms is extremely dangerous, the real danger from such storms is often the flooding. Each millibar drop in air pressure can lead to a 1 cm rise in sea level, and large storms can be accompanied by storm surges several meters high. This tends to be accompanied by high levels of rainfall, caused by water picked up by the storm while still at sea, which can lead to flooding, swollen rivers and landslides; which occur when waterlogged soils on hill slopes lose their cohesion and slump downwards, over whatever happens to be in their path.

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