Felstone at Schköna in Dübener Heide: Photo: Ralf Bülow
By Ralf Bülow
Schköna (world-of-Bronze Age) - Since the end of May 2008 in the National Museum in Halle / Saale, the Sky Disc see Nebra "in a newly designed department and excited to legal public interest. In should be noted, however, that in the Astro Archaeology many other fascinating monuments there, such as stone circles, or - with a certain probability - the shell or Näpfchensteine. These are boulders were placed on the surface of groups of wells that are quite representations can be interpreted as a star. At least two such
boulders are located near the village in the Schköna Dübener Heath, a wooded area south of Wittenberg. In the local tradition, they are regarded as the King Stone and the stone devil. When she identified the early history cupstones Otto-Friedrich Gandhi on 3 November 1927. He has published his find but ten years later in the article "The discovery of two Näpfchensteine in Dübener Heide" in Issue 6 / 1937 the journal "Central German People's awareness - books for history and folklore.
The more interesting of the two fragments is the devil standing in the open stone of biotite granite, which rises about 1.50 meters from the ground up and is flattened slightly. This platform measures about 1.90 x 2 meters. Gandhi also wrote:
"The dishes are divided into two groups. Group I is located in the southwest of the platform and comprises 26 dish. The largest is 15 mm deep and 73 mm in diameter, the smallest is 30 mm deep and 36 mm in size. [...] Group II with 40 bowl spans in some crowded, some loose scattering the northeastern area. There is also between the bowl a 45 cm long and 15 mm deep half-moon groove. It provides for the viewer, if he stands on the southeast quarter näpfchenfreien of the stone, the increasing (!) Moon dar. The group II is the main dish 65 mm wide and 15 mm deep, the smallest 36 mm wide and 20-30 mm deep. "
is to be noted that the company known as half-moon groove structure is most likely of natural origin . An astronomical rock art could then be created that the "artist" took the groove as a starting feature, for which he grouped the wells as a star representations. arranged by finds from nearby hills and shallow graves Gandert the shells to the middle to late Bronze Age, which from 1600 to 1200 should correspond to BC (Lusatian culture). So that they would have incurred after the burial of the Nebra disk, the BC in 1600. happened.
would be desirable for both boulders a detailed overview of the distribution of individual wells to identify possible constellations. In his article of 1937 suggested Gandhi, "an official excavation in the near vicinity of the devil stone and Luth Only One", which was not done. In addition, the largely forgotten book by the astronomer Rolf Müller "The sky above the people of the Stone Age" (Berlin 1970) - to whom we owe the reference to the boulders - once all the friends of the Bronze Age astronomy can be studied.
A few more sentences to Otto-Friedrich Gandhi: He was the son of Heide and was Dübener 1898 eighth child of Pastor Emil Ludwig Gandert in Söllichau born, a neighbor of Schköna. Even as a child he was interested in the prehistory of the region and studied after the First World War, the subject in Berlin and Halle. In Berlin he met while studying as a trainee, the National Museums. His doctoral thesis in Halle / Saale treated Neolithic domestic dogs.
After graduation Gandhi was an assistant at the State Institute of Prehistory in Halle / Saale. From 1928 he headed the prehistoric department at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum Görlitz and then became director of the city of art and antiquity collections. From 1936 to 1945 he worked in Berlin as director of the prehistoric and natural history Department at Märkisches Museum.
took Following military service and captivity Gandert 1946 the management of the Museum of History and Natural History in Oldenburg, before 1951 as curator of the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History came. From 1958 to 1963 he was director there, in his time scale excavations of prehistoric fall of Berlin, important exhibitions and the collection of the Museum in the west wing of Charlottenburg Palace. Otto-Friedrich Gandhi died in 1983.
crescent groove of the devil stone. Photo: Ralf Bülow
wells of a tray with stone Schköna. Foto: Ralf Bülow
