Ancient Artifacts Nominees

The records are sparse, but date back to antiquity – or at least give the appearance to. Within these ancient achievements lies the shrouded mystery of every Saturday afternoon matinee adventure flick. Well, maybe not every B movie, but a lot of them. Nonetheless, these nominees lend credence to Plato’s view, paraphrased here, that “man first turned his senses to the heavens.” Or was it Aristotle?

OK, so what, exactly, is “ancient”? Most people naturally tend to split things into “BC” and “AD.” Well, it’s hard to figure the Rome of Augustus, Tiberius, Nero and the rest of the Caesars as “modern,” so, let’s just say anything before the Fall of Rome (the city) in September 4, 476 AD when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed by Odoacer.

Final Nominations:

The following candidates were nominated under the Ancient Artifacts category. Highlighted candidates have a separate description page already posted to this site. To view any highlighted nominees, place your cursor anywhere over the text of the nominee and click (pop-ups must be enabled on your browser):

Antikythera mechanism
Babylonian Astronomy Records
Chinese Astronomy Records
Dropa Stones
Mayan Calendar
Nasca Lines
Nebra Sky Disk
Stonehenge
The Roman Calendar
The Number Zero

Not all the nominees made the top 100. Still, we’ve tried to include a short write-up on each of them. Any nominee that finished in the top 100 greatest images and imaginations in astronomy and space exploration will have its rank listed in the upper left hand corner of the specific page devoted to that nominee.