The Golden Hats: The Greatest Enigma of the European Bronze Age.

In the world of archaeology various curious artifacts have been found and today we're going to talk about some of them. Chatting with a friend in Finland he told me about some interesting ancient relics so I decided to investigate. These are objects made of gold which are little known and extremely interesting. The Golden Hats also known in German as Goldhut. What you see in this picture are the four conical gold hats that date back to the Bronze Age which is more than 1400 years before Christ. They are truly exceptional as only these four complete or partially preserved examples are known, all of them from Western and Central Europe. But where exactly were these objects found? Who made them and how? What was their purpose? Well, let's find out together in this video. Before we continue, please don't forget to like the video, subscribe to this channel and share it with your friends. Thanks! These super cool artifacts were made from hammered gold sheets. They have decorations made with punches and decorative bands. The gold sheet is very thin, ranging from 0.25 to 0.8 millimeters thick. They were made without seams from a single sheet and decorated using the repousse technique. They feature repeated patterns like concentric circles, dots, rosettes, crescent moons and other symbols, all arranged in horizontal bands that go around the piece. It's thought they were ritual insignias, maybe connected to the sun or even tools for telling time, like very complex calendars. Of the four known ones, three were found during digs, two in southern Germany and one in France. The fourth, called the Berlin Gold Hat, showed up on the antiques market and was bought by a museum. Now, let's get to know each of them. Come with me. The Schifferstadt Hat, or Schifferstadter Goldhut, was found in 1835 near Schifferstadt in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is believed to be the oldest of its kind. It is sometimes said to be from around the year 1400 or 1300 BC. Today it is cared for in the Historisches Museum der Pfalz in Speyer. The Aventon Cone, or Cone d'Aventon, was found in 1844 in Aventon near Poitiers, France. A part is missing, probably the brim, and what remains of it is about 55 centimetres high. You can see it in the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Esselstorff Buch Goldcone, or Hat, was found in 1953 in Bavaria, between Esselstorff and Buch. It is the tallest that has been reassembled, with a height of about 72 to 88 centimetres, depending on how it was assembled, and it weighs very little for its size, about 300 grams. It is in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. The Berlin Gold Hat, or Berliner Goldhut, is the best preserved in its form. It appeared in an antique market in 1996. By comparison with other things, it is believed to be from the end of the Bronze Age, between the year 1000 and 800 BC. But since it is not precisely known where it was found, we cannot be super sure of its exact date. It was bought by the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin, which is in the Neues Museum. Where these four pieces were found, and that they exist, is very well documented in museum books and in studies on the subject. You might be wondering if the material is pure gold. Well, we can tell you that these pieces are actually gold alloys mixed with silver and tiny bits of copper or tin. For example, the Berlin Gold Hat has about 87% to 88% gold and 9% to 11% silver. But this can change a bit depending on the specific hat. As for how they were made, they started with a single sheet of metal, which was hammered over and over again until it became a cone shape. To create the raised designs and decorations, they used many different tools like punches, stamping wheels and combs. It's likely that while they were working, the piece was filled with some kind of putty or resin. This would help support the metal, so it wouldn't get bent out of shape when they pressed designs into it. In some of these hats, we've even found bits of this filling or metal supports, like bronze rings at the bottom. The amazing smoothness and evenness of the work meant they had to be really good at controlling heat and using special techniques, like heating and cooling the metal over and over. This kept it from getting too hard and cracking. Thinking about how advanced they were for the late Bronze Age, making an object this big and smooth without any cracks is truly a remarkable feat of metalworking. The big question is, what do these symbols and markings on the golden hats mean? And another, no less important question is, what were they used for? Well, let's see below. The surfaces are divided into clearly defined bands, and well, each band regularly repeats a pattern. Concentric circles, discs, dotted bands, spoked wheels, little moons, eye-shaped designs, and even tiny cones in Iselsdorf. This repetition, which seems quite organised, has led to ideas that these signs aren't just pretty decorations, but have a hidden meaning. That is, they stand for numbers or units of time. The most detailed study has been done on the Berlin Hat, because it's complete, which makes it possible to count and look closely at the bands. The two main ideas don't go against each other, and in fact, both show up in books. The shape, a cone-shaped cap or hat with an oval bottom, and the careful way they were treated, like burying some pieces on purpose, suggest they were special headwear used by important people. Priests, leaders, or wise folks connected to sun or star rituals. Old drawings, like a cone-shaped head in the Kivik rocks in Sweden, have been used to compare with these hats. A big group of recent studies, which involves counting the bands and symbols, using math and figuring out cycles, has suggested that the decorations hide a moon and sun calendar. Each part or ring stands for a day. Putting these elements together and adding them up would allow for counting lunar months, solar years, and longer cycles, including ideas that could point to 19-year cycles or periods of 57 months, as some experts have described. This idea has mainly been used for the Berlin Hat, the only one that's complete, and has been supported by several researchers in archaeoastronomy and prehistory. However, not everyone agrees. Some experts say that the calendar function is possible, but hasn't been fully proven yet. But who actually made these gold artifacts? Well, it's believed that the golden hats were made by cultures from the Late Bronze Age, between 1400 and 800 BC. Even though there isn't one single name for the people who made them, archaeologists connect them to the cultures of the Tumulus Period, and also the Urnfield culture, who are thought to have lived in Central Europe, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Eastern France, between 1300 and 750 BC. These people had some special traits, for example. They cremated their dead and buried them in urns. They were also societies with different levels, having religious leaders. They were good at working with metal, especially bronze and gold, and it's very likely they used sun symbols and ritual calendars. The people who created these objects knew a lot about the cycles of the sun and moon. These cultures were part of the spread of Indo-European peoples. They didn't have writing, but they left behind clues in ritual objects, weapons, and burial sites. In newspapers and popular stories, the golden hats have been shown as wizard hats or sun crowns, which honestly really captures people's imagination, with exciting headlines like, Hats of Ancient Wizards. This media attention often focuses on how strange and amazing they are, and it's true, even today, these golden hats are still a big mystery for science. The golden hats are one-of-a-kind items, and because there aren't many of them, and the historical information is incomplete, it's smart to be careful. Many questions are still unanswered. Now it's your turn to join in. Do you think these objects were used for some kind of ceremony? What secrets do the strange, unreadable symbols on them hold? Leave your thoughts in the comments on this video, and let's start a discussion. Please don't forget to subscribe to the channel, and hit the notification bell, like the video, and share it with your friends. It costs you nothing, and will help us a lot. And don't forget, do good without expecting anything in return. Until next time.