GREVENMACHER — Two teenage girls from eastern Luxembourg have made a discovery that experts say is the most significant archaeological find since 2011, when a strange and still unexplained object marked “Walkman” was unearthed in a garage in Ettelbruck.
Last week, Laura Nosbach and Amelie Leist, both 14, were snooping around a spare bedroom that Nosbach’s parents use for storage when they discovered a curious silver disc packed in a cracked crystalline holder.
“Whatever it was, we knew it was totally important and didn’t belong next to my stepmom’s exercise bike and my dad’s guitar that he hasn’t ever learned to play,” Nosbach said.
Leist, who has watched enough series about ancient civilizations such as “Game of Thrones” and “Downton Abbey” to have developed expertise on the topic, first believed the item was an ornament that a priestess would wear around her neck while sacrificing animals.
Nosbach discarded the idea, saying that it was obvious what the relic was: some kind of blade or other cutting device used by the Roman soldiers who inhabited the area thousands of years ago.
The girls took their discovery to Collette Backes, a neighbor and former professor of Luxembourgology at the University of Wiltz. Using simple dating methods, Backes determined that the item was fabricated sometime around the eighth or ninth decade of the last millenium.
“It is unfortunately very scratched, but we can suppose it was once shiny, which leads me to wonder if it adorned a temple or sacred place,” Backes said. “But we can also suppose that it was highly reflective, which means it could have been used as a mirror by a wealthy family in an ancient tribe of European bureaucrats.”
Other experts have suggested that the item helped the ancients to communicate, that because it can reflect the sun, it was useful for transmitting signals over long distances. Backes, however, finds this theory ridiculous.
“That would mean this region got enough sunlight at some point in history to warrant such a means of communication, which frankly is a ridiculous proposition,” she said.
