Discovery
The Gundestrup cauldron was discovered by peat cutters in a small peat bog called Rævemose on May 28, 1891. The Danish government paid a large reward to the finders, who subsequently quarreled bitterly amongst themselves over its division. Palaeobotanical investigations of the peat bog at the time of the discovery showed that the land had been dry when the cauldron was deposited, and the peat gradually grew over it. The manner of stacking suggested an attempt to make the cauldron inconspicuous and well-hidden. A recent investigation of Rævemose was undertaken in 2002, with the results that perhaps the peat bog had been present when the cauldron was buried.
The cauldron was found in a dismantled state with five long rectangular plates, seven short plates, one round plate (normally termed the "base plate"), and two fragments of tubing stacked inside the curved base. In addition, there is a piece of iron coming from a ring originally placed inside the silver tubes along the rim of the cauldron. It is assumed that there is a missing eighth plate because the circumference of the seven outer plates is smaller than the circumference of the five inner plates.
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Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)