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A mysterious bronze disk, 32 centimeters in diameter, ranks as one of the most important archaeological finds of the last century. Discovered under dubious circumstances in 1999 near the small town of Nebra in central Germany, the Nebra Sky Disk is the oldest graphical representation of the sky and opens new awareness of the capabilities of the Bronze-Age people who apparently created it some 3,600 years ago in approximately 1600 BCE. Now, visitors can experience this unique example of cultural history in a multi-media discovery center near the town of Halle in the East German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The Sky Disk itself is beautiful, with a lovely blue-green patina on bronze and numerous inlaid gold symbols. These include a sun or full moon, a crescent moon,and numerous stars. It had two gold arcs (one has been lost) on opposite edges and another at the bottom. The symbols have been interpreted to have very specific meanings and the disk to have a specific use as a lunar calendar. Although people have debated the details, the piece is generally accepted as being the first portable, astronomical instrument. (The famous Stonehenge, constructed somewhat earlier in England, is not particularly portable.)

The discovery site is a prehistoric ring wall, or circle of stones, encircling the top of the 252-meter Mittelberg Hill near Nebra. The enclosure is oriented such that, on each equinox in that long-ago time, the sun appeared to set directly behind the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains, some 80 kilometers away. And on each May 1, which later became the Celtic holiday Beltain, the sun set behind another distant hill, the Kulpenberg. In this enclosure, the Sky Disk could be used as a calendar to confirm the solstices in those ancient times.

I was given the perfect opportunity to delve into the education and experience debates this past May when I was asked to speak on a panel at the Missouri Society of Professional Surveyor's (MSPS) spring conference. During the panel, we discussed some options for surveying education as well as how much education we should be requiring in the surveying profession. We also talked about how much experience, both field and office, we should be requiring after a person becomes a land surveyor in training (LSIT) in order to take the test for professional licensure.

I found it very interesting to hear the discussions from a room full of surveyors with, most likely, wildly different backgrounds. Opinions range from simply going through an apprenticeship to achieving a Bachelor of Science degree combined with on-the-job experience, followed by an examination. I vividly remember one gentleman saying that it seems like we've been continually debating these issues but nothing ever seems to come of it. I wish there was some magical answer to get all surveyors to agree on this topic because sometimes it does seem like the arguing prevents anything from being accomplished.

I believe that all states should be working towards requiring a bachelor's degree combined with on-the-job experience, followed by the current examination practices that are in place in most states. I feel that the current state of the profession seems to prohibit requiring a four-year degree as the only means of professional registration, although a degree requirement I think could attract individuals with the skills and drive to motivate others to bring the stature of the profession where it needs to be.

After years of working without success to make railroads responsibly mark the location of their abandoned tracks, the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) is taking the fight to the halls of Congress, and they've found some support along the way.

This issue of abandoned railroad monumentation affects many surveyors throughout the country, and it's becoming more of a problem as more and more railroads are abandoning all or portions of their tracks. Surveyors are often called in to survey a boundary that has no physical location and very few, if any, clues as to where that boundary existed.

Often, railroads would abandon all or part of their tracks for mostly economic reasons and not leave any physical evidence indicating where the track was located. In time, the track banks would level off, fences would be removed and foliage would grow over the location of the track. It would soon look like there was never a railroad track there in the first place.

Read through the table of contents and many of the feature stories and columns in this issue, and you'll notice an international flavor. One feature tells how an ancient portable astronomic calendar was discovered in Germany, and they constructed a unique visitor center to show how it worked. Another one talks about a new cadastral system in New Zealand that makes it easier for surveyors to log land title information and for the public to access it. Keeping the Down Under theme, a third piece tells how college students in Australia remapped a cattle drive route originally surveyed over 100 years ago. And if you count Canada as international, we also have one on a new system that helps manage bathymetric data. Indeed, if you haven't figured it out by now, this is our annual issue that focuses on international surveying.

In the past, we've sought stories that portrayed different ways of surveying in exotic lands. We ran a story on a European company that developed mechanisms for measuring around corners so surveyors could survey throughout buildings and in tunnels from above through manholes. Another company we covered produced small, unmanned aircraft for aerial mapping from low altitude. A third company mapped railroad tracks by mounting a laser scanner on the front of a moving train.

Over a hundred years ago, a stock route for moving cattle was conceived that would traverse the central deserts of Australia, and Alfred Canning was commissioned to survey it. Bearing his name, it finally came to fruition several years later but never became as popular and well traveled as its creators had envisioned. However, people haven't forgotten it in the years since.

As evidence, a group of Curtin University of Technology students, a number of industry professionals, and two traditional aboriginal elders recently traversed the southern section of the Canning Stock Route, from where the Talawana Track intersects with the stock route at Georgia Bore heading south to Wiluna. The expedition took 16 days, a mere two weeks in comparison to the 110 weeks it took Canning to do the original surveying. The purpose of this expedition: complete a spatial upgrade of the Geodetic Network along the route using GPS and locate original marks from Canning's survey as well as from a survey carried out by Payne and Alsop in 1932 along the southern section to Well 9.

This came as part of final-year projects for fourth-year surveying students at Curtin. Chosen by the students, these projects included the overall management of the trip, the GPS spatial upgrade along the current stock route track, documenting the history of the route, testing the accuracy of Omnistar's DGPS system, and testing several in-car GPS navigation systems and mapping data. Members of the Canning Stock Route Survey Team 2008 point out that funding for their trek came mostly from industry. Sponsor organizations included Sokkia, Associated Instrumentation, Landgate, Reward Minerals, Land Surveyors Licensing Board, HWE, Curtin University Spatial Science Department, Land Surveys, Harley Survey Group, Property People Surveying, McMullen Nolan and Partners Surveying, Whelans, Fugro, Survey 21, RM Surveys, Cottage and Engineering Surveys, Austin Surveys, and Centreline Pty Ltd.