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4 100-year-old treasure found
17/08/2005 12:13 - (SA)
Sofia, Bulgaria - Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed about 15 000 tiny golden pieces that date back to the end of the third millennium BC - a find they say matches the famous treasure of Troy, scholars announced on Wednesday.
The 4 100 to 4 200-year-old golden ornaments have been gradually unearthed over the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, 120km east of the capital, Sofia, according to Prof Vasil Nikolov, the consultant on the excavations.
"This treasure is a bit older than Schliemann's finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments," Nikolov said by telephone.
The treasure consists of over 15 000 miniature golden rings, some of them so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope.
A mystery
"We don't know who these people were, but we call them proto-Thracians," Nikolov said, meaning that they were likely ancestors of the Thracians, who lived in what is now Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Romania, Macedonia and Turkey until the 8th century AD, when they were assimilated by the invading Slavs.
"The buried man was cremated, and then an earth mound was piled over his ashes and his riches, suggesting that he was part of these people's social elite," Nikolov said.
Prof Bozhidar Dimitrov, director of Bulgaria's History Museum, said the site consisted of an ancient settlement and three mounds, and that excavations would continue.
"This is the oldest golden treasure ever found in Bulgaria after the Varna necropolis," Dimitrov said.
The golden artefacts from the vast burial complex discovered in the 1970s near the Black Sea port of Varna date back to the end of the fifth millennium BC and are internationally renowned as the world's oldest golden treasure.
- AP
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