Posted on 08/17/2005 4:37:50 PM PDT by blam
Bulgarian archeologists uncover treasure of thousands of golden ornaments
Canadian Press
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Archeologists working a dig in central Bulgaria have unearthed some 15,000 miniature rings and other gold ornaments that date to the end of the third millennium BC - a find they say matches the famous treasure of Troy, scholars announced 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, 120 kilometres east of the capital, Sofia, according to Prof. Vasil Nikolov, the consultant on the excavations.
"This treasure is a bit older than . . . finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments," Nikolov said by telephone.
The treasure consists of 15,000 gold ornaments and miniature golden rings, some of them so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope.
"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 artifacts from that vast burial complex discovered in the 1970s near the Black Sea port of Varna date to the end of the fifth millennium BC and are internationally renowned as the world's oldest golden treasure.
I've read that the Troy find by Schleimann was the largest gold stash ever found.
Cool. I wonder what the point of little tiny rings was.
Golden Fleece?
Check out Nick Cage in......NATIONAL TREASURE.
"Check out Nick Cage in......NATIONAL TREASURE."
I have that DVD but like everything around here, I can't get it to work properly.
Nah. The Golden Fleece was a sheep skin (with fur) that was placed into gold bearing streams and the gold would settle into the spaces between the hairs.
I would baselessly speculate that the rings were woven into cloth.
A ceremonial (or not) precursor to chain mail?
Good idea.
Hire a teenager to get it working.
Er ... what's the size on these rings? The article doesn't say, only that the soldering was well-done.
Possibly they were threaded on something like a string or leather thong that rotted away.
From Bulgarian tradition, Sofia was an Egyptian queen, and her treasure is hidden somewhere in this country.
A necklace does make more sense than a suit of ringlets.
Though the shirt would be cool.
The rings could have been used as money. Many early coins had holes in them, so that they could be strung together to carry.
Good point.
"I need to buy something. All these rings are burning a break in my string..."
Very shiny.
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Cremation and inhumation under a mound -- sounds like the ancestors of the Phrygians, possibly, or earlier migrating relatives of the Scythians perhaps. Also, I'd guess that this tomb isn't anywhere near that old, probably more like 3000 years old or less.
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