The Varna Necropolis ( bg, Варненски некропол), or Varna Cemetery, is a burial site in the western industrial zone of

Varna Varna may refer to: Places Europe *Varna, Bulgaria, a city in Bulgaria **Varna Province **Varna Municipality ** Gulf of Varna **Lake Varna **Varna Necropolis *Vahrn, or Varna, a municipality in Italy *Varniai, a city in Lithuania * Varna (Šaba ...

(approximately half a kilometre from

Lake Varna Lake Varna ( bg, Варненско езеро, ) is the largest by volume and deepest liman or lake along the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, divided from the sea by a 2 km-wide strip of sand and having an area of 19 km², maximal depth 19 m ...

and 4 km from the city centre), internationally considered one of the key

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

s in world prehistory. The oldest

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

treasure Treasure (from la, thesaurus from Greek language ''thēsauros'', "treasure store") is a concentration of wealth — often originating from ancient history — that is considered lost and/or forgotten until rediscovered. Some jurisdictions leg ...

and

jewelry Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry (U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western ...

in the world, dating from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC, was discovered at the site. Several prehistoric Bulgarian finds are considered no less old – the golden treasures of Hotnitsa,

Durankulak Durankulak ( bg, Дуранкулак ) is a village in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Shabla Municipality, Dobrich Province. Located in the historical region of Southern Dobruja, Durankulak is the north-easternmost inhabited place in Bulgaria a ...

, artifacts from the Kurgan settlement of Yunatsite near

Pazardzhik Pazardzhik ( bg, Пазарджик ) is a city situated along the banks of the Maritsa river, southern Bulgaria. It is the capital of Pazardzhik Province and centre for the homonymous Pazardzhik Municipality. The Tatars founded Pazardzhik in t ...

, the golden treasure Sakar, as well as beads and gold jewelry found in the Kurgan settlement of

Provadia Provadia ( bg, Провадия ) is a town in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Varna Province, located in a deep karst gorge (Provadia syncline) along the Provadiya River not far from the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. It is the administrative centre ...

–

Solnitsata Solnitsata ( bg, Солницата, "The Saltworks") was a prehistoric town located in present-day Bulgaria, near the modern city of Provadia. Believed by archaeologists to be the oldest town in Europe, Solnitsata was a fortified stone settlement ...

(“salt pit”). However, Varna gold is most often called the oldest since this treasure is the largest and most diverse.

Discovery and excavation

The site was accidentally discovered in October

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...

by excavator operator Raycho Marinov. The first to value the significant historical meaning was Dimitar Zlatarski, the creator of the Dalgopol Historical Museum. He was called by the locals to examine what they had found earlier that day. He realized how important the finding was, so he contacted the Varna Historical Museum and, after signing government papers, he handed over the research to the direction of Mihail Lazarov (1972–1976) and Ivan Ivanov (1972–1991). About 30% of the estimated

necropolis A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead". The term usually im ...

area is still not excavated. A total of 294 graves have been found in the necropolis,New perspectives on the Varna cemetery (Bulgaria)
, By: Higham, Tom; Chapman, John; Slavchev, Vladimir; Gaydarska, Bisserka; Honch, Noah; Yordanov, Yordan; Dimitrova, Branimira; 1 September 2007 many containing sophisticated examples of

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

(gold and copper),

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

(about 600 pieces, including gold-painted ones), high-quality flint and obsidian blades, beads, and shells.

Chronology

The graves have been dated to 4569–4340 BCE by

radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...

in 2006 and belong to the

Chalcolithic The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', "copper" and ''líthos'', "stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin '' aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regular ...

Varna culture The Varna culture is a Chalcolithic culture of northeastern Bulgaria, dated ca. 4500 BC, contemporary and closely related with Gumelnița in southern Romania, often considered as local variants. It is characterized by polychrome pottery and r ...

, which is the local variant of the KGKVI.

Burial rites

Human-sized clay head found at Varna necropolis

There are crouched and straight inhumations. Some graves do not contain a skeleton, but grave gifts (

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

s). These symbolic (empty) graves are the richest in gold artifacts. Three thousand gold artifacts have been found, with a weight of approximately six kilograms. Grave 43 contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. It was initially identified as the grave of a prince, but is now thought to be that of a

smith Smith may refer to: People * Metalsmith, or simply smith, a craftsman fashioning tools or works of art out of various metals * Smith (given name) * Smith (surname), a family name originating in England, Scotland and Ireland ** List of people wi ...

. Three symbolic graves contained masks of unbaked clay. The findings showed that the Varna culture had trade relations with distant lands (possibly including the lower

Volga The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the List of rivers of Europe#Rivers of Europe by length, longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Cas ...

and the

Cyclades The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The nam ...

), perhaps exporting metal goods and salt from the

Provadiya Provadia ( bg, Провадия ) is a town in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Varna Province, located in a deep karst gorge (Provadia syncline) along the Provadiya River not far from the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. It is the administrative centre ...

rock

salt mine Salt mining extracts natural salt deposits from underground. The mined salt is usually in the form of halite (commonly known as rock salt), and extracted from evaporite formations. History Before the advent of the modern internal combustio ...

—

. The copper ore used in the artifacts originated from a

Sredna Gora Sredna Gora ( bg, Средна гора ) is a mountain range in central Bulgaria, situated south of and parallel to the Balkan Mountains and extending from the Iskar to the west and the elbow of Tundzha north of Yambol to the east. Sredna Gora i ...

mine near

Stara Zagora Stara Zagora ( bg, Стара Загора, ) is the sixth-largest city in Bulgaria, and the administrative capital of the homonymous Stara Zagora Province. Name The name comes from the Slavic root ''star'' ("old") and the name of the medieva ...

, and Mediterranean ''

Spondylus ''Spondylus'' is a genus of bivalve molluscs, the only genus in the family (biology), family Spondylidae.MolluscaBase (2019). MolluscaBase. Spondylus Linnaeus, 1758. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies ...

'' shells found in the graves may have served as primitive currency. The culture had sophisticated religious beliefs about afterlife and had developed hierarchical status differences. The site offers the oldest known burial evidence of an elite male (

Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...

claims that the end of the fifth millennium BC is the time that the transition to male dominance began in Europe). The high status male buried with the most remarkable amount of gold held a war adze or mace and wore a gold penis sheath. Bull-shaped gold platelets might also have venerated virility, instinctual force, and warfare. Gimbutas holds that the artifacts were made largely by local craftspeople.

Historical impact

According to Gimbutas (1991), "The discontinuity of the

, Karanovo,

Vinča Vinča ( sr-cyr, Винча, ) is a suburban settlement of Belgrade, Serbia. It is part of the municipality of Grocka. Vinča-Belo Brdo, an important archaeological site that gives its name to the Neolithic Vinča culture, is located in the villa ...

and Lengyel cultures in their main territories and the large scale population shifts to the north and northwest are indirect evidence of a catastrophe of such proportions that cannot be explained by possible climatic change, land exhaustion, or epidemics (for which there is no evidence in the second half of the 5th millennium B.C.). Direct evidence of the incursion of horse-riding warriors is found, not only in single burials of males under barrows, but in the emergence of a whole complex of

Kurgan A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asi ...

cultural traits." According to J. Chapman, "Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it was widely accepted that steppe nomads from the North Pontic zone invaded the Balkans, putting an end to the Climax Copper Age society that produced the apogee of tell living, autonomous copper metallurgy and, as the grandest climax, the Varna cemetery with its stunning early goldwork. Now the boot is very much on the other foot and it is the Varna complex and its associated communities that are held responsible for stimulating the onset of prestige goods-dominated steppe mortuary practice following the expansion of farming." Among the metallic (gold and copper) and non-metallic (minerals, rocks, pottery, pigments, biofacts) artifacts in the graves from the Varna Chalcolithic site are numerous beads of a chalcedony (carnelian) and agate composition. Three main morphological types of beads are described: type 1 – elongated barrel-shaped; type 2 – elongated with trapezohedral facets; type 3 – short cylindrical (Kostov, 2007; Kostov, Pelevina, 2008). The carnelian and related beads of type 2 have a "constant" number of 32 facets – 16+16 on both sides on the elongation of the bead, which is considered probably the earliest in Chalcolithic complex faceting on such a hard mineral (hardness of chalcedony is 6.5–7 on the Mohs scale). In the hole of a single carnelian bead was found a gold mini-cylinder (~2x2 mm). The gold artifacts from the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis are assumed to be the "oldest gold of mankind" according to their total volume and quantity. Analysis of the measured weight of the different types of gold artеfacts (beads, appliqués, rings, bracelets, pectorals and diadems) revealed a weight system with at least two minimal weight units of ~0.14 and ~0.40 g among both mineral and gold beads (Kostov, 2004; 2007). The second one (=2 carats) was suggested as a basic "Chalcolithic unit" with the name ''van'' (from the first letters of Varna necropolis).

Museum exhibitions

The artifacts can be seen at the

Varna Archaeological Museum The Varna Archaeological Museum ( bg, Варненски археологически музей, ''Varnenski arheologicheski muzey'') is an archaeological museum in the city of Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. Founded on 3 June 1888, wh ...

and at the National Historical Museum in Sofia. In 2006, some gold objects were included in a major and broadly advertised national exhibition of antique gold treasures in both Sofia and Varna. The Varna gold started touring the world in 1973; it was included in "The Gold of the Thracian Horseman" national exhibition, shown at many of the world's leading museums and exhibition venues in the 1970s. In 1982, it was exhibited for 7 months in Japan as "The Oldest Gold in the World – The First European Civilization" with massive publicity, including two full length TV documentaries. In the 1980s and 1990s it was also shown in Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and Israel, among others, and featured in a cover story by the

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

. The Varna necropolis artifacts were shown for the first time in the United States in 1998 and 1999 as part of a major Bulgarian archaeological exhibition, ''Thracians' Riches: Treasures from Bulgaria''. In 2009–2010, several artifacts were shown at the

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in a joint Bulgarian- Romanian-Moldovan exhibition entitled ''The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000–3500 BC''.''The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000–3500 BC. Retrieved on 2009-10-31
/ref>
/ref> ttps://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01arch.html?ref=science ''A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity''. Retrieved on 2009-12-03/ref>

References

Bibliography

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