More than 7,000 years ago, someone accidentally placed lead or cinnabar near a fire and discovered that it could melt. Although it occurred long before the invention of writing and was left out of the historical record, this chance find revealed that some “rocks” could melt. Millennia later, in the midst of the Copper Age, humanity had already perfected metal smelting.
Among the great masters of this art were the ancient inhabitants of present-day Varna, in Bulgaria. His legacy was immortalized in a necropolis discovered in 1970, an authentic “golden cemetery” that contains the oldest known treasure of gold and jewels in the world.
Varna. Located on the Black Sea coast, Varna is a region with a thousand-year history. So much so that it is one of the cultural and, above all, commercial epicenters of Southeast Europe. The fertility of the soils and its location led humans to settle there for millennia, turning the region into a bridge between the Mediterranean and northern Europe.
Thus, it became a cultural center thanks to strong commercial networks that encouraged the exchange of goods and contact between peoples. And something no less important was the technological part, that which goldsmiths perfected for millennia to produce armor, weapons and jewelry, shaping metals such as silver or… gold. It was not an easy metal to work with as it had very different properties than silver or bronze, which were much more malleable, but the experience of the artisans elevated Varna above other cities.
The necropolis. We jump forward thousands of years and find ourselves in 1972. Raycho Marinov, 22, was an excavator operator doing work on the outskirts of Varna when, suddenly and during a routine day, the excavator unearthed a set of unusual objects. They were a few pieces of ceramic craftsmanship and tools, but Marinov considered it important enough to inform the authorities.
Thus, the archaeologist Mihail Lazarov undertook the first excavation and, as they say, he went looking for silver… and found gold. It turns out that what seemed like a minor discovery was actually a huge Copper Age necropolis. It was more than 4,000 years old and about 300 tombs were discovered. This was interesting, but even more so was the treasure that was buried.
A mine (of gold). This dominance of gold by the society of prehistoric Varna caused goldsmiths to make all kinds of objects in this material. And they did it conscientiously: hundreds of objects made of gold were found in the necropolis. They totaled more than six kilos and there were also copper tools, obsidian blades, all kinds of jewelry, amulets and lots of ceramics.
The most important, at least the most emblematic, is Tomb 43. Apart from the bone remains, they found a scepter and hood? gold for the penis, as well as jewelry and other ornamental elements. In fact, this tomb contained more gold than had been found anywhere else in the world at that time. Would he be a king? A prince? Well, that was thought, but now the tendency is to believe that he was a blacksmith.
Rituals. There were also tombs without bone remains, but with pieces of gold or any other object, and this speaks of the complex rituals that that society followed when it was time to bury their deceased. These artifacts demonstrate that the society not only had advanced skills in metallurgy and goldsmithing, but that they had a deep-rooted belief system that led them to deposit these objects in places of eternal rest.
And there were differences between men and women. They were placed face up, while the women were buried in the fetal position. They also found an evident difference in social classes evidenced by the amount of belongings with which each person was buried.
Capitalism. Beyond the funerary rituals themselves, what the Varna necropolis showed was that there was a strong social stratification. In fact, as some of those responsible for the discovery say in a Smithsonian article, archaeologists joked about the irony. At the time of discovery, Bulgaria was a communist country and they were eager to promote the country.
However, the irony for archaeologists was that that cemetery was the first nail in the coffin of that communist ideology. “It showed that, even thousands of years ago, society was very segmented, with very rich people, a middle class and, for the most part, people who had nothing more than a pot or a knife that they could call their own. It was the opposite to the official ideology,” says Alexander Minchev, a 25-year-old archaeologist who participated in the 1972 discovery.
Fall and legacy. However, like every great ancient civilization, the decline came. Burials at the site occurred within a few centuries: between 6,600 and 6,200 years ago, but along with other cultures that flourished during the Copper Age along the Danube, the practices ended abruptly about 4,000 years ago.
It is believed that a combination of factors, such as climate change, turned large areas of fertile land into swamps. Other events could have occurred that caused this town to change its way of burying its dead, but researchers are clear that Varna was a culture very advanced of its time that, with the development of commerce and goldsmithing, laid the foundations of current civilizations.
Images | Viajeaeden, Mark Ahsmann, Gabriele Burchielli, Zde
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