BULGARIA: Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed thousands of intricate gold artefacts from the 3rd millennium BC, remnants of a so far unknown but highly advanced civilisation.
Discovered by a farmer, the trove showed that a mysterious Bronze Age civilisation in the heart of modern Bulgaria produced and traded elaborate gold jewellery, said Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of Bulgaria's National History Museum.
"We can conclude that around 5,000 years ago, the centre of an until now unknown civilisation was here and it exported processed gold in central Europe, the Balkan peninsula and Anatolia on a massive scale," he said.
Similar gold pieces had been found in other countries and they were assumed to have come from ancient Troy, but it now appeared the production centre was in Bulgaria, he added.
So far, his team has recovered more than 15,000 gold items from three mounds near Dabane in central Bulgaria, west of Sofia.
"I think by the end of the year, we will have found around 100,000 items," he said.
The hoard is the most recent in a series of important finds in the Black Sea country, which has seen a revival in the study of its ancient history since the end of communist rule in 1989.
Since last year, archaeologists have unearthed a solid gold mask the size of a dinner plate, a golden wreath and many other items from tombs dating to the 5th century BC.
They are attributed to the Thracians, people with no written history who lived in what is now Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Turkey and Greece from as early as 4000 BC until the Romans absorbed them at about the time of Christ.
Dimitrov stumbled on the find by chance. Last year, two of his archaeologists saw a woman with a gold necklace.The woman said her husband had found it in a field he ploughed with his tractor.
"The man showed me the place and we started digging in late autumn," Dimitrov said. "We are still digging there."