The Oldest Gold Treasure and Jewellery

The Varna Necropolis is a large burial site about 4 km from the city centre of Varna, Bulgaria.

The site was accidentally discovered in October 1972. According to radiocarbon dating, the artefacts found in this cemetery are 6,500 years old.

So far, 294 graves have been found in the necropolis, but not all the graves were buried with treasure. This is the first evidence of social hierarchies in history.

Some graves have no skeletal remains but contain the richest grave gifts (cenotaphs).

The grave of a man, Grave 43, revealed more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for this millennium (5000-4000 BC), from all over the world. This includes Mesopotamia and Egypt.(Slavchev 2010).

Laying on his back, the man's skeleton was decked out with bangles, necklaces of gold beads, gold pendants, and golden disks. 

The high-status male, buried with large amounts of gold, also held a war axe or mace and wore a gold penis sheath.

Referred to as the “Varna gold”, the find includes 3000 gold artefacts, with a weight of approximately 6 kilograms. Also, found were about 600 pieces of pottery, including some painted with gold, high-quality flint and obsidian blades, beads, and shells.

The male-dominated Varna culture had sophisticated religious beliefs about the afterlife and developed hierarchical status differences. But the settlement appears to have been abandoned.

Settlements and cultures that flourished during the Copper Age in modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Macedonia, and Ukraine, disappeared or were suddenly abandoned about 4000 b.c.

These were the first cultures to invent metallurgy in Europe. They were mining, working with kilns and trading with distant lands.

For the following six centuries, the region seems deserted after large-scale population shifts. 

Theories about the rapid changes include migrations/invasions from the Eurasian steppes and climate change.

The artefacts can be seen at the Varna Archaeological Museum and at the National Historical Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Reconstruction of elite burial at the Varna necropolis (detail) Zde

Example of the Varna Treasures

Varna Treasure, Varna Archaeological Museum