How it began
The graves of the Varna necropolis, on the Black Sea coast of present-day Bulgaria, date between about 4600 and 4200 BCE, in the Copper Age. Radiocarbon dating puts the gold artifacts at about 6,500 years old, made only a few centuries after people in the region first worked metal. The oldest gold treasure and jewelry in the world was found there. Varna gold is most often called the oldest because the treasure is the largest and most diverse of its age. The territory belonged to a prehistoric culture, not to any state linked to modern Bulgaria.
How it works
Metalworking in the region began with green and blue ores, malachite and azurite, which melt into beads of copper when heated. Obtaining gold and copper meant mining large amounts of ore, as much as ten tons of material for an ounce of gold, then smelting and shaping it with specialized skill. The metal was malleable, could be formed into tools and jewelry, and could be recycled without limit. This organized labor separated people who worked metal from those who fed them.
What changed first
The cemetery gives the first evidence of social hierarchy in the historical record. About 300 graves were excavated, and just four of them held three quarters of the gold. The 13 pounds of gold recovered point to leaders who controlled wealth. Archaeologist Vassil Nikolov links that wealth to nearby Provadia-Solnitsata, where salt was produced for trade in the same centuries. The settlements of the lower Danube region ended abruptly around 4000 BCE, with no sign of battle.
What lasted
The discovery upended older ideas about prehistoric Europe, such as Marija Gimbutas's picture of peaceful, egalitarian societies in what she called Old Europe. The site was found by accident in October 1972 by excavator operator Raycho Marinov, who was digging a trench for electrical cables. Bulgarian archaeologists excavated it from 1972 to 1991.
Where it stands today
Eleven of the 13 pounds of gold excavated are housed in the Varna Museum of Archaeology, and some pieces have toured museums around the world. The cause of the decline of the society that made them is still debated, with invasion and climate change both proposed. In 2016 Smithsonian magazine reported a claim that a still older gold object may have been unearthed elsewhere in Bulgaria.
