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Wednesday, 8th July 2009 (1277 views)

Researchers looking into the origins of humankind on the coast of the Black Sea have used gold found in the area in their work.

Experts from the Institute of Oceanology at the Bulgarian Academy of Science and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory looked at gold found in a Copper Age necropolis in Varna in 1978 to work out the date of its origin.

They found that the precious metal was about 3,000 years older than the pyramids of Egypt, offering evidence for the world's oldest civilisation originating in Bulgaria, Standart reports.

The researchers, Petko Dimitrov, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, also used an analysis of Neolithic artefacts and settlements in north-east Bulgaria to back up the hypothesis that the Bulgarian Black Sea coast was the original cradle of the civilisation that later populated the European Mediterranean and Portuguese Atlantic coasts.

Furthermore, tools found near Varna have been discovered to be those that helped humans to leave their caves, with these artefacts being centuries older than similar ones found in the Middle East and Egypt.

The necropolis in Varna was found by accident in the early 1970s.

 

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