Chalcolithic Treasures: Varna, Bulgaria

Archaeologists Dig for Gold

Hammered copper and gold ornaments from an early Chalcolithic cemetery in Varna, on the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea, reveal that 6,500 years ago this area was a bustling maritime center and the home of one of the world’s earliest metal industries.¹ The grave finds included 23.5-carat gold beads, scepters, bracelets, rings and animal- and horn-shaped plaques.

Thirteen Chalcolithic settlements have been discovered around Lake Varna, which at the time was a bay of the Black Sea—not, as today, a separate lake—reaching 13 miles inland and providing a natural harbor for ships. The Varna people traded around the Black Sea, up the Volga and Danube rivers—perhaps as far as Rudna Glava in former Yugoslavia, where the world’s oldest copper mine has been found—and into the northeastern Mediterranean.