SOFIA, Bulgaria - Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed about 15,000 tiny golden pieces that date back to the end of the third millennium B.C. — a find they said Wednesday matches the famous treasure of Troy.

The golden ornaments, estimated to be between 4,100 and 4,200 years old, have been unearthed gradually during the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the capital, Sofia, said Vasil Nikolov, an academic consultant on the excavations.

"This treasure is a bit older than Schliemann's finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments," Nikolov said.

Heinrich Schliemann, an amateur German archaeologist, discovered the site of ancient Troy in 1868 and directed ambitious excavations that proved he was right.

The treasure consists of miniature golden rings, some so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope.

"We don't know who these people were, but we call them proto-Thracians," Nikolov said.

They likely were ancestors of the Thracians, who lived in what is now Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Romania, Macedonia and Turkey until the 8th century A.D., when they were assimilated by invading Slavs.

"The buried man was cremated, and then an earth mound was piled over his ashes and his riches, suggesting that he was part of these people's social elite," Nikolov said.

Bozhidar Dimitrov, director of the National History Museum of Bulgaria, said the site consisted of a settlement and three mounds, and excavations would continue.

"This is the oldest golden treasure ever found in Bulgaria after the Varna necropolis," Dimitrov said.

The golden artifacts from a vast burial complex discovered in the 1970s near the Black Sea port of Varna date back to the end of the fifth millennium B.C. and are internationally renowned as the world's oldest golden treasure.

I was just reading this on Yahoo. They have some good pics there of the objects they found. Very cool stuff.

WOW..They found gold and i missed out oh man...

I know one of the Gods on here prefer's Silver...

But ISIS loves Gold herself..

I guess different Gods, like different thing's.

Wow woundnt mind having all that.

Do you have a link to this? I would like to read more. However Schliemann found 7 cities on top of another and they're unsure which one -- if at all -- is the fabled city of Troy described by Homer.

You know the thing thats really ironic about this is at the time it was made Bronze was much more valuable.
golds pretty and shiny and nice to look at.
but with a bronze sword you could get as much as you needed without mining
ancient world economics in action

NO! I wanted to be the one to farm all that gold!

Here's a link to it. Some good pics of the treasure if you click on the pic in the story.

Treasure Story

Aww, it doesnt work any more, the site just brings up an error message
I wanted to see the pic...
Cool story
Wish I could have been the one to find all that gold though...

I found some pictures and a good link.

GOLD

That's a pretty good haul. I find the part about the welding being so fine that's the weld line is indistinguisable under a microsope interesting. The craftsmanship appears to be extrordinary.

DJ, I missed that part, But i have to ask how that could be so..I work where they weld all the time, And i do not see how they could hide the seam that well.

The weld is oversize and then polished afterwards.

Oh ok..I would guess that makes good since. But it sounds like alot of extra work hmm.

isis ::dohhh::

There would have been no real reason to go through all the extra work, Have you ever welded, or seen it done, Some things are just not needed.

every time i get around a jewelry shop, i seem to look away when i see the price tags

I have to agree with you on this. When I was a good deal younger, I used to prospect . . . for gold, of course. I did fool around with silver prospecting a bit, and actually mined some copper . . . but it was always gold I was really after, and did a bit of small mining for it in AZ.

That's cool Larry, there is gold bearing quartz here in Ireland, but its all covered with peat and not easy to access.
I actually do a bit of metal detecting myself with a friend who is a historian.
I have found quite a few old coins. I found a cache of 64 large silver coins about 4 months ago, but I haven't found any gold yet, except for 1 ring.
I always wanted to go gold prospecting and panning. It's just more fun when you find it yourself.