The Mystery and Intrigue of the Oldest Gold in the World

How a treasure from before the dawn of civilization changes the human story

Before the Roman Empire left hordes of coins across the Mediterranean and the wider world. Before Alexander, Sargon, or Gilgamesh. Before the ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid. Before the farmers of Neolithic Britain raised Stonehenge. Before even writing or the wheel, on the Black Sea coast of modern Bulgaria, there was hierarchy, as evidenced by the greatest treasure of the Copper Age by a mile and the details of the graves in which it was discovered.

Before 1972, there’d been less than one pound’s worth of gold artifacts from the Copper Age found anywhere in the world. And then the Varna gold — over 14 pounds’ worth of 3,000 different gold artifacts — was found in an ancient graveyard near the city of Varna. Researchers estimated the finds to be 6,500 years old, originating from the newly-named Varna culture of about 4600–4200 BC.

The only way to express this age is “immense”. It’s older than the very first cities. It’s older than almost any existent language family or human culture. It’s from a Europe so distant that practically nothing remains from it today. A few symbols, maybe, might outdate it. Maybe some of our oldest and now most convoluted mythological…