The site, located on the outskirts of the Black Sea Urals, was discovered accidentally when workers were operating an excavator to lay an electrical cable for a railway facility.
He noticed small fragments of scrap metal, bracelets of the same material, corroded war artifacts, and pieces of flint.
Rushed to the local museum, the objects were identified as prehistoric stone tools, copper tools, ceramic artifacts and, curiously, flint flakes, commonly associated with them, gilded elements or ornaments. The association was what mattered: the implication that the copper artifacts were older than any others ever discovered anywhere else.
The Moon shines with some of the oldest jewels in the world. Museum curator Michail Lazarov and Sofia University professor Georgi Georgiev led an excavation, and the museum team was quick to lead it.
Ivanov’s team eventually recovered 281 grams, more than half the grams, 18 of them exceptionally rich, and one of them among the richest ever excavated.
The dating of the material has recently been dated to the 5th millennium BC. A radiocarbon now determines it to be c. 4500 BC
The discovery of around 200 skulls or, more commonly, extremely damaged human remains in the waste deposits of the Black Sea coast has been excavated. Both men and animals are represented.
The bodies were placed in the graves with unimportant funerary objects, or ‘funerary gravels’, where the funerary objects were found in the place where the good grades had been raised or ‘gravel masks’, where a life-size ceramic mask had been been replaced by a real body.
The gravels contain gravels, gravel masks and a series of extremely rich burials. The total set includes 3,000 metal artifact objects weighing more than 6 kg.
The richest burial is that of a man in his mid-40s, with no less than 990 separate gold objects, including pearls, rings and a variety of body, clothing and hair decorations, including a tennis scarf. This man was also buried with copper tools, other copper objects, and a knife in the form of a pierced blade or mace.
Varana’s actions imply three important elements in the fifth millennium BC. First, given the range of exotic materials, Varana must have been part of an extensive exchange network, allowing some members of this early Eneolithic community to become rich and powerful.
Second, presumably due to their role in trade, the Varana community appears to have developed an extremely differentiated society in the realm of craftsmanship, as indicated by the abundance of gold objects, while only a few are exceptionally wealthy. The ѕoсіаɩ jump seems to have been very marked.
Third, the ѕoсіаɩ conflict can be seen in several details of the wealth that the mounds more or less contain, while a very small group seems to have escaped. The conflict between those buried varies and the group of 43 men seems especially affected.
A reconstruction of the Action of ɡгаⱱe 43 in Varana. Third, in the evidence of ɡгаⱱe 43, through the implication of a female warrior, a ruler, and perhapas, given the common characteristics of war paraphernalia, some high-ranking courtesans, the transition from early Neolithic material culture to the Early Chalcolithic/Bronze Age appears to have been marked by the extremely differentiated ѕoсіаɩ organization found at Varana.
The presence of gold objects in the burial mounds, most of which are otherwise unrepresented, coincides with the appearance of war paraphernalia, implying a cultural participation in more organized gender violence and warfare in Varana and the appearance of high-ranking women warriors.