They Found the OLDEST Gold on Earth in One Grave — And No One Knows Who Made It | History for Sleep

They Found the OLDEST Gold on Earth in One Grave — And No One Knows Who Made It | History for Sleep Around 4600 BC, beside a lake in Bulgaria, one man was buried with more gold than the rest of the ancient world combined would produce for another thousand years. His community left no writing, no name, and no explanation for why they vanished soon after. Sources & Further Reading: Ivanov, Ivan. The Varna Chalcolithic Necropolis. Agora Library, 1988. Chapman, John. Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South Eastern Europe. Routledge, 2000. Renfrew, Colin. "Varna and the Emergence of Wealth in Prehistoric Europe." In The Social Life of Things, edited by Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge University Press, 1986. Higham, Tom, et al. "New Perspectives on the Varna Cemetery (Bulgaria) — AMS Dates and Social Implications." Antiquity, 2007. Slavchev, Vladimir. "The Varna Eneolithic Cemetery in the Context of the Late Copper Age in Northeast Bulgaria." In The Varna Gold: Volume One. Institute of Archaeology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2010. Bailey, Douglass W. Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity. Routledge, 2000. Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton University Press, 2007. Todorova, Henrieta. "The Eneolithic Period in Bulgaria in Its European Context." In Prehistoric Bulgaria, Monographs in World Archaeology. Prehistory Press, 1995.