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It is the earliest gold of mankind. The gold articles were the first in the world to have been crafted by human hand. Special halls in the Archaeological museum in the town of Varna, Bulgaria, house the most ancient gold treasure. Bulgaria was the home of the earliest civilizations which had appeared before those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The amazing discovery took place in 1972 during excavations for an underground cable for Varna. Several hundred meters away from the Lake of Varna, workmen found by accident an ancient tomb with a pile of gold objects. The earliest worked gold in the history of mankind was discovered in the Chalcolithic Necropolis ("Chalcolithic" is the name given to the era when Neolithic man began to smelt copper-the last quarter of the 4th millennium BC). By 1976, on an area of 0.3 hectares, 265 graves were discovered with a total of nearly 6 kg of 23.5 carat gold fine objects. For instance, tomb N36 contained gold articles weighing 1.5 kg.

The human skeleton in grave N43, in a good state of preservation, was identified as a 40-50 year-old man, apparently a rich noble. He was buried with more than 100 jewels intended for different parts of the body. The man is thought to have been of an Europoid type of a race which inhabited South West Europe long before the Thracians.

The great amount of gold and the different kinds of graves-symbolic and real, gave answer to the social structure and the way of life of those ancient people. It seems that the symbolic tomb 36 can be considered to be a substitute burial of the ruler who was actually buried in tomb 43. These are the two richest and probably the earliest tombs in the whole necropolis. They are sited symmetrically to a group of tombs which are of exceptional interest in the ideological system of the whole necropolis.

The most important objects are three clay masks whose features are marked by small gold pieces and have diadems around their heads. Beside them are three symbolic graves which were quite rich in gold. This arrangement cannot be accidental. It reflects a particular mythology and religious conception.

The large quantity of gold is evidence not only for a developed social hierarchy but also for developed ideas about the sacrality of the king figure or tribal chieftain.

The gold articles were shown at many sensational exhibitions in different countries around the world.

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