Archaeologists Discover Wealthy, 8,000-Year-Old Prehistoric Settlement in Northern Bulgaria
BalkanTravellers.com
The town, which experts say blossomed between 5800 and 5500 BC, possessed well-organised streets and houses with two floors and oak floors.
“The ceramics that we found here are of a very high-quality, and with no analogy compared to other settlements from this age. People of this period had taste, and we can say they had an aristocratic style,” archaeologist Dr. Svetlana Venelinova from the Regional History Museum in the city of Shumen told national media.
According to her, an electromagnetic waves survey has demonstrated that the prehistoric settlement was structured in a way comparable to town from a much later Antiquity period.
Because of the impressive quality of the ceramics and tools found at the site, archaeologists believe that the settlement may have been a religious center. The town had a 5-meter fortress wall and a 3-meter-deep moat, but there is evidence that it had burned down several times in the 300 years of its existence.
The newly discovered site is located near the village of Ivanovo, whose rock-hewn monasteries are recognized as an UNESCO World Heritage site. The archaeological excavations of the site near Ivanovo started in 2008 after a construction firm stumbled upon and destroyed by accident part of the mound covering the prehistoric town as it was digging out soil in order to use it for a dike along the Kamchiya River.
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A Perfect Shot
Koprivshtitsa Fair, Bulgara. Photographs by Neva Micheva
In Homo Urbanus Europeanus, exhibited May 9-24 in front of the National Theatre in Sofia, Jean-Marc Caracci presents his photographs of people in the urban environment of European capitals.
RED&WHITE SOFIA. On the 1st of March Bulgarians say goodbye to the winter. They buy each other red&white threads to carry around until they see a stork and spring can begin. Photography by Lode Desmet
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excellent smugs
