A prehistoric town has officially been unearthed in Eastern Bulgaria. "Vasil Nikolov, a professor from Bulgaria's National Institute of
Archaeology, said the stone walls excavated by his team near the town of
Provadia are estimated to date between 4,700 and 4,200 B.C. He said the
walls, which are 6 feet high and 4 ½ feet thick, are believed to be the
earliest and most massive fortifications from Europe's prehistory."
Previously it was widely accepted that Damascus was the worlds oldest city, however since the excavation which, started in 2005, on the town in Bulgaria, remains have confirmed that this is now the oldest recorded town in the world.
There were many buildings and depth to this unearthed town, two story homes, fortified wall enclosing the buildings, pottery copper needles, etc all suggest that the town was lucrative and may have produced salt from the sea as a major commodity. They boiled brine from salt springs in kilns, baked it into bricks,
which were then exchanged for other commodities with neighboring
tribes.
This information makes one think, what else are we going to continue to learn and find from our past, seeing that there is something this amazing unearthed in this era is astounding. I think that there is a lot to be found, and that we are just at the tip of the ice berg, and only after we continue to dig will we really come to understand where and who we came from.
I also find it interesting how times change and how what we truly value changes dramatically. In this day and age we want money, the more money that we have the more power we appear to have. However, back in 4,000 BC salt, which this town appears to be a big producer of, was in high demand and was seen at that time as the most valuable commodity on the market.
Hopefully Vasil Nikolov and his team of excavators are able to get the funding needed to continue their project, and will keep finding new artifacts and learn as much as they can about our ancestors.
This is a cool story to hear about. It's stuff like this that should be shared everyday, instead of the same of stuff we hear about. We can never know what's going to come next. As long as we have archaeologists, we will be amazed by what they find. In today's society--at least what we're used to--we keep looking toward the future, forgetting our pasts. What we should do is focus on the past and that way we will continue to hear about our past. Learning about past towns and cultures is very interesting and more people should get excited about what existed before we did.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really cool story. I always like stories like this and find them interesting. It is crazy to think that these towns are preserved in the earth and we are able to dig them out and study them. I wonder how many things we will find in the future. I like how you pointed out salt was the main thing for that community. It is amazing how things can change. It will be interesting to see what will be the most important item years from now.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting it really seems like this city was really intelligent for being the oldest city to date. The fact that they built some big two story buildings and thick walls is very impressive and it might be interesting to see what else they can unearth at this historic site. If the group keeps digging who knows what other important information they can find out about this city, either way I am really interested to wait and see what else these group of archeologists can dig up.
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