This is fascinating...absolutely fascinating.

[Doberluv]

My ex is half Czech and half Bulgarian so in looking at news from around there, he came across this interesting news. This gold hoard was unearthed in Bulgaria very recently. The beauty and mystique of these artifacts is so intriguing...to think of those people so very long ago (this is really, really an old city) and what they were doing, how they lived...

This is just one little excerpt: There are several very cool photos. Be sure to check them out with the link at the bottom.

The new golden artifacts are dated back to the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century BC and we found in the biggest of 26 ancient tombs of the Getes, a Thracian tribe that was in contact with the Hellenistic world. Picture taken November 7, 2012.

http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-thraci...133631604.html

[Renee750il]

And just think, we're in the habit of considering those civilizations to be lesser than our own, and the romans -- who essentially stole every ideology incorporated in their own society -- referred to civilizations like this as "barbaric" before they looted and destroyed them.

[Doberluv]

Yes, we sometimes think of those long ago civilizations as backward. But they were quite sophisticated and some of them very advanced.

I just think it's really amazing how these things were discovered...such beautiful artifacts. I imagine those people finding all that gold and creating this art from it and wonder what they were thinking. Of course, much of it is all tied up in their religion and rituals of life. It had a lot of meaning to them...very different from the way our culture would value it.