15,000 Tiny Gold Rings Unearthed

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed a treasure that rivals that of Troy. 15,000 tiny gold rings. some so small that the welds can be seen only with a microscope! And they are old. 4,000 years old. Just older than Troys treasure.

Yahoo News
SOFIA, Bulgaria - Bulgarian archaeologists have unearthed about 15,000 tiny golden pieces that date back to the end of the third millennium B.C. — a find they said Wednesday matches the famous treasure of Troy.

The golden ornaments, estimated to be between 4,100 and 4,200 years old, have been unearthed gradually during the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the capital, Sofia, said Vasil Nikolov, an academic consultant on the excavations.

Isnt this amazing? I wonder how they made the rings so small.
MSNBC
USA Today

This is a most fascinating story. Now, I always worry about authenticity when there are reports of spectacular finds. For example: how did they know that they're from around 4000 BC? I think a lot more information needs to come out about this before we can assess it properly.

Oh my gosh. What beautiful pieces and workmanship! This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

The golden artifacts from a vast burial complex discovered in the 1970s near the Black Sea port of Varna date back to the end of the fifth millennium B.C. and are internationally renowned as the world's oldest golden treasure.

and

"The buried man was cremated, and then an earth mound was piled over his ashes and his riches, suggesting that he was part of these people's social elite," Nikolov said.

I assume they have found bodies, which can be dated?

To make things so small with such detail it was common to use shortsighted people, since there eyes could focuse better on small things.

Also the BBC reported a few days ago that even more Thracian gold had been found in a small village.

I did some jewelry work about 25 years ago (as well as some chain mail making) so I know a bit about this first-hand.

First, gold is pretty malleable. You can pull it out into threads that are fine enough to sew with (and gold-thread clothing is a fairly old technology. If you look at them closely, you'll see that they're made a lot like chainmail -- you take the soft wire and wrap it around another piece of wire, clip it, and then make another. It goes pretty quickly and you could even do this with a good flint knife.

Gold that fine can actually be welded by a fairly cool flame. Since they had early bronze-age technology, it wouldn't be too hard to seal gold links together with something (like still more gold.) Some of our older jewelry making techniques require only a simple lamp (there's a type of glass bead called "lampwork" and it was done by melting the glass/softening the glass in the wick of a plain old lamp. It was tedious, mind you, but beautiful.)

Remember, this isn't pure gold; it's probably got some silver or other metals mixed in, so it probably melts at a lower temperature.

(g) And yes, I'm terribly short-sighted... about 20/700 at the last prescription (in the range where they have to start special ordering my lenses)

But isn't it beautiful? Great find!

It is really great to see something like this - so intricate and lovely, amidst all the hooplah in the world lately. I want some cool jewelery!

Its really cool ! Very Beautiful!

I can only imagine how beautiful that must have looked on a fair maiden thousands of years ago , but I imagine it was and is very impressive!

Jewelry seems to me to be uniquely human. I'd like to hear what others wiser than me think about that.

Originally posted by Byrd

Gold that fine can actually be welded by a fairly cool flame.

Thread is one thing, welds so small you cannot even see them in a microscope is pretty amazing. Have you heard of welds that small before?

Some advanced civilisation if you had all the time in the world to be working those tiny rings. You know the whole 'advanced' civilisation premise; If you are still hunting and gathering you are pretty much confined to your basic rustic pottery with possibly a few designs and of course you standard WBD (weapons basic destruction).

I would like to know more about these people. Were they astronomers and Mathematicians as well as highly trained artisans?

As to the jewelery - who wore it? Would it be reserved for just a few or were they all universally adorned in such a gorgous manner. What a cheery concept if they ALL had to wear it and made it their main function in life: to create fabulous art and to look and feel good wearing it...

That is until some other group came around coveting their stuff...

OH pretty jewelry!! I want! I want! I want!

More evidance to support the Troy stories as fact and not fiction....Brilliant evidance!

Originally posted by d1k

Originally posted by Byrd

Gold that fine can actually be welded by a fairly cool flame.

Thread is one thing, welds so small you cannot even see them in a microscope is pretty amazing. Have you heard of welds that small before?

Yes, there are some on the Sutton Hoo treasures in England. All done by very careful shortsighted people.

Thread is one thing, welds so small you cannot even see them in a microscope is pretty amazing. Have you heard of welds that small before?

No...great find...

[edit on 4-9-2005 by Enkis_my_hero]

can gold withstand alot of heat? this may tie in with some ancient technology, they should check under a microscope to see if its coiled again like they coil tungsten (theres 1 meter of tungsten in a lightbulb).