"There are crouched and extended inhumations. Some graves do not contain a skeleton, but grave gifts (cenotaphs). Interestingly, the symbolic (empty) graves are the richest in gold artifacts. 3000 gold artifacts were found, with a weight of approximately 6 kilograms. Grave 43 (photo) contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. Three symbolic graves contained masks of unburnt clay.

The findings showed that the Varna culture had trade relations with distant lands (possibly including the lower Volga and the Cyclades), perhaps exporting metal goods and salt from the Provadiya rock salt mine. The copper ore used in the artifacts originated from a Sredna Gora mine near Stara Zagora, and Mediterranean Spondylus shells found in the graves may have served as primitive currency."

The text above from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_Necropolis

WOW! What a find! And what a find, Alan! Ten pops and ten wows!

Michellezm said what I wanted say! Fantastic clip!

That is crazy! At first I assumed it was a country in Africa or South America (Egyptian or Mayan)...but Bulgaria? That is so cool - you would think all the treasures under Europe had been found already! Great Clip!

Wonderful clip!

those burial remains appear to have been a highly revered
leader or monarch. beautiful clip!

So glad you liked the clip - with all the skeleton photos, it kind of looks like a house of horror but definitely a lot of interesting ancient artifacts and clearly a divide of social classes had started.

Fantastic. Thanks (again) Alan

so there is one gold piece that shows up in several of the pics... is it an ... um... golden... uh... "extension"?

Funny, Varna is my home town yo!

curomo, I think the "extension" is a pipe of some type...