Tiny Bead, Found In Bulgaria, Is World's Oldest Gold

Every year, we discover something about our history on the planet through excavations around the world. In one such excavation, archaeologists found what may be the world’s oldest gold dating back to 4,500 B.C. The gold bead found was an eighth of an inch found in Bulgaria and it might be the oldest processed gold ever discovered in Europe and probably the world.

Reuters reported in 2016 that the bead predates the previous oldest gold object, the Varna Gold, which is a cache of gold found in a necropolis outside the Black Sea port of Varna. The Varna Gold cache was found between 1972 and 1991 and weighed about 5.8 kilograms. However, the new bead found in Bulgaria pushes the mystery back another 200 years.

Yavor Boyadzhiev, professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Science and in charge of the dig told Krasimiov, “I do not doubt that it is older than the Varna gold. It’s a really important discovery. It is a tiny piece of gold but big enough to find its place in history.”

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Researchers discover what triggered Earth's last ice age

At the beginning of the last ice, local mountain glaciers grew and formed large ice sheets, like the one seen here. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)

For quite some time, paleo-climate specialists have been perplexed by two enigmas: What was the origin of the ice sheets that defined the final ice age, and how could they expand so rapidly?

A fresh research conducted by the University of Arizona's experts suggests a plausible explanation for the swift expansion of the ice sheets that coated a considerable portion of the Northern Hemisphere during the last ice age. Furthermore, the study's findings may be applicable to other glacial periods in the Earth's past.

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The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Surprising new insights into the minds of this extinct human species suggest they may have been far more cultured than their outdated brutish reputation once suggested. But getting into the minds of a long-dead species is no easy task.

Sometime between 135,000-50,000 years ago, hands slick with animal blood carried more than 35 huge horned heads into a small, dark, winding cave. Tiny fires were lit amidst a boulder-jumbled floor, and the flame-illuminated chamber echoed to dull pounding, cracking and squelching sounds as the skulls of bison, wild cattle, red deer and rhinoceros were smashed open.

This isn't the gory beginning of an ice age horror novel, but the setting for a fascinating Neanderthal mystery. At the start of 2023 researchers announced that a Spanish archaeological site known as Cueva Des-Cubierta (a play on "uncover" and "discover") held an unusually large number of big-game skulls. All were fragmented but their horns or antlers were relatively intact, and some were found near to traces of hearths.

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