Thracians - the first goldsmiths?

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

I'm not certain if this is true or not, but I was recently reading somewhere that the tribes on the Black Sea that collectively became known as the Thracians - were in fact one of the rest, if not, the first gold and silversmiths. I was wondering if anyone in the org has any further information to support that claim. Either way, they also worked with tin and lead (pewter I think), and had begun these practices around 8,000 BC.

If anyone can back this claim please post here. Thanks. ~D

[Colovion]

I'd be interested in this as well; I'm not all that well versed in the cultures immediately surrounding the Black Sea.

[Byzantine Prince]

Thacian Gold Fever - link (http://www.archaeology.org/0503/abstracts/kitov.html)

Many Thracian kings were burried Mycinean style, with the golden mask and everything. So there you have it. I believe they started goldmining since the bornze age: link (http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=49429)

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

Thanks for the link Byzantine Prince. I was curious because it was claimed they were the first culture to begin goldmining and working and it was quite odd that a culture on the black sea (so far from the proposed cradles of civilisation) that it was hard to believe.

[edyzmedieval]

I don't think the Thracians were the first.

I believe the Scythians were, because archeologists found tombs of Scythian leaders, cluttered with gold!!!!

[Colovion]

Thanks for the link Byzantine Prince. I was curious because it was claimed they were the first culture to begin goldmining and working and it was quite odd that a culture on the black sea (so far from the proposed cradles of civilisation) that it was hard to believe.

Oh not that far. The Black Sea is rather close to Mesopotamia
http://lib.lbcc.edu/images/Near%20East/mesopotamia-map.jpg

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

I see it was rather close, but since the thracian tribes were on the opposite side of the strait, it seemed unusual that they would begin goldcrafts early. And it is possible the scythians were the first, in fact, the Japanese were the first to make pottery around 10,000 BCE.

[Aenlic]

Herodotus called the Thracians the most numerous people after the people of India.

The finds at Varna in Bulgaria contain the largest and oldest known collection of worked gold, dated at around 4500-4000 BCE. This puts it squarely in the Chalcolithic era and much earlier than previously thought. The oldest known use of worked gold in China, for example, is around 1100 BCE. The Scythians don't appear in recorded history until the Assyrians write about them around 700 BCE.

The people of this area at the time were proto-Indo-Europeans, and they are likely the base culture for the spread of Indo-European languages, east into India and north and west to Italy and Germany. Tagging a name to them as the Thracians really can't be done, because the Thracians were so disunited for so many millenia. They didn't form their first kingdom until the Odrysians in the 5th century BCE. But they certainly weren't any other people; and all of the evidence suggests that the people who formed the Odrysian and Dacian kingdoms were the same people who lived there 4000 years earlier.

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

Gold is a malleable(spelling?) material just like forms of copper and tin which were used during the chalcolithic period. It would be easy to assume that some of these early people found exposed deposits of gold and also shaped it into tools, weapons, etc.

Again I'd like to thank everyone who helped and assisted me with opinions, resources and brilliant map (yay!). ~D