At Varna on the Black Sea, one old man was buried with a third of all the gold in a 6,000-year-old cemetery, and the richest graves held no bodies

In October 1972 an excavator operator, Raycho Marinov, found the Varna cemetery by accident^†. Ivan Ivanov excavated it from 1972 to 1991. A 2017 study by Raiko Krauß and colleagues dates the cemetery from 4590 to 4340 BC, about 250 years, with about 270 burials. It calls the richness of the graves "singular in Old World prehistory." The goods were spread very unevenly. One third of all the gold objects came from Grave 43, the grave of a man over 60. Another third came from a few symbolic graves and deposits that held no skeleton, including Graves 1, 4, 36 and 41. One symbolic grave held gold appliqués, chains, arm rings, a stone axe-sceptre with a gilded shaft, and copper tools and weapons. The authors say the large number of symbolic burials suggests Varna served several settlements. Altogether about 3,000 gold objects weighing about 6 kilograms were found^†. Archaeologists cite Varna as early evidence of wealth and rank concentrated in a few people at death. The gold is displayed at the Varna Archaeological Museum and the National Historical Museum in Sofia^†.