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0:00In 1972,
0:01an excavator driver working on a
0:03building site near the Black Sea hit
0:05gold. Not a coin, a grave.
0:09The oldest worked gold ever found on
0:12Earth, buried long before the first
0:14pyramid rose in Egypt. And it's not even
0:16the strangest thing in Bulgaria.
0:19This country hides a river that swallows
0:21whatever falls into it, a forest made of
0:24stone, and a cave where Europe's first
0:26humans lived
0:28and then vanished.
0:30Number 12, the forest that turned to
0:32stone, Pobiti Kamani, near Varna.
0:36About 18 km west of Varna, the ground
0:39turns flat and sandy, almost like a
0:42desert. And standing in that sand are
0:44stone columns, hundreds of them. Most
0:47reach 5 to 7 m, the tallest [music] up
0:50to 10.
0:51Many are hollow and filled with sand.
0:54And here's the strange part, they have
0:56no foundation. They aren't attached to
0:58the bedrock. They're just stuck in the
1:00sand, as if something hammered them in
1:02from above.
1:04That's exactly what the name means, the
1:06stones beaten into the ground.
1:09Scientists have proposed dozens of
1:11theories to explain them, petrified
1:13trees, coral, rainwater dripping through
1:15sand.
1:17One of the leading theories today is
1:18stranger than all of them.
1:20Around 50 million years ago, this was a
1:23seabed. Methane gas seeped up from deep
1:26below, and microbes feeding on that gas
1:28cemented the sand around it, column by
1:30column, stone built by bubbles.
1:34But even the people who favor that
1:35theory admit it doesn't explain
1:37everything. Some of the columns are
1:39stacked in layers, one above the other,
1:41and nothing quite like this exists
1:43anywhere else in Europe. The closest
1:45comparisons are on the other side of the
1:47planet in Australia, and even those are
1:49different.
1:50Locals have their own answer. They say
1:53giants fought here and hammered the
1:55stones into the Earth. Stand among them
1:57at sunset, and that doesn't sound like
1:59the worst theory you've heard.
2:01And this is the easy one, because the
2:03next mystery doesn't stand on the
2:05surface. It goes under it.
2:08Number 11.
2:10The river that swallows things.
2:12The Devil's Throat, Trigrad Gorge,
2:15Rhodope Mountains.
2:17Deep in Bulgaria's southern mountains, a
2:19river runs between towering marble
2:21cliffs.
2:22Then, it does something rivers aren't
2:24supposed to do.
2:26It goes into the mountain.
2:28The water pours into the mouth of a cave
2:31and drops [music] 42 m, the highest
2:33underground waterfall in the Balkans,
2:36into a chamber so loud it's known as the
2:38Hall of Thunder.
2:40And then, it vanishes into the rock.
2:43It comes out again about half a
2:45kilometer away. A short distance, easy
2:47to understand.
2:49Except it isn't.
2:51When researchers poured dye into the
2:52water, it took more than an hour and a
2:55half to cover that short stretch.
2:57And when people have sent wood and other
2:59objects into the river at the cave to
3:01follow their path, they haven't come out
3:03the other side.
3:04The water returns. [music]
3:06What it carries doesn't.
3:08So, in 1970, two Bulgarian cave divers
3:12decided to find out where it goes.
3:14>> [music]
3:14>> They dove into the flooded passage at
3:16the foot of the waterfall.
3:18They never came back up. Their bodies
3:20were never found. Neither was their
3:22equipment.
3:23And this cave was feared long before
3:25that. The Thracians, who lived in these
3:28mountains, believed this abyss was the
3:29road to the underworld.
3:31>> [music]
3:31>> Legend says this is where Orpheus, the
3:33musician of Greek myth, went down into
3:36the kingdom of the dead to bring back
3:37his wife. A cave the ancients called the
3:40door to the underworld. Where the water
3:43takes far too long, and what goes in
3:46doesn't come out.
3:47Maybe the myth is just a myth, but the
3:50river still keeps its secret. And the
3:52next mystery isn't hidden at all. It's
3:54hanging [music] in plain sight, 23 m
3:57above your head.
3:59Number 10. The Horseman on the Cliff.
4:02Madara, Northeastern Bulgaria.
4:0523 m up a cliff that rises 100 m
4:08straight from the ground, a rider is
4:11carved into the living rock. Almost
4:13life-size. A horseman, a dog running
4:16behind him, and a lion beneath his
4:18horse.
4:19It's been there since the early 800s.
4:22Sorry, since the [music] early 700s,
4:24around 1300 years.
4:27And it's the only rock relief in all of
4:29Europe from the early Middle Ages.
4:31Think about how it was made. Someone
4:33worked on a near vertical wall, high
4:36above the ground, and carved a royal
4:38scene into the stone.
4:40Around it are Greek inscriptions that
4:42tell of events in the reigns of Bulgar
4:43Khans Tervel, Kormisos, and Omurtag.
4:46[music]
4:48So, the case should be closed.
4:50It isn't.
4:51Historians still argue about who the
4:53rider actually is.
4:55The most widely accepted idea is Khan
4:57Tervel, or a symbol of the early
4:59Bulgarian rulers.
5:01But others have linked the image to
5:02something older, to Thracian culture, to
5:05ancient Iranian gods.
5:07Even the details are argued over.
5:10Experts still disagree about what he's
5:11wearing, and whether his spear actually
5:13pierces the lion.
5:15What isn't disputed is the effect.
5:18>> [music]
5:18>> You stand at the foot of the cliff, look
5:20up, and a rider looks down at you from a
5:22wall nobody should have been able to
5:24work on.
5:25It's one of Bulgaria's most famous
5:27images. And nobody can tell you with
5:30certainty who he really is.
5:33But at least he was meant to be seen.
5:35The next people on this list were buried
5:37so they would never rise again.
5:40Number nine. The graves they nailed
5:42shut. Sozopol, on the Black Sea Coast.
5:46In 2012, archaeologists excavating in
5:49the Black Sea town of Sozopol opened a
5:51medieval grave.
5:53Inside was a man with a piece of an iron
5:55plowshare [music] driven through his
5:56chest.
5:58In the grave beside him, another man
6:00with an iron object driven into his
6:01body.
6:03These weren't battle wounds. They were
6:04done after death, deliberately, to make
6:08sure the dead stayed down.
6:10The headline said one word, vampire. And
6:14Sozopol wasn't a one-off. According to
6:16the head of Bulgaria's National History
6:18Museum, around a hundred similar burials
6:21have been found across the country.
6:23The belief behind them was simple.
6:25People considered evil in life might
6:27rise after death and torment the living,
6:30unless they were pinned into the ground.
6:33But here's what makes it strange. These
6:35weren't outcasts or beggars.
6:37Every one of these so-called vampires
6:39was a man. Many were aristocrats and
6:42clergymen.
6:43The one with the plowshare in his chest
6:45was buried right next to the church, a
6:47place of honor.
6:48Archaeologists think he may have been
6:50one of the town's medieval leaders.
6:52So, what did these powerful men do to
6:54make their own communities fear them
6:56after they died?
6:57We don't know.
6:59And this wasn't a short-lived panic. The
7:01practice continued in some Bulgarian
7:03villages until the early 20th century.
7:06Today, that skeleton from Sozopol lies
7:08in a museum in Sofia.
7:10A man who was buried with honor next to
7:13a church, and then given a piece of iron
7:15through the chest, just in case.
7:18And some Bulgarian rituals are still
7:20alive today, including one where people
7:22walk into fire.
7:25Number eight. The people who dance on
7:28fire.
7:29The village of Bulgari, Strandzha
7:31Mountains.
7:32In a village of only about a hundred
7:34people in the mountains near the Turkish
7:36border, a ritual takes place every June
7:39that once filled some thirty villages
7:41across the region.
7:43It begins in the morning. The icons of
7:45Saints Constantine and Helena are
7:47carried out to a holy spring to the
7:49sound of a drum and a bagpipe.
7:52And then, the evening comes. A great
7:54fire burns down to a circle of glowing
7:57embers. The crowd stands in silence. The
8:00sacred drum begins.
8:02And the dancers walk into the fire,
8:05barefoot.
8:06They're called Nestinari. They cross the
8:08embers, sometimes in what looks like a
8:10trance, and some even make predictions
8:13while they dance.
8:14And according to the tradition, they
8:16aren't performing. They're the people
8:18through whom the saints themselves
8:20express their will.
8:22That's where the mystery begins.
8:24The saints are Christian, but the ritual
8:26is a mixture of Orthodox belief and much
8:29older pagan tradition from these
8:30mountains.
8:31Traditionally, the right to dance was
8:33passed down within families, from parent
8:35to child. Nobody can say when it
8:37started. UNESCO recognizes it as part of
8:40humanity's intangible heritage. That's
8:43the official way of saying it's alive
8:45and no one can date it. So, you're
8:47watching people step into fire for
8:49reasons that may be older than the
8:51church they're honoring. And in a
8:53village of 100 people, thousands come to
8:55watch.
8:57So far, everything on this list is
8:59something you can stand next to. A
9:01stone, a cliff, a cave, a fire.
9:04But from here, the mysteries get
9:06heavier, literally. Because Bulgaria has
9:09a habit that few countries can match.
9:11Farmers, workers, and ordinary people
9:14keep digging up treasure. And almost
9:16every time, nobody can fully explain
9:19where it came from.
9:21Number seven. The gold three brothers
9:24dug up. Panagyurishte, Central Bulgaria.
9:27December 8th, 1949.
9:30Three brothers are digging clay at a
9:32tile factory near the town of
9:34Panagyurishte.
9:35A shovel hits metal.
9:37What comes out of the ground is nine
9:39gold vessels. Drinking horns shaped like
9:42animal heads, jugs in the form of
9:44women's heads,
9:45>> [music]
9:45>> an amphora, a shallow ritual bowl. More
9:48than 6 kg of 23-karat gold made more
9:52than 2,300 years ago, decorated with
9:55gods, heroes, and myths in [music]
9:58astonishing detail. It's one of the most
10:00famous treasures ever found in Europe,
10:03and [music] experts still disagree on
10:04the most basic questions. Where was it
10:07made? When? Was it created for the
10:09market or commissioned by a king?
10:12It looks like a single set, but there's
10:14so much gold in it that researchers
10:15[music] doubt the pieces were even made
10:17at the same time. And Panagyurishte
10:19isn't an exception. In 1985, a tractor
10:23driver named Ivan Dimitrov was digging a
10:25ditch for water pipes in his garden in
10:27the village of Rogozen. He found 65
10:30silver vessels. When archaeologists
10:32arrived, they found a hundred more. 165
10:36vessels in total, more than 20 kg of
10:39silver. Who buried them there and why?
10:42It's still debated. And in 1924, two
10:45brothers working in their vineyard at
10:47Valchitran pulled out 13 gold vessels
10:49from the Bronze Age weighing 12 and 1/2
10:52kg. Over and over, the same story. An
10:56ordinary person, [music] an ordinary
10:58day, and a shovel that breaks through
11:00the floor of history.
11:02Which raises an uncomfortable question.
11:04If this much has been found by accident,
11:06how much is still [music] down there?
11:09In one valley, we actually have a
11:11number. Number six. The buried head and
11:14[music] the drowned capital. The Valley
11:16of the Thracian Kings near Kazanlak. The
11:19plain around Kazanlak is covered in
11:21[music] hills that aren't hills. They're
11:24burial mounds, around 1,500 of them. And
11:27only a few hundred have ever been
11:29excavated. In 2004, [music]
11:32archaeologist Georgi Kitov opened one
11:34called Golyamata Kosmatka. Inside was a
11:37royal tomb with a burial chamber carved
11:40from a single block of granite. A gold
11:42wreath, silver vessels, a bronze helmet.
11:46And on several of the objects, a name.
11:49Seuthes. Seuthes the Third, king of the
11:52Thracians. But the most famous find
11:54wasn't inside [music] the tomb. It was
11:56buried in the ground in front of it. A
11:59bronze head. A portrait of the king
12:01himself [music]
12:02with a thick beard and a crooked nose.
12:05Not the idealized face Greek artists
12:07usually made. A real man. It was buried
12:10there on purpose as part of a ritual
12:12[music] that no one fully understands,
12:14and even the identification is still
12:16argued over. Some researchers doubt this
12:18is really Seuthes' tomb at all,
12:20>> [music]
12:21>> and the king's city is gone, too.
12:23Seuthes founded a capital called
12:24Seuthopolis. In the late 1940s, it was
12:27found during the construction of a dam.
12:30Archaeologists studied it from 1948 to
12:321954,
12:34and then the reservoir was filled.
12:36Today, the capital of a Thracian kingdom
12:38lies under the water of the Koprinka
12:40Reservoir. A king's head buried in front
12:43of his tomb, hundreds of mounds no one
12:45has opened, and his capital under a
12:48lake. Bulgaria didn't lose this kingdom.
12:51It's still there. We just put water on
12:53top of it. But, the Thracians left
12:55something even more powerful than gold,
12:57a prophecy, and nobody knows where it
13:00was spoken.
13:02Number five, the oracle that chose
13:04emperors, the Eastern Rhodope Mountains.
13:08The Roman historian Suetonius tells a
13:10story about the father of Augustus,
13:13Rome's first emperor.
13:15While traveling through Thrace, [music]
13:16he went to a sacred grove of the wine
13:18god and asked the priests about his
13:20son's future.
13:21When wine was poured on the altar, a
13:23pillar of flame shot up above the roof
13:26of the temple, reaching toward the sky.
13:28Suetonius says the same sign had
13:30appeared only once before, when
13:32Alexander the Great had made a sacrifice
13:34at that same altar.
13:36Two predictions, two world empires, and
13:40one problem.
13:41The ancient accounts never made clear
13:43where that sanctuary [music] was.
13:45The leading candidate is Perperikon, a
13:47city carved into a rocky hill near
13:49Kardzhali. Its excavator, Professor
13:52Nikolay Ovcharov, believes it was the
13:54great sanctuary of Dionysus, and he
13:57keeps finding altars there.
13:58But, Perperikon isn't the only claimant.
14:01High in the mountains is Belintash, a
14:03flat rock plateau covered in carved
14:06holes, steps, and niches [music]
14:08whose purpose no one has fully worked
14:09out. Some claim it was the oracle. The
14:12evidence for that is thin, but nobody
14:14has ruled it out either. And the legends
14:17don't [music] stop there. At Tatul,
14:19another rock sanctuary nearby, a
14:21sarcophagus carved into the stone is
14:23promoted as the tomb of Orpheus himself.
14:26Archaeologists stress that this remains
14:28a hypothesis, but the fact that it can
14:31even be suggested tells you something
14:33about these mountains. Here's the irony.
14:35In most countries, finding a famous
14:37temple is hard because nothing is left.
14:40Here, it's hard because there's too
14:42much. The Rhodopes are full of carved
14:45sacred rock. The most powerful prophecy
14:48of the ancient world was spoken
14:49somewhere in these hills. We just can't
14:52agree on which one. From here on, the
14:54mysteries stop being about kings and
14:56temples. They're about firsts, marks
14:59that might be writing,
15:00>> [music]
15:00>> the first gold, the first town, and the
15:03first Europeans. And every one [music]
15:05of them is missing a piece.
15:08Number four, signs before writing.
15:11Gradeshnitsa, northwestern Bulgaria. In
15:141969, archaeologist Bogdan Nikolov was
15:18excavating a prehistoric settlement near
15:20the village of Gradeshnitsa when he
15:22lifted a palm-sized clay plaque from the
15:25floor of an ancient house.
15:27Both sides were covered in incised
15:29signs, lines, angles, and symbols
15:32arranged in rows.
15:34And researchers have been arguing about
15:35it ever since.
15:37The first question is when it was made.
15:40Some date it to the fifth millennium
15:41before Christ, or even earlier. Others
15:44place it in the fourth.
15:46That matters because similar signs from
15:48this part of Europe, known as the Vinča
15:50symbols, are mostly older than the
15:52oldest accepted writing in the world
15:54from Mesopotamia, by more than a
15:56thousand years.
15:58The second [music] question is what the
15:59signs are.
16:00The cautious view is that they're
16:02symbols or decoration with no direct
16:04link to spoken language, not writing as
16:07we define it. That may well be right,
16:09but others have argued for decades
16:11[music] that the signs are arranged too
16:13deliberately in rows without overlapping
16:16to be mere decoration.
16:18What makes this fascinating isn't a
16:20claim that Bulgaria invented [music]
16:21writing, it's that someone, thousands of
16:24years ago, in a farming village in the
16:26Balkans, pressed marks into clay in a
16:28careful order on both sides to keep
16:32something, to say something.
16:34>> [music]
16:34>> And whatever it was, we can't read it.
16:37Hold on to that, because a few hours
16:39east, people of that same age were doing
16:41something even harder to explain.
16:44Number three, the oldest gold on Earth,
16:48the Varna Necropolis, Black Sea Coast.
16:50[music]
16:51Back to that building site from the very
16:53beginning, October 1972.
16:57An excavator operator named Raycho
16:59Marinov is digging on the edge of Varna
17:01when his machine turns up something
17:03bright.
17:04He realizes it matters, and he contacts
17:06the local museum.
17:08That decision leads to one of the most
17:09important discoveries in world
17:11prehistory. Archaeologists spent nearly
17:1420 years excavating the site. They found
17:17[music] 294 graves dated to roughly
17:204,600
17:22to 4,200 years before Christ.
17:25Inside them were around 3,000 gold
17:28objects, about 6 kg of gold, the oldest
17:32gold treasure of its size ever found
17:34anywhere.
17:35But the gold isn't the strangest part.
17:38The strangest part is who got [music]
17:40it. Most graves held little or nothing.
17:43A few held almost everything. [music]
17:45One man buried in grave 43 went into the
17:48ground with about 990 gold objects,
17:52around 1 and 1/2 kg of gold, and a
17:55golden scepter.
17:57Researchers say that single grave
17:58contained more gold than had been found
18:00in the entire [music] rest of the world
18:02from that era.
18:04This is one of the earliest clear signs
18:06of something new in the human story, a
18:08person so [music] powerful he was buried
18:10like a king thousands of years before
18:13kings existed. And then there are the
18:15graves with nobody in them, symbolic
18:18graves with gifts but no skeleton. And
18:21they're the richest of all. Three of
18:23them held masks made of unbaked clay,
18:26faces without [music] bodies. Their
18:28meaning is unknown. And here's the part
18:31most people don't know. Around 30% of
18:33the cemetery has never been excavated.
18:36Whatever is in those graves is still in
18:38the ground. So, where did all this
18:41wealth come from? A Stone Age community
18:43on the Black Sea coast holding more gold
18:46than anyone else on the planet. Who were
18:48they trading with? What were they
18:50selling?
18:51For a long time, there was no good
18:53answer. Then, archaeologists started
18:55digging about 40 km inland and the
18:58answer was salt.
19:01Number two, the first town in Europe.
19:04Solnitsata near Provadia.
19:07Near the town of Provadia, there are
19:09salt springs. People have been
19:11extracting salt here for around [music]
19:137,500
19:14years.
19:15And around those springs, archaeologist
19:18Vasil Nikolov uncovered what he believes
19:20is the oldest town in Europe. Not a
19:23village, a town. Around 350 people,
19:27two-story houses, and a stone wall
19:30around it all, [music] 3 m high and 2 m
19:33thick, built between 4700 and 4200
19:37before Christ. Among the earliest and
19:39most massive fortifications known
19:41[music] from prehistoric Europe.
19:43Why build walls like that in a world
19:45without states?
19:47Because of what they [music] were
19:48guarding.
19:49The people here boiled brine from the
19:51springs in kilns and baked it into
19:53bricks of salt, which they traded with
19:55neighboring groups.
19:57Back then, salt was more than seasoning.
19:59It was wealth. As Nikolov put it, salt
20:03was the money.
20:04And that's the connection. Nikolov
20:06believes this is how the region became
20:08so [music] rich. Salt went out, gold
20:11came back. Solnitsata may be the engine
20:14behind [music] the oldest gold treasure
20:15on Earth.
20:17But even here, the dead are strange. In
20:20the town's graves, some bodies have been
20:22cut in half and only the upper half,
20:24from the pelvis up, was buried. Why?
20:28Nobody knows.
20:29And then, the whole world collapsed.
20:32Between roughly 4200 and 3900 before
20:35Christ, more than 600 settlements across
20:38the lower Danube and eastern Bulgaria
20:40were burned [music] or abandoned. Places
20:43that had been lived in for centuries
20:45emptied, all within the same few hundred
20:47years. [music]
20:48Researchers call this abandonment
20:50enigmatic. Was it climate change?
20:53Exhausted land? War?
20:54>> [music]
20:55>> Newcomers from the steppe? Possibly all
20:57of them. The most advanced society in
20:59Europe disappeared and it left no
21:02[music] account of why.
21:04That's a civilization vanishing.
21:06Number one is bigger. It's the
21:08disappearance of the first people.
21:11Number [music] one, the first Europeans.
21:15Bacho Kiro Cave near Dryanovo, central
21:17Bulgaria. [music]
21:19In the wooded hills of central Bulgaria,
21:21there's a cave you can visit with a
21:22ticket. It has lights, it has paths,
21:26school groups walk through it. And in
21:272020 and 2021,
21:30it changed the story of who first
21:32settled Europe.
21:34In 2015, an international [music] team
21:36re-excavated the cave floor. They found
21:39a human molar and tiny bone fragments
21:41alongside stone tools and thousands of
21:44animal bones.
21:45The human remains were dated to between
21:47about 42 and a half and 46,000 years
21:50ago.
21:51They were Homo sapiens, modern humans,
21:54people like you.
21:55Among the oldest known modern humans
21:57ever [music] found in Europe. That alone
22:00would earn a place on this list. But
22:02when geneticists read their DNA, they
22:04found two more surprises.
22:06The first, these people had a
22:08Neanderthal ancestor only five to seven
22:11generations back.
22:12Think about that. A great, great, great
22:15grandparent who was a Neanderthal. It's
22:18one of the closest snapshots ever
22:19captured of two kinds of human meeting.
22:22The second surprise is the one nobody
22:24can fully explain.
22:26These first Europeans did not contribute
22:28much to the Europeans who came after
22:30them. Their genetic legacy survives, but
22:33not in Europe. It's found in people
22:35living today in East Asia and the
22:37Americas. They got here first. They
22:40lived [music] in this cave. They made
22:42tools. They wore pendants carved from
22:44the teeth of cave bears. They met the
22:46Neanderthals and had families with them.
22:49And then, in Europe, their line faded
22:51away.
22:52Why? The cold? Competition? Too few of
22:56them? We don't know.
22:58And that's the pattern hiding under this
23:00entire country. Bulgaria isn't
23:03unexplained because nobody has looked.
23:05It's unexplained because every time
23:07someone does, the story cuts out right
23:09before the ending. The first gold with a
23:12third of the cemetery still unopened.
23:15The first town, abandoned. The first
23:17Europeans, gone from the continent they
23:20found. Europe keeps beginning here, and
23:23Bulgaria keeps the endings [music] to
23:24itself. But, the people who replaced
23:26them, the ancestors of most Europeans
23:29alive today,
23:30>> [music]
23:30>> had to come from somewhere, too. And the
23:32route they took runs through places even
23:34stranger than this one. That's the next
23:36video, and it's waiting for you right
23:38there on screen. And if there's a place
23:40near you that nobody can quite explain,
23:43tell me in the comments. Those are the
23:45ones we're hunting next.

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