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Excavations in an ancient Greek city in western Turkey have unearthed artifacts and archaeological remains dating back to the fifth century BC – including a pot filled with an unidentified gold coin that was hidden for more than 2,000 years.
Researchers found the stash in Notion, an 80-hectare fortified city occupied from the sixth century BC to the first century AD. Found buried – possibly intentionally – under the floor of the fifth century BC courtyard house, fortune can tell the story of ancient mercenary soldiers during the conflict-ridden times, according to a news release from the University of Michigan.
“The discovery of valuable finds in controlled archaeological excavations is rare,” said excavation leader Dr. Christopher Ratté, professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archeology at the University of Michigan and director of the Conceptual Archeology Project, in a release.
“No one buries a coin, especially a coin of precious metal, without intending to retrieve it. So only the greatest accident can explain the preservation of such a treasure.”
The site includes typical features of ancient Greek cities, such as theaters, temples, town houses and markets. The understanding was largely untouched and unexplored for thousands of years until about ten years ago when Ratté and a team of researchers began the process of aerial survey and mapping of the visible remains of the city from the Hellenistic period (323 BC to 30 BC) .
But when researchers began excavations in 2022, with the aim of studying the remains that were not visible above ground, they made an exciting discovery: In the foundations of a large courtyard city house from the Hellenistic period there are the remains of an old house with pottery fragments inside. the wall dating to the fifth century BC, according to the release. The researchers later found a pile of coins buried under the floor of an older house.
The artifacts tell the story of the people who lived in the city not only during the reign of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, but also hundreds of years before, when there was tension between the Greek civilization and the Persian Empire.
Persian Darics for soldiers
The newly discovered coins are from the reign of the Persian Empire (sixth century BC to about 330 BC) and are known as Persian darics for the archer kneeling in front of the coin depicting the Persian King Darius. Like other ancient coins from the sixth to fourth centuries BC, these coins are undated, making it a challenge for researchers to determine when they were produced, said Dr. Peter van Alfen, chief curator at the American Numismatic Society, who was not part of the dig. .
“Several huge hoards of darics have been found in the past, numbering thousands of coins, but these were not found by archaeologists, so the coins were scattered and the context of the hoard (was) lost forever,” van Alfen said in an email. “The fact that this daric hoard was found in a controlled archaeological excavation is very rare. … The (archaeological) context of this hoard can provide absolute dating benchmarks for certain types of daric.
For about 200 hundred years the same coins were in production, they had small stylistic changes that researchers have tried to put in chronological order, Ratté said. Finding the coin along with external dating evidence allows scientists to understand how this coin had such a high intrinsic value at the time.
It is not clear what exactly the valuable coins are used for – one guess is a way to pay mercenaries, van Alfen said. One gold coin would be equivalent to a month’s salary for a mercenary soldier, according to the University of Michigan. Silver coins are more commonly used for everyday expenses, such as going to the grocery store. They were known as Persian silver sigloi, 20 of which would be equal to one gold coin.
“The fact that this hoard was found in a house shows that whatever the purpose of producing the daric, it was used in this case as a store of wealth,” said van Alfen. Because of the high value of gold coins, “it is more efficient to store wealth in gold coins than in silver,” he said.
As for the reason why the owner never returned to retrieve the gold, Ratté proposed that it could be an indication of Notion’s place as a border between Greek civilization and the Persian Empire during the centuries of conflict. Several scenarios could have led to the coins being left behind, he suggests, including one in 427 BC when an Athenian general attacked and killed a group of mercenaries for Persia.
Another clash occurred at the end of the fifth century BC when the Spartan navy defeated Athens in battle and had to evacuate the city, he added.
It is possible that the cache was a wealthy citizen who hoped to live like a king, such as “the very rich Pythius (ancient Greek architect) who had 4 million darics in his pocket as told by Herodotus,” said van Alfen.
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