manny-jestem
01.12.09, 20:20
Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of
Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley
and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art,
technology and long-distance trade.
For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built
sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered
large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held
an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one
cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere
in the world.
www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01arch.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print