It may be just a tiny gold bead — 4 mm (1/8 inch) in diameter — but it is an enormous discovery for Bulgarian archaeologists who say they have found Europe's — and probably the world's — oldest gold artifact.
The bead, found at a prehistoric settlement in southern Bulgaria, dates back to 4500 to 4600 B.C., the archaeologists say, making it some 200 years older than jewelry from a Copper Age necropolis in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna, the oldest processed gold previously unearthed, in 1972.
"I have no doubt that it is older than the Varna gold," Yavor Boyadzhiev, associated professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Science, said.