Page 10 - Martin Downs Bulletin - September '22

Page 10, Martin Downs

travel

Bulgaria: Birthplace Of

Spartacus

By Don Kiselewski, MCC,
D.S., Palm Beach Gardens
Travel Leaders
Long before Bulgaria
received its name, this
land area bordering
the Black Sea between
Turkey, Romania, Serbia,
Macedonia and Greece
was known as Thrace. Its
people were the Thracians
and they started recording Bulgarian town of Sozopol
history around 3500 B.C. The artwork – especially
that which was produced in gold – is considered by the Gradeshnitsa tablets
archeologists to be the oldest in the world, dating back based on the location where
some 6,500 years. they are kept. Gradeshnitsa
Not only does Bulgaria have some of the oldest pieces Monastery, also known
of gold artwork, it also ranks third in the world for the as St. Ioan, is located in
number of cultural sites after Greece and Italy. Bulgaria the northwest corner of
is said to have fostered the world’s first writing system. the country. These tablets
This claim is based on the engraved stones known as were found in 1969 and are
examples of late Neolithic
proto-writing known as
“Old European Script.” The
tablets were dated to around
500 B.C. Stephen Guide, a
Bulgarian-American of the
Institute of Transcendental
Analysis, claimed that he
had deciphered the tablets. A village in the wine region of Melnik, Bulgaria
However, I along with many
others haven’t heard or read the transcript. Although the country was named after the Bulgars,
The Thracian civilization, forerunner to Bulgaria, was the language and culture of the people died out. It was
jointly founded by the Greeks and Romans. Romans had supplanted by the Slavic language, religion and writing.
the command by the end of the first century A.D. At the Boris the First adopted Orthodox Christianity for the
decline of the empire, the Goths, Avars, Huns and Bulgars country in 865. Bulgaria is the birthplace of the Cyrillic
Two children in a traditional Bulgarian costumes at the invaded. In 679 A.D., the Bulgars crossed the Danube
Surva fair, which is held annually in Pernik, Bulgaria from the north and took control of the area. Travel on page 11

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