THE LEGACY OF THE THRACIANS

Considering the extremely high time limits for the stone as a main working material, the first metals /copper and gold/ as well as the earliest farmers and stock-breeders form a chronology of the Bronze Age that spans more than twenty centuries: from the beginning of the third millennium BC to the end of the second millennium BC. All the basic technological phases of mining, processing and application of the bronze alloy /copper-lead-arsenic/ for tool and weapon making are found in the Southeastern Europe. However, this archaeological reality changed c. 1200 BC as the iron – recognized for a long time as a rare and valuable metal – was introduced everywhere for production of more efficient tools, attacking armaments, cart/chariot parts as well as for horse trappings. After four more centuries the European Southeast gradually entered the time of its written history prepared by the evolution of the ancient Greek language and writing /Linear B script/ during the time of the Mycenaean Hellas – between 17^th century BC and 13^th century BC.

The culture-historical problem of Thrace, i.e. of its proto-history, consists in the question of what the archaeological landscape and its analysis indicate: do the forms of settlement life, of economic activities and political arrangements, as well as the rites and beliefs connect the Southeast with Middle and Central Europe – where all chronological frames of the epochs are situated later in the time scale – or do they match those of the Aegean basin and Anatolia? The proved general answer read that Thrace was an Aegean-Anatolian space in the southeasternmost part of Eurasia. In spite of this, the archaeological situation in the land situated between the Carpathian Range and the Rhodopes/Aegean sea – the core of the Thracian ethno-cultural community – indicates more complicated interactions. They outline this area as a living contact zone which continues to function throughout the Antiquity by means of mutual exchange of ideas, artifacts, skills and experience.

The two principal entrance-exit interaction directions with the North lay along the course of the Istros River and its adjoining areas and along the so-called Eastern Arc of the Balkan Peninsula. This arc begins in the steppes near the Black Sea /South Russia and Ukraine/, proceeds through the Dobrudzha plain /Southeastern Romania and Northeastern Bulgaria/ and along its coastal line on the Pontos passes the eastern part of the Haemus Mountain, slopes down along the course of the Tonzos River and goes towards the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. All major periods of the Southern Eurasian proto history are richly evidenced along this arc but the most valuable sites are those giving information about the formation of the Thracians.

The ethnic consolidation phenomena become detectable in the archaeological material approximately at the end of the Eneolithic Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age. This material comes from necropolises /cemeteries/ and tells /settlement mounds/. The tells are artificial heights resulting from the debris accumulation from a series of settlements superimposed in the course of millennia, but with several sub-centers of life. Local and imported artifacts, together with the discernible practices in such sites, characterize the way of living and the social structures.

The other participants in the ethnogenesis of the Thracians were horses. The emergence of the horse in Southeastern Europe and Near East poses both an archaeological and culture-historical problem. From an archaeological point of view the problem lies in the dispute whether the horse bones and skeleton parts discovered in these lands are sufficient to compose the chronology of the domestication of the wild breeds by areas and living centers. The second problem is the more important one. It is formulated by the questions who, when and how turned the domestication into a production branch, directed it towards an improving large-scale and heavy stock-breeding, reorganized the being as a movement on wheels and built a military regime based on mounted troops? Such people are the nomads. The etymology suggest stockbreeders and masters of geographic uninhabited space turning it into pasture grounds. Thus, the stockbreeders reclaimed steppe lands in a wave-like manner and distributed these lands in a way that enables them to stay there until they could feed their herds.

Changes in the social-political and economic organization took place around and after the middle of the second millenium BC at the beginning of the reorganization of the settlement system in Southeastern Europe and in Thrace. The newlybuilt fortified residences that held whole districts under control reveal the stabilization process of the power and activities of the horsemen aristocracy. The latter demanded production, building and wartime services by force. The society in transition towards a territorial state knew war as an everyday life as the open plunder assembled land, raw materials, captives, properties, treasures, cattle, tools and precious artifacts in the treasury of the local dynasty. These dynasties in Thrace were still anonymous around and after the middle of the second millenium BC. Their generalized image is that of the ruler who held in his hand the gold set found near the village of Vulchitrun, Pleven District, North-Central Bulgaria. The Vulchitrun set is unique despite the fact that some of the vessels and their lids have analogues in Mycenaean Hellas and elsewhere.

Herodotus declares in the fifth book of his “Histories” that the Thracians were the most numerous people in the world after the Hindus. This is a very well known piece of information but it represents an impression rather then a statistical conclusion. It is simply an indirect characteristic of the demographic situation in Thrace, both in Europe and in Asia Minor. The number of ethnonyms confirm this situation in more than 80 records in ancient Greek and Latin historiography. However, the ethnonyms are not tribal names”, as is usually accepted, but family names /or bynames/ of local dynasties. Their actions were noted and recorded during wars, invasions and campaigns as well as because of their political relations, trade contacts, minting and conspiracies. The Thracian “ethne”, which never did unite in a single state structure, represent organizations of a military-nomadic type. The treasures of the Thracian aristocracy found in burials, tombs or in the open in the lands ruled by the dynasties of the Getae, Dakoi, Triballi, Odrysai, Bessi, Edoni and Bithynoi denoted the places of golden power and golden death up to the beginning of the Roman Rule.