Archaeologists Find 7,500-Year-Old Cult Complex in Bulgaria’s Durankulak Lake

2/5. Photo: TV grab from BNT

A prehistoric cult complex which is about 7,500 years old, i.e. dating to the Chalcolithic, as well as what has been described as “possibly Prehistoric Europe’s largest stone building”, have been discovered by the archaeologists who have resumed the excavations of the Paleolithic and Neolithic settlement on the Big Island in the Durankulak Lake in Bulgaria’s northeastern-most corner.

The excavations of the Paleolithic and Neolithic settlement on the Big Island in Bulgaria’s Durankulak Lake first started in 1970s, with the discovered Paleolithic finds dating back to around 10,000 BC; and a Neolithic settlement dating back to between 5500-5400 BC and 5100-5000 BC.

The settlement, which created what is said to be Europe’s first stone city, belongs to Blatnitsa, the earliest phase of Europe’s Late Neolithic Hamangia-Durankulak Culture (whose remains are found in today’s Black Sea regions of Bulgaria and Romania).

Some of the finds date back to about 10,000 BC, the Paleolithic Age, and there are also numerous finds from all the later periods in Prehistory, and from the Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The Big Island in the Durankulak Lake, a 3.4 square km lagoon, is known as the Lake City or the “European Troy”. [...] archaeologyinbulgaria.com/