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August 08, 2007, 3:51 PM BG, 12:51 PM GMT

History and Religion

Published on March 07, 2007 at 5:26 PM BG
Updated on March 13, 2007 at 5:17 PM BG

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Rock Mysteries photo-exhibition

The National Natural Science Museum in Sofia played host to an exhibition entitled Rock Mysteries. Dr. Ana Raduncheva and Dr. Stefanka Ivanova from the National Archeology Institute with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who have made the selection of photos supply information on the prehistoric sanctuaries and ancient observatories in the Rhodope Mountains in Southern Bulgaria.

Click to enlarge and view the photos:

Says Mrs. Raduncheva: “The purpose was to show the wide public at least part of these exceptionally important sites. These are rocks with niches ancient people have dung in them. There are also rock sanctuaries dating back to the end of the 7th and the early 6th millennium BC. The entire network of such sanctuaries found not only in the Rhodopes but in other mountains as well has been organized until the end of the 4th millennium BC. Just to give you an idea, I should say that in the region of Momchilgrad, Eastern Rhodope Range, the number of such sanctuaries found so far is about 100.”
After the end of the 4th millennium BC / the stone-copper age/ the sanctuaries in these lands are abandoned until the late Bronze Age /between 1600 and 1200 BC/. Ceramic pieces from that period have been found, but they are rather few. A lot more ceramic objects have been found from the period after the 6th century BC and it is related to the Thracians. It is known that in the Rhodope Mountain the Thracians used to practice their cults in sanctuaries carved in the massive rocks, but nowhere do we find evidence that these places have been carved by the Thracians themselves. This is also the case with the rock palace at Perperikon, also in the Eastern Rhodopes. It possesses a huge stone altar made by prehistoric man. So archeologists have reached the idea that the sanctuaries have existed even before the Thracians and that they have only been adapting them to their cults.
“This is a matter requiring many years of studies,” Dr. Stefanka Ivanova adds. “And these studies are the deed of a stable scientific team including also archeo-astronomers, petrographers and biologists because we are talking here of a unique civilization having left us highly interesting monuments. It is strange that now they are called Thracian sanctuaries or Thracian niches because the phenomenon rather refers to a form of spiritual life dating back to about 4 thousand years before the Thracians.”
According to the organizers of the exhibition, this culture which is older than the Egyptian pyramids and the civilization of Mesopotamia is actually one of the oldest in the world. The idea of the authors of the exhibition is to expand it into an multimedia product. This will give more people the possibility to get acquainted with the ancient rock monuments, many of which are in most inaccessible places.

Written by: Andrey Melamed
English version: Iva Letnikova