Archaeological excavations around the Ancient Greek city of Pylos have never yielded such stunning historical rewards.
Workers thought they had been digging out an ancient house, and the researchers discovered the warrior burial site un-robbed, which is unusual for a tomb this wealth-abundant.
Hard clay made digging expensive and time consuming, but as they ventured deeper into the soil, they hit stone corners, and realised that they may have stumbled onto something at last.
Then they struck bronze, and the quantity and quality of the items they were finding just continued to increase. All findings date back to before the Dark Ages of Greece. Western Civilisation was founded here.
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Close to the Palace of Nestor, the burial was not the first of early civilisation discoveries. In 1939, Carl Blegen discovered tablets enscripted with words from a very old Greek writing language known as Linear B.
The middle aged warrior, who has come to be known as the “Griffin” warrior, was buried alongside a long bronze sword which has a golden hilt.
Expensive beads made of amethyst and jasper were scattered around inside his tomb, not to mention an ancient mirror was found.
Some more of the items include ivory sculptures and masses of jewellery, stones produced on the island of Crete and colourful gemstones. Unlike anything from the period!
The Griffin warrior tomb may shed some light on our understanding of Europe’s first Mediterranean tribes. Four solid gold rings are amongst more artifacts that were almost undoubtedly produced on the island of Crete. Total objects number 3,000.