site.btaThousands of Years Ago, People in Varna Area Were Taller than Neighbours, Had Diverse Racial Features

The ancient people who inhabited the Varna area, on the northern stretch of the present-day Bulgarian Black Sea coast, were different from their Balkan neighbours. They were taller and possessed features associated with various races, according to archaeologist Vladimir Slavchev of the Varna Regional Museum of History and Viktoria Ruseva of the Department of Anthropology and Anatomy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. They were interviewed by BTA's Varna correspondents Mila Edreva and Danail Voikov.

According to them, studies conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany revealed details about the ancient inhabitants of the Bulgarian land. The institute's Department of Archaeogenetics examined 27 samples from the Varna Necropolis along with material from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Central Europe. This enabled the scientists to build a huge database.

The findings show that the people who lived in the Varna area between the Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age (5th to 4th millennium BC) carried various pathogens such as Hepatitis and Salmonella. It cannot be said whether they died of these diseases. Their immune systems reacted in different ways and some individuals may not have developed the diseases. Back in those times, people died much younger than today, usually at 30 to 40 years of age. Infant mortality was high.

Genetically, no individual from the Varna Necropolis was very different from the rest. This does not mean that they were an isolated group prone to in-breeding. They were close genetically but not necessarily close of kin.

Material found around today's city of Varna suggests that the local ancient population was linked mainly to populations in Anatolia who later migrated along the Danube to Central Europe. Surprisingly, the Max Planck Institute studies showed that the people of the Varna Necropolis were genetically distant from the inhabitants of the steppes north of the Black Sea, and genetic influences were stronger along the route from Anatolia to Central Europe. One could argue that this does not seem to make much sense, given that the people north of the Black Sea and those in the Varna area were close economically.

All those thousands of years ago, people were considerably shorter than nowadays, but some of the individuals buried in the Varna Necropolis were quite taller than average. Although they were Caucasian in appearance, they had features typical of the "coloured" races: darker skin and hair, and fuller lips. But their noses were thin.

Comparisons between genetic lineages in Romania's Pietreni area and Bulgaria's Yunatsite (near Pazardzhik) and Varna show that the respective ancient populations were mixed together. Similarities between Yunatsite and Pietreni suggest the existence of a large ethno-cultural complex in which not only artifacts but also groups of people moved about and mixed with one another.

At the time of their arrival in the area, the Varna people were underdeveloped compared with their neighbours, but adapted quickly enough to produce what is known as the oldest worked gold in the world, which was a kind of business niche for them. Varna is perhaps the poorest area in the Balkans in terms of natural resources such as ore and stone, and the people who settled there had to adapt in order to survive. The Varna people came here at the onset of a general surge in crafts, which implied knowledge sharing. It is hard to prove yet quite likely that these changes helped the Varna people fit into the larger picture.

Whatever their physical appearance, these people basically lived like us and had the same notions of economy, business, law and order as ours. Scientists are now certain that their diet was dominated by meat and grain. They may have lived by the sea, but fish accounted for less than 5% of their food consumption. Studies show that there were no starving individuals. They all consumed the same food, which means there was no dire poverty, and everyone could earn a living, the two experts told BTA.