By: Brady Cheng

In the 5th century, a soldier dug a hole and buried a jug with gold coins inside: all his life savings stored away for safe keeping.

But he never came back to get the jug, and it was buried, undiscovered, for 2,400 years, waiting to be discovered by Christopher Ratté, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan. This jug was found in the ruins of Notion, an ancient city-state in Turkey.

“The coins were buried in a corner of the older building,” Dr. Ratté said. “We weren’t actually looking for a pot of gold.”

The coins, called darics, were used to pay soldiers in Notion, a big ancient area in Turkey. Notion was a Greek community that started around 1000 B.C. due to people moving across the Aegean Sea. The treasure at Notion was buried during a time of war and conflict, and everyone had to escape.

“This was true in deepest antiquity, as remembered in the story of the Trojan War,” Dr. Ratté said. “And it remains true to this day, as demonstrated by the Syrian refugee crisis.”

Anatolia, a region in Turkey, is where the first coin was made by the Lydians. It was called a “stater” and was made of a mix of gold and silver called electrum. Later, King Alyattes’ son Croesus made the first gold coin, the Croeseid. The phrase “rich as Croesus” is used to describe someone very wealthy because Croesus was extremely rich during his time.

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