By: Victoria You

In the late fifth century B.C.E., a soldier held a jug called an olpe containing gold coins called darics, which were each worth a month’s payment. Then, he lowered the olpe into a hole that he had dug, buried it, and left. But misfortune struck, and he never returned to retrieve his things.

2,400 years later, a group of archaeologists were digging around in an ancient city in Turkey when they found the olpe containing gold coins. “The coins were buried in a corner of the older building, we weren’t actually looking for a pot of gold.” Dr. Ratté said. “This was true in deepest antiquity, as remembered in the story of the Trojan War, and it remains true to this day, as demonstrated by the Syrian refugee crisis.”

An archaeologist from the University of Oxford who was not in the project, Andrew Meadows, said he didn’t know of any hoard of this type to be found in Asia Minor. He said, “This is a find of the highest importance, the archaeological context for the hoard will help us fine-tune the chronology of Achaemenid gold coinage.”

It is fascinating to look back in history and discover more. And sometimes, it feels like history is being made and that the people of the future might one day think that phones or cars are old or not useful. But there is history in the past, and there will be history soon in the present and future!