By: Olivia Ho

A mercenary buries his savings in a carefully dug hole, hoping that his money will be safe and sound when he returns. As he finishes covering his gold with dirt, his work blends perfectly into the ground. However, while the gold was kept safe, the mercenary was never able to dig up his savings again. The pot remained untouched for 2,400 years, until now: the pot of gold has been found.

This scenario is one of several hypotheses that Christopher Ratté, an archeologist at the University of Michigan has produced on how the pot of gold ended up buried underground.

While in Turkey, Dr. Ratté and his research team found the pot of gold buried in the ground next to the oldest building in the ancient city-state located in Notion, 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.”

Notion is a Greek-speaking community in Anatolia and has a rich history. The city has connections to the Trojan War and the Peloponnesian War. Anatolia is also where the first stater (ancient coin) was created by the Lydians. King Alyattes, ruler of the Lydians, made the design based off the Lydian stater, an ancient Greek coin. Then his son first minted the first true coin which is known as the Croseid.

The area was then conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 546 B.C. Although Croesus was defeated by Cyrus the Great in battle, his system of gold-based currency lived on. However, the Persians introduced their own currency into the region which included two types of coins. There were silver coins called sigloi, and gold coins that were called darics which is the same type of coin that Mr. Ratté and his research team found.

The discovery of these coins is crucial as it enhances our knowledge of past civilizations and the lives of the people who lived back then.