Thracian Culture

Isn't Bulgaria the land of one of the Europe's and the world's oldest civilization? The latest scientific researches of prominent European scientists show that most probably it is here, and not in Mesopotamia, or China, where the human civilization marked its start...

The term Thracians is a common name of the tribes once settled in the eastern parts of South-Eastern Europe. It was first mentioned by Homer in the second song of the Iliad known as the Catalogue of Ships when referring to the inhabitants of Thracian Chersonese and further in the tenth song when describing the warriors led by Rhezos in front of Troy's walls. This ethnic designation was most probably an Hellenized form of a Thracian name whose meaning is not clear yet. According to some hypotheses it meant 'brave, courageous' which in Greek obtained the implication of 'wild, ungovernable'.

The ethnogenic process that started developing during the middle of the 2nd millennium BC resulted in a relatively consolidated Thracian nationality. It roughly covered a territory bordering on the Carpathian Mountains to the north, the Prut river to the north-east, the Vardar river to the west, the island line Tassos - Samothrace to the south, and north-western Asia Minor and the Hellespontic coast to the south-east.

The Thracian language was Indo-European.

Some of the more popular Thracian tribes were: the Odrysians, the Gatae, the Bessae, the Kikones, the Mysians, the Paniones, the Bithynians.

The 2nd millennium BC saw the Thracians' transition from tribal to territorial communities, and later to early class state unions. The Thracians were familiar with centralized political and priest power, and military class organization; they also had a traceable dynastic line with its own treasury. Some of their rulers were outstanding political figures in the epoch prior to, in the course of and following the Troy War in the 13th century BC.