13/01/2025
The excavations of the Paleolithic and Neolithic settlement on the Big Island in Bulgaria’s Durankulak Lake first started in 1970s, with the discovered Paleolithic finds dating back to around 10,000 BC; and a Neolithic settlement dating back to between 5500-5400 BC and 5100-5000 BC.
The settlement, which created what is said to be Europe’s first stone city, belongs to Blatnitsa, the earliest phase of Europe’s Late Neolithic Hamangia-Durankulak Culture (whose remains are found in today’s Black Sea regions of Bulgaria and Romania).
Some of the finds date back to about 10,000 BC, the Paleolithic Age, and there are also numerous finds from all the later periods in Prehistory, and from the Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The Big Island in the Durankulak Lake, a 3.4 square km lagoon, is known as the Lake City or the “European Troy”.
It features prehistoric remains from what is said to be the first sedentary agricultural culture in Europe, which created Europe’s first stone architecture.
The so called Big Island is today a peninsula with an area of 19 decares (app. 4.7 acres, or 0.019 square km).
