The team of Georgi Ganetsovski, an archaeologist from the Vratsa Regional History Museum who specializes in Paleolithic settlements, has uncovered a structure that might be the world's oldest sun temple, 3,000 year older than Stonehenge.
     The 8000-year-old structure has been found near the village of Ohoden, Vratsa District, Northwestern Bulgaria. The floor of the site, which was uncovered from under a thick layer of earth, is paved with cobblestones; the structure itself has the form of the Cyrillic letter "П", with its open end directed to the east.
     "My research during the fall equinox and the measurements and tests that we made show that the shape of the structure is focused on the sunrise. Another interesting fact is that we found dozens of clay and stone discs at this spot," explained Ganetsovski. In his words, in early agricultural societies the disc with a dot in the middle symbolized the sun disc, which indicates that the sanctuary is the oldest temple dedicated to a cult of the sun in Bulgaria, and possibly in the world.
     Ganetsovski has been excavating the site near Ohoden for years, which is believed to contain important remains from the first agricultural communities in Europe; over the summer he found an 8000-year-old skeleton of a young man dubbed by the media 'The First European.'

Edited from Novinite (16 December 2010)