Arab coin breaking in half for thousands of years

 

When you’re young you don’ give a toss if they found evidence of some major thousand years old fortification somewhere in the woods on the top of your home town. You don’t see the old guys with detectors searching the ground to the songs of birds early in the morning. Not if you live through 1990s velvet revolutions and all you want is to push the boundaries to the West.

It makes me sound like an old person but I wish I was one of those who have enough time to carry their detector to the top of the hill and fiddle with above the ground to the tune of the autumn sun.

But I can’t. It is prohibited – or so the sign nailed to the tree says. Many people ignore it, my Dad knows because he sees them on his walkabouts. Slovakia does not have enough money to police such endevours and most of its heritage has been traded away by amateur collectors.

I visited this place after twenty years years (that makes me feel old even more). The last time I have seen it was getting ready for my first time camping without my parents and we did not say ‘lol’ in those days. One of my friends experienced some real kissing during that ‘pioneer camping experience’ to my horror but I will spear you the detail.

 

And today I learnt that more research has taken place in this largely unexplored fortification, probably belonging to the Great Moravia rulers now simple called a Slavic Fortification. They even found coins from Al Mu’tazz period, the ruler of Baghdad who was helped to power by Turks but his rule lasted only three years. He died in the midst of chaos which probably explains how the coins have scattered around the world (according to my simplified version of history). I wonder now, how he managed, during such a short rule, to have his image imprinted on the coins but I will leave it to historians to prove.

By the way, the forest ranger stumbled on the fort by accident when he kicked his boot into ancient clay pipes. Since then, archeologists have found Roman and Celtic coins and multitude of tools. And all this with a fraction of funding they spend on projects abroad. The place is worth a visit. I hope you enjoy my amateur photos and the article below. There’s a few stories waiting to be written from those forest grounds, I bet.

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20542813/archaeologist-pieces-together-early-history-of-what-is-now-western-slovakia.html