Grandmother finds rare ancient artifact — but doesn’t tell experts for over 50 years
A woman in Poland found a unique stone in a field and kept it. Over 50 years later, archaeologists got their first look at the stone — and identified it as a rare ancient artifact.
Mariusz Buczko recently visited his grandmother, who gave him a unique stone, the Lublin Provincial Conservator of Monuments said in a Dec. 1 news release on Facebook. His grandmother found the stone over 50 years ago in a field in Biłgoraj and decided to keep it.
The grandson donated the stone to a local museum, officials said.
Jerzy Libera, an archaeology expert with the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, identified the stone as a rare type of flint ax from about 4,400 years ago, conservators said.
Photos show the gray-brown ax. It has a trapezoidal shape, a slightly jagged blade and a smooth-looking surface. The artifact is about 4.3 inches long.
One side of the ax has a lighter brown patch that almost looks like the center of a circle. The other side is darker brown with two small indents near the thicker end, a photo shows.
Archaeologists identified the ax as a tool made by the Globular Amphora culture between about 2600 and 2400 B.C., the release said.
The Globular Amphora culture is a largely unknown people group who lived in the late Neolithic period. Their artifacts are more commonly found in eastern Poland and Ukraine, officials said. The ax found in Biłgoraj indicates these people lived over a wider area than previously thought.
Biłgoraj is a town about 150 miles southeast of Warsaw and close to the Poland-Ukraine border.
Officials also announced a second discovery. Another resident of Biłgoraj found a stone hatchet fragment in their field.
A photo shows the hatchet piece. It has a cone-like shape, speckled brown coloring and measures about 3 inches in length.
Archaeologists were not able to confidently identify or date the hatchet because of its fragmented nature.
Both artifacts will be given to the museum in Biłgoraj after being fully analyzed.
Google Translate was used to translate the news release from the Lublin Provincial Conservator of Monuments.
This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 9:01 AM with the headline "Grandmother finds rare ancient artifact — but doesn’t tell experts for over 50 years."
