Bulgarian archaeologist Vasil Nikolov and his team have discovered "the oldest urban settlement found to date in Europe," according to Fox News.
The excavated site is located near Provadia, Bulgaria and reportedly hosted 350 people in its heyday.
Nikolov explains that the residents of the settlement "boiled brine from salt springs in kilns, baked it into bricks, which were then exchanged for other commodities with neighboring tribes,"
He adds, "At a time when people did not know the wheel and cart, these people hauled huge rocks and built massive walls. Why? What did they hide behind them? The answer was salt. For millenniums, salt was one of the most valued commodities, salt was the money,"
The archaeologist reveals that residents of the settlement used rock-salt deposits to produce this "money."
Fox notes that the stone walls which protected the excavated town were carbon dated to 4,700 and 4,200 B.C. and stood at 6 feet high and "are believed to be the earliest and most massive fortifications from Europe's prehistory." 4 ½ ft. thick walls protected a range of two-story houses that had a diameter of about 100 meters.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Nikolov said, "We started excavation work in 2005, but only after this archaeological season did we gather enough evidence to back up this claim."
Nikolov states, "We are not talking about a town like the Greek city-states, ancient Rome or medieval settlements, but about what archaeologists agree constituted a town in the fifth millennium BC,
New samples have been sent to the University of Cologne in Germany for ongoing analysis.