[HN Gopher] Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin
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Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin
Author : speckx
Score : 185 points
Date : 2026-04-17 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thehistoryblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thehistoryblog.com)
| lordleft wrote:
| I knew vaguely that Troy had many layers of settlement, but I
| didn't realize that Troy had an extensive life in antiquity that
| extended into the classical Greek age (Post-Bronze Age) and Early
| Roman Age. It's funny to think of Roman and Greek Tourists
| visiting Troy VIII in 300 BC.
| lamasery wrote:
| I wonder if there were street vendors selling little replicas
| of the wooden horse.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| When I visited Troy, the museum's trojan horse replica said
| "Under Construction". Apparently it had been that way for
| months and months, which was pretty funny considering the
| original took only 3 days.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Be careful building that thing! It might go off!"
| schoen wrote:
| I had the same problem during my visit. It seems we can't
| build bridges, railroads, or Trojan horses nearly as fast
| as earlier generations could.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You might be interested in this, a list by Stripe's
| founder.
|
| https://patrickcollison.com/fast
| exitb wrote:
| Was there anything resembling tourism in 300 BC?
| arethuza wrote:
| _" The final layers (Troy VIII-IX) were Greek and Roman
| cities which served as tourist attractions and religious
| centers because of their link to mythic tradition."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy
| gostsamo wrote:
| no, but in first century bc and after that the roman world
| was connected enough that rich young romans were doing their
| version of the grand tour. Cesar managed to be kidnapped by
| pirates doing something like that, if I remember it
| correctly.
| Gormo wrote:
| > no, but in first century bc and after that the roman
| world was connected enough that rich young romans were
| doing their version of the grand tour.
|
| So "yes", then.
| detourdog wrote:
| There were "pilgrimages", trade, and extended families.
| Joseph traveled with his brothers to Egypt long before 300 BC
| thehours wrote:
| Alexander the Great visited it in 334 BC:
| https://greekreporter.com/2025/09/07/alexander-the-great-
| vis...
|
| Edit: this was also mentioned in the article
| aaronharnly wrote:
| not _exactly_ a tourist :) but the point stands
| olalonde wrote:
| That's covered in the article.
| riffraff wrote:
| not only there was, people were still people and we have
| roman and greek graffiti on monuments ("X was here" and
| similar).
| globnomulous wrote:
| Yes, definitely. There was tourism in Greece in the Classical
| Period, too. Epidaurus is a good example: a major religious
| sanctuary, side by side with a theatre and athletics venues,
| all part of the thriving local economy propped up entirely by
| tourism. Fun fact: history's first recorded hypochondriac was
| a frequent patient/visitor at the temple of Asclepius in
| Epidaurus.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Don't underestimate ancient globalization.
|
| Heck, Inuit had Chinese bronze artifacts [0] well before
| European contact (basically 4,000 miles).
|
| [0] -
| https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/archive/releases/2016/Q2/old...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I read something about the Sphinx in Egypt suggesting that
| modern excavations came to the conclusion that at least one
| Ancient Egyptian dynasty probably excavated it trying to figure
| out the history of it as well
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The oldest written text that definitely refers to it is the
| Dream Stele by Thutmose IV, which describes him having it dug
| free of sand. The monument was more than a thousand years old
| at that point.
|
| Young kings showing their piety by restoring old monuments
| was useful royal propaganda. This wasn't even the last time
| that the Sphinx was restored.
| ocschwar wrote:
| The Pyramids have a recently noticed Tamil inscription from
| Indian tourists visiting 2000 years ago.
|
| And the Neo-Babylonian Empire had the first tourism minister
| taking care of a paleo-Babylonian site.
| rtkrni wrote:
| No information about the kid who found it? Did he get some reward
| for finding it? Does it come from some archeological site around
| there or some collector just lost it there?
| adriand wrote:
| Yeah I really want more information than "on a walk". Really?
| No digging whatsoever involved? Did they walk past an eroding
| riverbank or something? I'm so curious.
| zadikian wrote:
| There's a link in the blog to another source saying he found it
| in a field that turned out to be an archeological site. A
| modern collector didn't lose it.
|
| https://greekreporter.com/2026/04/16/ancient-greek-coin-troy...
| RyanOD wrote:
| Does he get the coin back after the museum is done showing it?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| "Finders keepers" is a legal principle only common in common
| law countries. In most of the world, in no way could you be
| construed to own something just because you found it in the
| ground.
|
| In most civil law countries, everything always has a legal
| owner (usually reverting to the state when no other legal
| owner can be found), and if you just "find" something and
| take it, you have committed theft. In Germany, the
| antiquities law is clear that anything of significant
| historical value belongs to the state, with a monetary reward
| possible for the finder in some situations (and finding
| something and not reporting it is a crime). If an old coin is
| deemed to not be historically significant, it probably
| belongs to the landowner.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| "At first, archaeologists wondered if the coin was a "modern
| loss"--perhaps dropped by a collector in recent years. However,
| a professional excavation of the discovery site suggests a much
| deeper connection.
|
| The field was found to be a multi-layered historical site,
| containing Bronze Age and Iron Age burial remains, Roman-era
| artifacts, and even a medieval Slavic knife fitting. This
| "archaeological context" suggests the coin likely arrived in
| the region centuries ago, rather than falling out of someone's
| pocket last week."
|
| If I get that right, the student somehow managed to find the
| coin in a field, and after archaeologists started digging and
| found a whole historical site.
|
| Since the location is a field, I imagine the coin had come to
| the surface when the farmer was plowing the field, or something
| like that. Still, why was the student walking in a field?
| Germans are known for going on walks, but why in a field? Was
| he or she in the field with the express purpose of trying to
| find something interesting, maybe even using a metal detector?
| Or was it a purely accidental find?
| roelschroeven wrote:
| I found some more information in this other article:
| https://www.dw.com/en/teen-discovers-first-ancient-greek-art...
|
| ""After we understood where it came from, I had the task of
| figuring out where this coin was found exactly. Fortunately,
| the boy was very precise and showed me exactly where he found
| it on a map. Then we went into our findings registration and
| found that this agricultural site was actually a well-known
| place," Henker explained.
|
| Berlin'sMuseum for Pre- and Early History has been
| systematically conducting surveys on empty land in Berlin since
| the 1950s to determine where possible excavation sites might
| be.
|
| In this particular spot, explains Henker, the upper layers of
| the soil were surveyed in the 1950s and 70s and again later.
| "Every time, they discovered a few distinct finds that made
| them say 'ok, there's probably more in the ground here'."
|
| Over the years, fragments of ceramics, Slavonic-era knives and
| a bronze button have been unearthed on the site, as well as
| burnt human bones, leading researchers to conclude that this
| are was used as a burial ground dating as far back as the early
| Iron Age -- and has been in use throughout the centuries."
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Back in my day, if you uncovered some priceless historical
| artifact, the least the newspaper could do is print your
| friggin' name in the article. Did some nearby archaeology
| professor already swindle the kid out of the coin and call dibs
| or something?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Spandau occupies a commanding position on the wide confluence
| of Spree and Havel river. It is part of the wider river
| networks and one can easily navigate to Elbe and Danube. The
| coin might have ended up here via trade.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/aFfBzWNgnMiCvdHf6
| cammasmith wrote:
| Can't even imagine what it's like to live in Europe. Just
| casually going on a walk and finding a coin that is over 2
| millennia old. Just another Tuesday.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You can walk around the USA and find flint arrowheads ... not
| sure the Native Americans used coins as such.
| robot-wrangler wrote:
| Yeah the wild thing about the southwest is the open-air
| museum aspect of it, not the layers on layers. For
| petroglyphs, the southwest has so many that date to the high
| middles ages (~1100 AD) you can stumble on them by accident
| as a hiker. AFAIK the oldest in the area are still thought to
| be these ones[0], about 9000 years ago. (Always controversial
| to date rocks I guess, but the oldest North American mummy
| should be easier and is about the same.[1])
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnemucca_Lake [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Cave_mummy#Dating
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The southwest has plenty of layers on layers. Tucson is
| built on a Spanish fort, which is built on native villages
| on top of yet older native villages going back almost 4,000
| years, as one example.
|
| For another example, most neighborhoods in eastern phoenix
| are built on top of old Hohokam villages, adjoining older
| basketmaker sites. The canals throughout the city often
| follow the old Hohokam canals. Fun fact, the Intel Chandler
| campus is on top of old hohokam suburbs of Pueblo de los
| muertos, which is buried under the modern suburbs.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The Puebloan culture in the southwest during that time was
| basically a full fledged civilization. It's insane how
| underresearched such a culture is despite having built
| megastructures like within the Grand Chaco Canyon
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| did they leave behind significant amounts of writing?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nope. Which is what makes it so difficult. Additionally,
| adjacent nations like the Navajo, Apache, and others are
| _very_ tight lipped about their extremely robust
| ancestral and oral history because of bad experiences
| along with taboos.
|
| It felt like a mix of rightful wariness due to
| untrustworthy opportunistic anthropologists from the 19th
| and 20th century along with taboos that developed due to
| some sort of collapse.
| louky wrote:
| Old trade beads can sometimes be found, old stashes and
| caches. Pony beads, seed beads, and others. They were
| traded/used as "money". The Hudson's Bay Company brought
| millions of them to this continent.
|
| https://surface.syr.edu/beads/vol2/iss1/6/
| dylan604 wrote:
| Growing up as a kid, we used to find old wagon wheels and
| arrow heads frequently. There used to be an old fort not far
| from where my parent's house was located. A limestone creek
| ran on the back part of their property and defined the
| property line. We'd find all sorts of artifacts up and down
| this creek. I even came across a rock with an circular hole
| that was obviously bored into it and charring around the
| hole. I used to have some interesting show-n-tells. This was
| in the 80s.
| dhosek wrote:
| I grew up in the bed of a drained lake (https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Chicago_Portage#:~:text=this%2...), so there were no
| native American artifacts to be found. The best we could do
| were the foundations of some homes that had been on sanitary
| district land but then torn down with the area reverting to
| forest (sadly, this forested area which was open to
| exploration when I was a kid has since been fenced off).
| tiagod wrote:
| I feel the same way about the US. Can't imagine the vast
| wilderness you still have. I've never been somewhere truly wild
| and untouched by man.
| danans wrote:
| > truly wild and untouched by man.
|
| In the US you can find truly wild places, but it is pretty
| hard to find places untouched by man. Humans have been here
| for at least 15000 years, and from the very beginning were
| having huge impacts on the ecology.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Downtown Los Angeles has a pretty famous park and museum with
| fossils of preserved megafauna that have been extinct for
| millennia still regularly found just chilling in a bubbling
| lake of oil. I even worked there 25 years ago.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| What's it called?
| Clamchop wrote:
| La Brea tarpits
| traderj0e wrote:
| La Brea tarpits, the essential LA elementary school field
| trip
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| And well known to fans of Dr Demento. This is the Wikipedia
| about "Hancock Park" the city park that contains the tar
| pits and museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_Park
|
| There is also a district of the city that contains NIMBYs
| and other fossils, by a similar name.
| dhosek wrote:
| Pico and Sepulveda! Pico and Sepulveda!
| unsignedchar wrote:
| the museum is small but excellent; it has a wall covered just
| in Dire Wolf skulls found there
| danans wrote:
| > Already in the 5th century BC, Herodotus reports about the
| 'Hyperboreans' (Folks from above the North Wind), and how they
| regularly visited the island of Delos
|
| Heh, some things never change.
| hecturchi wrote:
| As a child I was walking down the street and kicked something by
| chance that sounded metallic. 150 year old coin, irrc. Just there
| on the asphalt next to the sidewalk.
|
| Unfortunately bronze, with trimmed edges, common mint and worth
| very little. But if you tell me someone just stumbles onto and
| old coin in the street just lime that, I pretty much believe it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| When I was a teenager I was working at McDonalds and someone
| came in and paid for a meal using old US Silver Certificate
| bills. Some people just are careless and don't notice old or
| unusual things.
| bombcar wrote:
| I used to see those once or twice a year, now it's been a
| decade since I've seen even a $2 in the wild.
| genxy wrote:
| You can get new $2 from your bank
| eszed wrote:
| And they're still a pain to spend, because too many
| people refuse to believe they're real money. Or else
| don't want to take them because there isn't a slot in
| their cash drawer. I inherited a couple of bundles from
| my dad last year (he made $2 bills his "thing", much like
| Woz, because he enjoyed arguing with cashiers), and
| exchanged them all at the bank for "real money".
| cxr wrote:
| I believe that you have run into difficulty with some
| person(s) not understanding that $2 bills are real money.
|
| I don't believe that they've been anywhere nearly as much
| of "a pain to spend" for you as you're stating. You're
| just gabbing.
| bombcar wrote:
| I know and do; it's a question if I get one in change or
| otherwise.
|
| (IIRC some businesses used to give change in $2 to show
| their "influence" on the area.)
| traderj0e wrote:
| Wow. I like how those look almost like modern bills except
| for a cool seal and text saying it's redeemable for silver,
| subtle flex.
|
| Only time I ever got rare money was a buffalo / Indian head
| nickel as change in a cafe very recently, not a valuable form
| though.
| eszed wrote:
| I've had that happen a couple times, too. The first time I
| was super excited, and looked up the collectable price, and
| it was like $8 for a (pristine) $5 bill. I think I kept it
| for a few days to show to people, and then spent it. I
| inherited a couple from my dad last year, and the collectors'
| price hadn't changed, so I did the same thing. Still cool,
| though. I hope whatever cashier received them from me got a
| similar thrill.
| dhosek wrote:
| I took my kids to one of those gaming centers (skee ball, claw
| machines, etc.) and stumbled across a 19th century 50-cent
| piece in the change machine. It apparently is worth about $150
| last time I checked.
| incanus77 wrote:
| The oldest coin in my collection is an 1838 large cent, which
| my dad says he found as a kid in a crack in the sidewalk. He
| was born more than 100 years after that date.
| jethkl wrote:
| > if you tell me someone just stumbles onto and old coin...
|
| I found a bill from the Weimar hyperinflation era. Its face
| value was several billion (Milliarden). Its only value was as a
| curiosity.
| cachius wrote:
| Official German press statment:
| https://www.berlin.de/landesdenkmalamt/aktivitaeten/presse/2...
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Germany was populated in antiquity?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Is this a joke?
| lukan wrote:
| Probably just ignorance, but there actually was a gap in that
| time in some areas in germany. Close to my hometown are the
| remains of an old ancient fortress - that was build by mostly
| unknown people and abandoned at 400 b.c. and only 1000 years
| later there were settlements again. A bit rougher area,
| though.
|
| The flat area of Berlin on the other hand, had human
| settlement since 60 000 years.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I don't think anyone requires every hectare to have been
| developed in order to consider an area inhabited.
| Neanderthals are named after the Neander valley (Thal) near
| Dusseldorf, so I think we can definitely say yes, that
| humans have lived in Germany since long before antiquity.
| tremon wrote:
| Germany was only populated in olden times. The present name for
| (most of) the region is Deutschland.
| traderj0e wrote:
| Romans referred to the region where they came into contact with
| villages across the Rhine as "Germania."
| mc32 wrote:
| Did Schliemann pass through Berlin, maybe?
| moezd wrote:
| That, or German soldiers and engineers and adventurers passing
| by in the 19th and early 20th century bringing home "a
| souvenir". It would be in character since the large sections of
| ancient Pergamon were also lifted and shifted to Berlin as
| well.
| brailsafe wrote:
| This article https://www.dw.com/en/teen-discovers-first-ancient-
| greek-art... posted by roelschroeven is much more informative
| than this AI slop.
|
| Link should be updated to this.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Whoever dropped that coin is going to be very upset!
| jb1991 wrote:
| That's addressed in the article: unlikely to be a collector who
| lost the coin. The coin was just one of many artifacts
| discovered in that area over the last 75 years.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Unsure if this is the connection, but the guy who discovered Troy
| in the late 1800's (Heinrich Schliemann) actually brought Troy
| artifacts to a Berlin museum, which someone with more knowledge
| of Berlin than me may be able to draw more connections from.
|
| Per his Wikipedia:
|
| "In 1874 Schliemann published Troy and Its Remains. Schliemann at
| first offered his collections, which included Priam's Gold, to
| the Greek government, then the French, and finally the Russians.
| In 1881, his collections ended up in Berlin, housed first in the
| Ethnographic Museum, and then the Museum for Pre- and Early
| History, until the start of WWII.
|
| In 1939, all exhibits were packed and stored in the museum
| basement, then moved to the Prussian State Bank vault in January
| 1941. In 1941, the treasure was moved to the Flakturm located at
| the Berlin Zoological Garden, called the Zoo Tower. Dr. Wilhelm
| Unverzagt protected the three crates containing the Trojan gold
| when the Battle of Berlin commenced, right up until SMERSH forces
| took control of the tower on 1 May.
|
| On 26 May 1945, Soviet forces, led by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Antipenko,
| Andre Konstantinov, deputy head of the Arts Committee, Viktor
| Lazarev, and Serafim Druzhinin, took the three crates away on
| trucks. The crates were then flown to Moscow on 30 June 1945, and
| taken to the Pushkin Museum ten days later. In 1994, the museum
| admitted the collection was in their possession."
|
| From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann
| jb1991 wrote:
| I've always wondered how something so old and in one place so
| long is just sitting on top of the soil so easily found. How did
| it go for such a long time not noticed?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Earth erodes, fields are plowed, roots disturb the soil; if
| it's sitting on the surface now, it almost certainly was buried
| not long ago.
|
| It's the same reason paleontologists can go back to the same
| places every year and find new fossils, or farmers keep having
| to remove stones from their fields.
| agentifysh wrote:
| so how much is this coin worth ?
| tdiff wrote:
| I don't get why people capable of making complex bas-relief could
| not make the coin more or less round
| nemo wrote:
| It is more or less round. While modern milled coining created
| nice neatly rounded coins, throughout the history of hammered
| coins they were very rarely anything like a perfectly rounded
| coin. They were creating these things in a mass production
| environment where they made tens of thousands (or more the
| Romans), quality control was focused on weight over all else.
| For silver coins and gold some issuers did often try to hold to
| higher aesthetic standards, there's some Roman/Sassanian/etc
| coins that are fairly nicely rounded (though often still a bit
| ragged on the edges from being hammered) but for bronzes they
| did rarely focused on this (the Ptolemaics did, some others
| did, most didn't care).
| ekaryotic wrote:
| Do you happen to know the reason the term for english is
| sasanach in irish language. i.e. is there a connection
| between sasanach and sassanian.
| simonreiff wrote:
| Antiquity slop
| e-dant wrote:
| Rarely do I think "that would make great poem"
| tsoukase wrote:
| Most probably the artifact was transferred there in modern times.
| Once I had found a 2nf century AD Roman coin while playing
| outside, worth about 200E. If they were transfered in their
| corresponding time, they would be burried many metres beneath
| earth surface.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Berlin specifically has a few meters of soil separating it from
| that period, but that's not always true. I've excavated
| millennia-old sites barely centimeters under the surface.
| Others are buried under meters of soil overnight. There's also
| natural processes moving things around in the soil (e.g.
| rabbits, freeze-thaw cycles), and human processes (e.g.
| tilling).
|
| I wouldn't jump immediately to modern collector, nor does the
| article.
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| Sometimes, ancient artifacts may be dropped on your head in
| Berlin, especially if you're a former angel who is hard up for
| money!
|
| https://youtu.be/xLfpSTmVSks?t=260&si=YvNcX7OmrVa2dXaA
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