Archaeologists In Italy Unearthed 300 Roman Gold Coins – And The Treasure Could Be Worth Millions

it's September 2018 and in the city of Como in Italy construction work is underway that will lead to an astonishing discovery yes an excavation on the site of the 19th century chris sony theater reveals something incredible a real-life treasure trove buried in the earth and inside an ancient jug lies one particular hall that could be worth a fortune [Music] [Applause] welcome to Italy a land of incredible food and beautiful landscapes as well as one of high fashions cultural centers and in addition to being a draw for tourists looking for summer sun gorgeous views and shopping to die for the country is of course a wonderland if your passion involves history in any way shape or form from its earliest conception in fact it's fair to say that Italy has been a real trailblazer and the legends that surround the founding of what is now the country's capital Rome are particularly remarkable the most popular is the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus who were allegedly these city's founders the story goes that the twins were brought up by a wolf before they decided to establish a major urban center soon after it set a feud between the pair over what to name the city ended in Remus's death at his brother's hand the victor then used his own name as the inspiration for the city's moniker or so the legend has plus of course the italian peninsula once served as the seat of the highly influential and hugely successful roman empire which existed for an incredible five centuries the empire spanned from north africa and the middle east right up to britain and at its height some 21 percent of the world's population lived under its rule featuring famous leaders such as Julius Caesar Nero and Caligula the Roman Empire spread its rule of law across its domains meanwhile its forces came into contact with such important historical figures as ancient Egypt's Cleopatra Queen Boudicca of Britannia and Jesus Christ and that's not even a mention how the Romans gave humanity roads sanitation and central heating indeed so mighty was Rome's influence that it dominates much of our knowledge about the world during the period of its existence but post Empire the cultures of the Italian peninsula didn't rest on its ancient laurels at least not ultimately once again then the area emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the 14th century this time though it was through art and science that it spread its influence and the resulting Italian Renaissance period brought about a cultural shift that still resonates today during the three centuries that marked the Renaissance the region produced myriad great artworks including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in literature meanwhile the Divine Comedy by Dante is among the works that are famous even now and in science the Polish thinker nicholas copernicus first posited a model of the universe with the Sun at its center but this cultural revolution didn't stop at the Italian peninsulas borders instead the Renaissance spread rapidly across Europe and it wasn't just art and science that we're changing exploration also began in earnest to Christopher Columbus the man claimed to have discovered America was one of a number of Renaissance era explorers for example meanwhile the creative explosion of the Renaissance also brought about a new art form opera combining dance music and poetry this type of song drama became all the fashion across Italy and by the end of the 17th century other European territories had fallen for it too having been performed mostly for courts during its early days the art form soon took off among the general public which helped to fuel its spread opera was so popular in fact that theaters began to appear all across Italy and in 1870 one such venue opened its doors in the town of Como known as the Chris Sony theater its stage productions of Rigoletto and The Barber of Seville among others but it wasn't just a highbrow venue by any means the theaters program also included wrestling and magicians in 1913 however the Cressona became a cinema and it remained in this form until it closed its doors for the final time in 1997 then after that the theater was abandoned for more than two decades yet fast forward to September 2018 and the venue is once again in demand and the reason might surprise you in 2018 the construction of a new apartment block began on the Cressona site meaning the theater ultimately needed to be torn down excavation then started to take place in September that year but the demolition work came to an abrupt end when workers found something unusual in the soil nestled in the dirt was what looked like an old jar or perhaps even in ancient M fora it was almost complete - except for one missing piece and the hole that was left there gave the workers a tantalizing glimpse of what lay inside something in fact that must surely have shocked the builders there ensconced in the jar were what looked like hundreds of gold coins at this point then the builders contacted local authorities to report their find leading specialists to make their way in turn to the site finally it was thereby discovered that the jar itself is indeed ancient although it was the soapstone receptacles contents that really stood out experts found you see no fewer than 300 coins packed into the jar making the find a truly incredible one specialist Maria Grazia fetch and Eddy elaborated further on the discovery at a press conference saying the coins were stacked in rolls similar to those seen in the bank today so in addition having been buried in a jar the coins also appear to have been neatly packed before burial at the press-conference fetchin Eddy continued all of this makes us think that the owner is not a private subject rather the jar could have belonged to a public bank or deposit and the revelations about the hall just kept coming it seemed for instance that not only were these circumstances of the coin storage and burial unusual but also that the relics themselves appeared to be incredibly rare as a result the owners of the stash lived it's believed through a particularly interesting period in world history what's more the 300 or so coins all made of gold just as they'd appeared are also fairly ancient experts wreck and in fact that they date as far back as 474 AD making the currency potentially more than fifteen hundred years old and while their age alone makes them a pretty amazing find it gets better still that's because these ancient coins are thought to have come from a very specific period in history the age of the Roman Empire this theory is backed up to by the fact that the money bears the name of Roman emperors Libya Severo Leon the first Antonio and Valentinian the third and if the coins really come from around 474 AD this means that they were produced at the close of Imperial Rome lifetime in fact since the empire finally ended around two years later and after an eye on 500 years of rule these relics may have been among the last of their kind to be minted the hall therefore took on special significance as a small link back to the conclusion of a historical era yet upon examining the coins experts found one more surprise some of the gold pieces are as mentioned stamped with the name Libya Severo or Libya's Severus one of the final rulers of the Roman Empire this puppet Emperor sat on the throne for four years although he actually held little power but one ounce of the newly discovered monetary artifacts well for one thing they were found to be in near-perfect condition featuring as they do the original markings and engravings indeed in a 2018 interview at the Times local archaeology superintendent Luca Rinaldi referred to the hall as unlike anything else ever found in the area Rinaldi continued sometimes coins are found that are stuck together but these are all separate it was like opening a wallet meanwhile Italian minister of cultural heritage and activities Alberto Bhansali could for his part barely hide his excitement at the discovery as he said at a news conference in September 2018 it's more than exceptional it's epochal one of those discoveries that marks the course of history historically and culturally the gold relics are of course priceless but speaking in a purely financial sense even one of these coins could set you back a pretty penny in September 2018 precious metals retailer F Mex valued each of them between 2,500 and five thousand five hundred dollars but even with such a value in mind the hall still has more to give it seems as well as laying their hands on the gold coins archeologists also found a gold bar in another jar on the site and yet it's actually the container of the coins itself that's unique in the archaeological record at least according to Bono solely as for where the Hall was uncovered well perhaps that shouldn't come as much of a huge surprise after all of these City of Como which lies close to the famous lake of the same name and not far north of Milan has been around for a long time the hills surrounding Como for instance have been occupied from the Bronze Age when a Celtic tribe lived there and the area itself was later taken over by Romans in 196 BC however things got a lot more intriguing when one Julius Caesar took an interest in the place Caesar ruled Rome from 49 BC until his death five years later and during his reign he expanded the Empire by ordering the construction and renovation of vast new cities years before he became emperor however Caesar had overseen significant changes to Como as he'd seen great potential in the settlement at first though Como's proximity to the lake that shares its name meant that the land between the water and the town was rather swampy Caesar therefore gave the order to drain the swamp at the southern end of the lake and this was they have a hugely significant impact on the town in the years that followed after that Caesar ordered an exterior wall to be built around the town and so a new design was set out for the settlement that was in line with Roman architectural principles the town which he called novum comum then flourished under Roman rule and as the ruling classes began moving in it also became something of a business hub even today evidence of Como's Roman past can be found and you don't have to dig it up first the thermal baths constructed sometime during the 1st century AD still exist and are open to the public for one as for the after mentioned exterior wall that Caesar had built it survived until the 12th century so with all this in mind perhaps the fact that the cache of coins was found in Como isn't that surprising the real mystery then lies elsewhere who owned the coins for and why were they buried in the way that they were there yet even the experts don't at present have clear answers to these questions you see despite their initial assertion that a bank would have owned the hall it seemed that there could be another explanation in particular there could be some significance to the manner in which the jar containing the coins was concealed during a September 2018 press event that Jannetty posited the idea that the container was buried in such a way that in case of danger the owner could have gone and retrieved it so who buried the treasure trove and why well the chances are that we will never know for sure although the mystery is certainly a tantalizing one what is more certain however is that Roman coins have actually been found all over the world and they've sometimes appeared in very unexpected places for example during the 2016 dig in Okinawa Japan archaeologists unearthed some startling treasures the excavation was taking place at katsu Rijn Castle a structure believed to have been built between the 13th and 14th centuries and work has actually been ongoing at this important Japanese cultural location since 2013 prior to the big discovery a team from the Board of Education in the city of a rumah had actually already uncovered samurai armor among other artifacts at the site however gang Gogi temple cultural properties department researcher Toshio Sakamoto stumbled across something very unusual not long after he'd arrived at the castle at this time a small cachet of just ten coins appeared and having worked on digs in Italy and Egypt Sakamoto immediately knew what they were Sakamoto had in fact found Roman coins dating from between the 3rd and 4th centuries in Japan amazingly then the researcher had discovered the first ever currency of its kind in the country so just outed Roman money and up in Catherine Misaki at Cal from the Board of Education in aroma offered an explanation as she told CNN in 2016 the discovery confirms how this region had trade relations with the east of Asia it's a strange and interesting find continued she then revealed that the coins could have arrived in Japan through the trading routes that connected Asia to the West in the third and fourth centuries but even so that doesn't explain how the far older coins ended up in a castle that was built up a thousand years later meanwhile Okinawa International University Hiroyuki Miyagi chose to give his thoughts after seeing the hall which he described as a remarkable discovery he told CNN I couldn't believe they'd found coins from the Roman Empire in cats or in Castle I thought they were replicas that have been dropped by tourists but just as with the coins found in Como the Japanese Hall raises as many questions as it answers the journey that took the relics from Europe to Japan centuries ago would indeed have been fascinating so too would the story behind the burial of 300 pieces of gold under a theater in the Roman homeland for the time being though the Como coins remain in a lab in Milan for cleaning and examination in conclusion then and whether they're found in Italy or Japan Roman coins provide a tangible link to our ancient past and even if we may never know who they once belonged to each artifact adds a piece to the rich mosaic that is our understanding of the Roman Empire so as scientists work to discover the origins of these priceless items we'll have to wait and see what they reveal about our shared history