Emily Chan
Thousands of years ago, someone dropped a copper dagger in the forests of Poland. Now, a metal detectorist has unearthed the ancient weapon near the town of Korzenica.
The 4,000-year-old dagger most likely belonged to a warrior of high status. It is a rare find, as no other metal dagger of its kind has been discovered in the region before.
“The Korzenica dagger is so far the oldest metal dagger discovered [in] southeastern Poland,” Marcin Burghardt, an archaeologist at the Orsetti Tenement House Museum in Poland, told Live Science. “The only similar dagger in Poland was uncovered in the [1960s], so the new find comes as a great surprise.”
The metal detectorist, Piotr Gorlach of the Historical and Exploration Association Grupa Jarosław, had been conducting a search in Jarosław Forest, hoping to locate military artifacts from World War One and Two.
He had just finished his exploration for the day and had just returned to his car when his metal detector picked up a signal. As he dug up the forest floor, he came across a “flat metal object.”
“I quickly realized I was dealing with something much older than the military items from World War One and Two that I was looking for in the area,” Gorlach said.
Gorlach immediately informed archaeologists from the Orsetti House Museum in Jarosław about his discovery. A team of researchers examined the area where the dagger was detected but could find no traces of any other artifacts.
Due to the lack of additional artifacts, they are unable to connect the dagger to a specific civilization or culture.
Archaeologists dated the dagger by comparing it to ones that have been found in Central Europe and the Ukrainian forest-steppe. They concluded that it was from the third millennium B.C.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
