Turkish officials can barely contain their excitement over what they found buried in the legendary city.
The discovery settles a 100-year debate among scholars.
And archaeologists just unearthed one treasure in Troy that changes everything we thought we knew about ancient trade.
Best-preserved Bronze Age brooch finally solves Troy’s timeline mystery
Archaeologists excavating the legendary city of Troy in northwestern Turkey recently uncovered remarkable artifacts that have experts calling it one of the most significant finds in a century.¹
The team discovered a beautifully preserved gold brooch from 4,500 years ago, along with a rare jade stone and bronze pin, all dating to approximately 2,500 BC.²
Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy described the discovery as among the most significant finds of the last 100 years.³
The golden ring-shaped brooch represents one of only three known examples worldwide, and Ersoy emphasized it’s the best-preserved specimen.⁴
But here’s what makes this discovery truly remarkable – it just settled a century-long academic debate about when Troy’s Early Bronze Age settlement actually began.
Previous scholarly estimates placed the Troy II settlement layer between 2,300 and 2,200 BC.⁵
These new artifacts definitively push that timeline back to 2,500 BC – several centuries earlier than experts thought.⁶
That’s not just splitting hairs over dates. This changes our entire understanding of when Troy emerged as a major Bronze Age power.
https://x.com/ragipsoylu/status/1971953784642212202“>https://x.com/ragipsoylu/status/1971953784642212202
Exotic jade stone reveals Troy’s shocking reach across ancient world
The jade stone might be even more significant than the gold.
Jade doesn’t exist naturally in Anatolia – meaning someone transported it thousands of miles from distant regions.⁷
Think about what that means for a city in 2,500 BC. Troy wasn’t some isolated hilltop settlement.
The discovery shows Troy’s inhabitants had access to far-reaching trade networks, bringing in luxury materials from regions thousands of miles away.⁸
The presence of jade at Troy suggests the city’s inhabitants were part of trade networks reaching across the Near East, Central Asia, and possibly China.⁹
Researchers believe the jade stone was once part of a ring or pendant, showing a taste for imported luxury goods centuries before the events described in Homer’s Iliad.¹⁰
Back in 1873, amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann famously discovered what he called "Priam’s Treasure" in this exact same Troy II layer.¹¹
Schliemann believed he’d found King Priam’s gold from Homer’s Trojan War. He was wrong about the connection to Homer’s epic, but right about the layer’s significance.
He found gold and silver vessels, elaborate diadems, precious jewelry, bronze weapons – enough treasure to make any king jealous.¹²
But Schliemann’s methods? Absolutely catastrophic. The man dug massive trenches straight through the site, hauling out hundreds of tons of earth and smashing through walls he figured weren’t important.¹³
Even by 1870s standards, his approach was "savage and brutal" – no maps, barely any notes, just plowing through millennia of history.¹⁴
Archaeologists today are still cleaning up the mess he left behind.¹⁵
Troy was already a Bronze Age powerhouse when Homer was still 1,000 years in the future
Here’s what the new discoveries really show – Troy had sophisticated metalworking and artistic skills centuries before anyone was telling stories about Helen of Troy or wooden horses.
The craftsmanship on that gold brooch? Local artisans made luxury items that screamed status and wealth for Troy’s ruling class.¹⁶
Troy sat at the perfect strategic chokepoint for Bronze Age commerce. The city grew from a small fortified settlement around 3,000 BC into the prosperous Troy II by 2,500 BC.¹⁷
Experts knew Troy II was wealthy and had impressive architecture. What they couldn’t figure out was when this phase actually started.¹⁸
Now they know. And that tells us exactly when Troy became a major player in shaping Bronze Age trade and power across ancient Anatolia.¹⁹
The artifacts go on display soon at the Troy Museum right next to the excavation site.²⁰
That museum already has thousands of finds from the different cities stacked on top of each other over 4,000 years.²¹
UNESCO designated Troy a World Heritage site back in 1998, calling it one of the most famous archaeological sites anywhere – the place where you can see the first real contact between Anatolian civilizations and the Mediterranean world.²²
Archaeologists have been digging at Troy for more than 160 years, uncovering a city people lived in for thousands of years straight.²³
Every new discovery fills in another gap about how this crossroads between East and West shaped the ancient world.
The gold brooch and jade stone prove something important – Troy mattered long before Greek poets made it legendary. This was a Bronze Age trading superpower with connections spanning continents.
¹ Andrea Margolis, "Once-in-a-century treasures dating back 4,500 years unearthed in legendary city," Fox News, October 16, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ "4,500-Year-Old Gold Brooch Changes Troy’s Timeline," Ancient Origins, accessed October 2025.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Andrea Margolis, "Once-in-a-century treasures dating back 4,500 years unearthed in legendary city," Fox News, October 16, 2025.
⁸ "4,500-Year-Old Gold Brooch Changes Troy’s Timeline," Ancient Origins, accessed October 2025.
⁹ "Ancient Gold Brooch and Jade Stone Unearthed at Troy," AllThatHistory, accessed October 2025.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ "150 Years Since Heinrich Schliemann Uncovered the Treasure of Priamos in Troy," Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, accessed October 2025.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ "Troy: Great Excavations," World Archaeology, September 18, 2018.
¹⁴ "Amateur Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann Discovered—and Nearly Destroyed—Troy," Smithsonian Magazine, July 25, 2022.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ "Ancient Gold Brooch and Jade Stone Unearthed at Troy," AllThatHistory, accessed October 2025.
¹⁷ "Troy," Wikipedia, accessed October 2025.
¹⁸ Ibid.
¹⁹ "4,500-Year-Old Gold Brooch Changes Troy’s Timeline," Ancient Origins, accessed October 2025.
²⁰ Andrea Margolis, "Once-in-a-century treasures dating back 4,500 years unearthed in legendary city," Fox News, October 16, 2025.
²¹ "4,500-Year-Old Gold Brooch Unearthed in Troy: One of Only Three Known Examples Worldwide," Arkeonews, accessed September 2025.
²² Andrea Margolis, "Once-in-a-century treasures dating back 4,500 years unearthed in legendary city," Fox News, October 16, 2025.
²³ "Legendary City of Troy Yields 4,500-Year-Old Golden Brooch and Jade Stone," Anatolian Archaeology, accessed September 2025.
