There is a six-thousand-year-old burial site near Varna on the Black Sea that contains more than two hundred tombs. Many of the dead were buried with nothing or with just a few simple objects, but about 10 percent of the graves held much more; one contained over a thousand objects, most of them made of gold, including bracelets, copper axes, and even a penis sheath.2 This is a very familiar triangle of wealth, with an elite population of about 10 percent and one person at the very top, while most people lived close to subsistence.
