The rare silver denarius from the era of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor who ruled from AD 161 to AD 180, was found last summer in the nursery yard by Bjarne, an eight-year-old boy who loved collecting private pebbles, but the find was only made public today. Friday.
At the press conference, Uta Halle, head of the regional archaeological office in Bremen, said that the seemingly insignificant discovery should not be underestimated, because denarius was found outside the borders of the former Roman Empire, and so far only two are similar. Finds have been made in the area.
According to the scholar, the coin may have arrived in Bremen by trade, but it is also possible that it was obtained as payment by mercenaries from the Roman army, or sent outside the empire as a souvenir for a traveler.
According to the archaeologist, the find also proves once again that inflation did indeed affect the Romans: the silver denarii discovered by Bjarne weighed only 2.4 grams, although these coins originally weighed 4.5 grams. During the time of Marcus Aurelius, the silver content of the coins decreased and they were alloyed with cheaper copper.
Ota Haley said that while in the past, for example, in the 1950s, schoolchildren would come across old things relatively often, in recent years this has not happened. According to him, children today play less outside, and partly there are fewer places where you can look.
In Germany, only two similar cases have occurred in recent years, both in Lower Saxony. Three years ago, a schoolgirl stumbled upon an Iron Age urn while walking in the Emsland area, and earlier this year, a little girl found a dagger in a kindergarten yard, dating from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, MTI reports.
Girls can keep their own discoveries. No decision has yet been made on the Bremen coin, but according to the head of the Antiquities Office, the now nine-year-old boy is tempted to go to the local museum of cultural history denarii, because “it would only be boring if he could always see” Roman-era money.
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