Prehistory and antiquity
Further information: Neolithic Europe, Odrysian kingdom, Thracians, and Slavic peoples
The earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans were discovered in the Kozarnika cave, dating to 1,400,000 BC. Prehistoric cultures in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture and the eneolithic Varna culture (fifth millennium BC). The Varna Necropolis offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies.
The earliest and one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians were the Thracians, who populated various tribes until king Teres united most of them in the Odrysian kingdom around 500 BC. They were eventually subjugated by Alexander the Great and later by the Roman Empire in 46 AD. After the division of the Roman Empire in 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, assimilating the Hellenised or Romanised Thracians.
First Bulgarian Empire
Asparukh, son of Old Great Bulgaria's khan Kubrat, migrated with several Bulgar tribes (supposed by most scholars to have been a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia) to the lower courses of the rivers Danube, Dniester and Dniepr. After 670 he was forced by the Avars to move into the Balkan Peninsula by leading a horde of 50,000 across the Danube and in 680 severed Scythia Minor from the Byzantine Empire. A peace treaty with Byzantium in 681 and the establishment of a permanent capital at Pliska south of the Danube marked the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire. A common language developed from Slavonic, which functioned as a lingua franca for the region.
Succeeding khans strengthened the Bulgarian state throughout the 8th and 9th centuries—Tervel established Bulgaria as a major military power by defeating a 26,000-strong Arab army during the Second Arab Siege of
