"Thrace was certainly inhabited by a civilized nation at some remote period; for when Philip «of Macedon opened the gold mines in that country, he found that they had been worked before with great expense and ingenuity, by A PROPLE WELL VERSED IN MECHANICS, OF WHOM NO
"MEMORIALS WHATEVER ARE IN EXISTENCE “
The quote comes from Richard Payne Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, written in the late 1700s. He points to the fact that when Philip II reopened the Mount Pangaion gold mines around 357 BC, his crews discovered existing shafts, galleries, and workings that clearly predated the known Thracian or Greek activity in the area.
These weren’t shallow surface scrapings. They showed signs of serious investment deep tunneling, engineering to deal with water and ventilation, and organized extraction which suggested a people with real mechanical know how, not just basic panning or open pit digging. Since no historical records or cultural memory of who built them survived into Philip’s time, Knight concludes there must’ve been an earlier, now forgotten advanced group in Thrace.
The Pangaion gold mines are real archaeological sites, but there aren’t any public photos of the ancient Thracian tunnels or workings. They’re mostly collapsed, flooded, or sealed off. The modern mines in the area don’t show the ancient parts publicly.
You can find images of the Pangaion mountain range and the surrounding countryside beautiful green hills, but nothing showing the actual ancient mine shafts. The Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, one of the sites Godfrey Higgins linked to these people, has plenty of dramatic photos of its massive beehive tomb and huge stone lintel