GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATIONS OF THE VALLEY OF THE THRACIAN KINGS ON THE EXAMPLE OF STAROSEL, BULGARIA

The world's oldest gold artefact a tiny gold bean just - 4 mm in diameter is dated back to 4,500-4,600 B.C., which makes it 200 older then the earliest major assemblage of gold artefacts (dated to the first half of the fifth millennium B.C) both located in what is now Bulgaria - in the heart of ancient Thrace. Historians and archaeologists proclaim that several modern countries in South - Eastern Europe share the Thracian heritage, but the main part of Thrace lies in Bulgaria and Romania. Thrace was located on the northern edge of the Greek civilization, and although certain Thracian regions became Hellenized during the early periods of the Greek colonization and particularly during the Hellenistic period, Thrace remained on the periphery of classical civilization until it was annexed by the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. (Anthony & Chi, 2010). Communism regime (until the 1970s) isolated Romania and especially Bulgaria economy, science, archaeology and ancient history was mainly used actively as ideological tools related to communist state policy and propaganda. In the late 1980 only one person dared to brake that isolation - Ludmila Zhivkova, the daughter of Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, President of the Committee for Art and Culture. She managed to list the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak tomb UNESCO World Heritage List. Nowadays, globally only few scholars outside Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Greece, Turkey, and Serbia study ancient Thrace. Moreover, until recently none of the abovementioned countries tourism brand was associated with its Thracian cultural heritage.