Bilche-Zolote ( ''Bil'che Zolote''; ; ) is a Ukrainian village located within the

Chortkiv Chortkiv (, ; ; ) is a List of cities in Ukraine, city in Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast, western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Chortkiv Raion, housing the district's local administration buildings. Chortkiv hosts the administratio ...

Raion A raion (also spelt rayon) is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet states. The term is used for both a type of subnational entity and a division of a city. The word is from the French (meaning 'honeycomb, department'), and is c ...

(district) of the

Ternopil Ternopil, known until 1944 mostly as Tarnopol, is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Western Ukraine and the historical regions of Galicia and Podolia. The populatio ...

Oblast An oblast ( or ) is a type of administrative division in Bulgaria and several post-Soviet states, including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Historically, it was used in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The term ''oblast'' is often translated i ...

(province), about driving distance southwest of

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

. It hosts the administration of Bilche-Zolote rural hromada, one of the

hromada In Ukraine, a hromada () is the main type of municipality and the third level Administrative divisions of Ukraine, local self-government in Ukraine. The current hromadas were established by the Cabinet of ministers of Ukraine, Government of Uk ...

s of Ukraine. This rural community is located in a small valley adjacent to the ''Seret'' River, which is surrounded by plateaus covered with farms, broken by occasional stands of mixed forest. Bilche-Zolote is home to a remarkable park of , of which is covered with virgin timber, including some trees up to 400 years old. Bilche-Zolote is also the location of the large

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate Hydrate, dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, drywall and blackboard or sidewalk ...

karst Karst () is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble carbonate rocks such as limestone and Dolomite (rock), dolomite. It is characterized by features like poljes above and drainage systems with sinkholes and caves underground. Ther ...

Verteba Cave, as well as a significant

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

Cucuteni-Trypillian culture archaeological site, and attracts tourist and spelunker visitors from many countries.

History

Founded in the early 10th century, Bilche-Zolote has been ruled at various times by the

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus,. * was the first East Slavs, East Slavic state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical At ...

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Carpatho-Ukraine Carpatho-Ukraine or Carpathian Ukraine (, ) was an autonomous region, within the Second Czechoslovak Republic, created in December 1938 and renamed from Subcarpathian Rus', whose full administrative and political autonomy had been confirmed by ...

, and Ukraine. Its town council, which oversees the governance of the area, also administers the villages of ''Yuriampil'' (), ''Monastyrok'' (), and ''Mushkativ'' (). The nearest railway station is away in the town of ''Ozeryany'' (). The town includes public elementary through secondary schools, a public library, two recreational facilities, and an Inter-Regional Rehabilitation Hospital. Until 18 July 2020, Bilche-Zolote belonged to

Borshchiv Raion Borshchiv Raion (), historically known as , was a raion (district) within Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine, in a historical region known as Galicia and bordering Podollia. The administrative center of the raion was Borshchiv, its only city. ...

. The raion was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Ternopil Oblast to three. The area of Borshchiv Raion was merged into Chortkiv Raion.

Bilche-Zolote Landscape Park

Founded in the early 19th century, the Bilche-Zolote Landscape Park included part of the estate and the palace of a local aristocrat family. On 29 January 1960, the Ukraine Council of Ministers passed a resolution to include the Bilche-Zolote Landscape Park within the Ukrainian Natural Reserve Fund.

Verteba and Priest's Grotto Caves

The Verteba Cave () located on the outskirts of Bilche-Zolote village gets its name from the Ukrainian word for "crib" (, ''vertel''). Verteba is one of the largest caves in Europe, measuring in length, with a total of 6000 cubic meters. It consists of maze-like passageways, often separated by thin walls, as well as broad galleries. The walls of the cave are smooth and dark, with rare incrustations of

calcium carbonate Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is a common substance found in Rock (geology), rocks as the minerals calcite and aragonite, most notably in chalk and limestone, eggshells, gastropod shells, shellfish skel ...

appearing. There are also small

stalactites A stalactite (, ; , ) is a mineral formation that hangs from the ceiling of caves, hot springs, or man-made structures such as bridges and mines. Any material that is soluble and that can be deposited as a colloid, or is in suspension, or is ca ...

, and unusual

stalagmites A stalagmite (, ; ; ) is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically composed of calcium carbonate, but may consist o ...

that have the appearance of barrels, all of which are coated in an opaque watery liquid known as

moonmilk Moonmilk (sometimes called mondmilch, also known as bergmilch, montmilch, or cave milk) is a white, creamy substance found inside limestone, dolomite, and possibly other types of caves. It is a precipitate from limestone comprising aggregates o ...

Cucuteni-Trypillian settlement

During a mundane excavation on the Sapyehy estate in 1884, workers stumbled upon the buried ruins of a prehistoric settlement near the mouth of the Verteba cave. Over the years, more than 300 intact ceramic containers have been unearthed from the floor of the cave and this Neolithic era settlement, which encompasses a total of . Archaeologists identified the artifacts as belonging to the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, with evidence of two separate periods of settlement activity dating from 4440 to 4100 B.C. and 3800-3300 B.C. The members of this society plowed their farms, raised livestock, hunted and fished, created textiles, and developed a beautiful and highly refined style of pottery with very intricate designs. Their settlements, which with up to 15,000 inhabitants were among the largest on earth at the time, were built in oval or circular layouts, with concentric rows of houses that were interconnected to form rings around the center of the community, where often a sanctuary building would be found. They left behind a large number of clay figurines, many of which are regarded as

Mother goddess A mother goddess is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, ...

fetishes A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent non-material value, or powers, to an object. Talismans and amulets ...

. For over 2500 years the culture flourished with no evidence left behind that would indicate they experienced warfare. However, at the beginning of the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

their culture disappeared, the reasons for which are still debated, but possibly as a result of invaders coming from the Steppes to the east. Over the years there have been a number of major archaeological explorations of this site, starting with excavations from 1889 to 1891 by Edward Pawłowicz and Gotfryd Ossowski. In 1898 Włodzimierz Demetrykiewicz conducted an excavation and analysis. In 1952 and 1956 V. N. Eravets, I. E. Svyshnikov, and G. M. Vlasova resumed the exploration of the site, which had been neglected during the turbulent first half of the 20th century. Recently, in 2000, M. Sohatskyy conducted further excavations of the site. The evidence from the discoveries revealed that there had been a gap between when the settlement was occupied. The more recent settlement yielded ceramic finds that connected it to the ''Shypynetsk group'' (), a sub-group of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture that flourished in this region during the later Neolithic. Along with the intact ceramic containers unearthed in the cave, archaeologists have also found more than 35,000 clay fragments, including many of the famous Cucuteni-Trypillian goddess figurines, 200 pieces of bone and antler remains, and an additional 300 tools and other objects crafted from bone and stone, including flint implements, bone awls, and a few small copper artifacts. Archaeologists discovered one of the few burial sites of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture at this site, amounting to almost 120 individuals. One of the most famous artifacts from the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture was found at Bilche-Zolote by the first team of archaeologists in the 1890s: a bone plate from about 3500 B.C. was found inside the Verteba cave, which was incised with a silhouette of a Mother goddess, and which became one of the most recognized symbols of this culture. Beginning in 1907, a collection of the archaeological finds from the Bilche-Zolote Cucuteni-Trypillian settlement made up the core collection of the local archaeological museum, which was housed in the palace located on the grounds of the Landscape Park. During the period of Polish occupation, these materials were removed to th
Museum of Archeology in Krakow
More recent finds from archaeological excavations have been housed in th
Lviv Historical Museum
and th

Religion

* St. Michael Church (1871, OCU, brick) * St. Paraskeva Church (1899, UGCC, brick)

Notable residents

* Mykhailo Sokhatskyi (born 1959), Ukrainian archaeologist, local historian, speleologist, public figure

References

Sources

External links

Christos Nicola's Home Page
- includes biographical information about Christos Nicola, and links to videos and information about the story of the survivors who hid in these caves during the Holocaust.
The Trypillia-USA-Project
The Trypillian Civilization Society homepage (in English).

The homepage for The Institute of Archaeomythology, an international organization of scholars dedicated to fostering an interdisciplinary approach to cultural research with particular emphasis on the beliefs, rituals, social structure and symbolism of ancient societies. Much of their focus covers topics that relate to the Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture (in English).

A page from the UK-based group "Arattagar" about Trypillian Culture, which has many great photographs of the group's trip to the Trypillian Museum in Trypillia, Ukraine (in English).
Bilche Zolote weather page
(in English)
''Трипільська культура в Україні з колекції "Платар"''
Ukrainian language page about the Ukrainian Platar Collection of Trypillian Culture.
''"Вертеба" - пристановище Tрипільців'' ("Verteba" - Trypillian refuge)
by Mikola Shot, appearing in: ''Урядовий кур'єр'' (Governmental Courier), 7 February 2005 (in Ukrainian). This is a special report to the Ukrainian National Ministry of History. The author provides a narrative historical account of the archaeological explorations of the Verteba Cave and the village of Bilche-Zolote, with details about recent and projected improvements in the area to support potential tourist interest.
Більче Золоте історія (Bilche-Zolote history)
from: Архітехтурні Та Природні Пам'ятки України (Architecture and Natural Monuments of Ukraine), providing a brief historical narrative of the town, with photos of some of the older buildings (in Ukrainian).
Більче-Золоте сайту (Bilche Zolote page)
from: Верховна Рада України-Офіцйний Веб-Сайт-Органи Місцевого Самоврядування В Украіні (Parliament of Ukraine-Official Web Site-Local Government in Ukraine), providing data for the town of Bilche-Zolote (in Ukrainian)

This web site has photographs of the entrance to the cave, as well as Cucuteni-Trypillian pottery partially buried in the cave's floor.

A web site in Ukraine called: In Ternopil ongoing research the world's largest gypsum caves. This site includes some photographs of the Verteba cave and archaeological artifacts discovered at Bilche-Zolote.

A web page written by Peter Lane Taylor, one of the co-authors of the book "The secret of Priest's Grotto", which contains some excerpts from the book.
The Secret of Priest’s Grotto by Chris Nicola and Peter Lane Taylor
An audio clip podcast of a 2007 interview with Chris Nicola and his co-author Peter Lane Taylor about the story of the Jewish survivors who hid in the Verteba and Priest's Grotto caves.
The Cave - the Secret of Priest's Grotto
YouTube clip of a promotional teaser for a documentary about the Jewish survivors who hid in the Priest's Grotto and Verteba Caves during World War II. Some of the people who experienced this are interviewed briefly in this clip. {{Authority control Bilche-Zolote rural hromada Villages in Chortkiv Raion Archaeological sites in Ukraine Cucuteni–Trypillia culture The Holocaust in Ukraine Holocaust locations in Ukraine