Lure of gold draws hundreds to riverbanks

Many are combing the country's waters to strike it rich More than 2,000 years after the ancient Thracians crafted their exquisite jewelry from gold deposits in Bulgaria, hundreds are combing its rivers again in the hope of striking it rich in the EU's poorest country.

Around a dozen men and a woman stand knee-deep in the waters of the Tundzha river in central Bulgaria. Bent over their green pans, they diligently wash the gravel looking for specks of the precious metal.

"This site must be rich if the Thracians chose it as their capital," 59-year-old Milka Ganeva says, while sorting through stones with her husband near the Koprinka dam.