In America, there isn’t too much history behind our construction. The oldest buildings in the oldest cities still don’t rival any given street in some of Europes oldest cities. With such a rich and deep history, construction sites sometimes uncover some wild things!

While working in Spain, some construction workers were installing a waterline in Tomares near Seville.

Primeras imágenes del hallazgo de monedas romanas de Tomares en el #MuseoArqueologico de Sevilla pic.twitter.com/5aK5fovNjj

— Cultura Junta de Andalucía (@CulturaAND) April 28, 2016

In order to install the line, they needed to dig a ditch. As they excavated, they found a collection of some very strange objects in the dirt. Pulling it up, they realized it was 19 storage jars FILLED with coins! The entire haul weighed more than 1300 pounds in total.

One of the urban councilors gave a statement on the discovery.

“The machines hit against something that wasn’t normal for this soil,” Vallejo said. “The workers immediately stopped, and soon discovered that there were many coins there, inside broken amphoras.”

Incredibly, the coins were dated by archeologists all the way back to the 3rd century! On top of that, they were barely used and had minimal wear on their surfaces – astonishing for things this old.

With all the data, it looks like they weren’t even used in circulation!

Ahora en @cuatro la directora del #MuseoArqueologico de Sevilla habla del hallazgo de monedas romanas pic.twitter.com/Vu4B4yjiJO

— Cultura Junta de Andalucía (@CulturaAND) April 28, 2016

Ana Navarro is the head of Seville’s archaeology department and estimated the haul of coins was worth several million euros. That’s quite a construction bonus!

“It is a unique collection and there are very few similar cases, the majority were newly minted and some of them probably were bathed in silver, not just bronze,” she continued.

The history of the coins shows us a bit about the time period and what was happening at the time.

The experts guessed that the Roman coins were being used to pay taxes or that they were about to be given to soldiers as payment for their service.

“What is incredible is a discovery of this size – there are 19 amphoras, all complete, and I can assure you that they can’t be moved by one person alone, because they weigh so much due to the coins inside,” Navarro said.

Of the 19 jugs, 10 were broken during excavation. That still left 9 jugs filled to the brim with coins!

The coins feature Maximian and Constantine inscriptions, helping to date them.

Although they can date them, it’s truly hard to value them in today’s coinage. They have SO much historical value and it’s really hard to calculate that fiscally.

“I could not give you an economic value, because the value they really have is historical and you can’t calculate that,” said Navarrro.

As you can imagine, the waterline construction was stopped for the time!

“What is incredible is a discovery of this size — there are 19 amphoras, all complete, and I can assure you that they can’t be moved by one person alone, because they weigh so much due to the coins inside,” said Navarro in an interview with CNN.

They don’t want to miss anything! It is going to take some time to process everything and perform a full archeological dig, but they would eventually finish. It’s not every day that you find a Roman treasure trove of ancient coins while doing construction work!

Check out the video below!

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Source: Science Alert, Associated Press