“On 4 October, 1913, at this place were cruelly killed by the Turkish bashibozouk more than 1800 Bulgarians, driven away from their homeland in Aegean Thrace…The small river is full of dead bodies and its water is red with blood. The voivode Dimiter Madzarov and Rousi Slavov and their bands heroically defended the population that was running away and saved from death over 20 000 refugees. Let us honor the memory of the those who perished!”

This inscription stands on the Thracian pantheon built on the banks of the Arda River, at the entrance of the town of Madjarovo. Behind it is the suffering and sorrow for the tragic events near the village of Yatadzik, part of history preserved in the memory of the future generations, refugees from Ederne Thrace and Asia Minor, who live in this small Bulgarian town on the Arda River.

The municipality has a population of 2000 and 750 live in its center. After the tragic events, a result of the Inter-ally War, the settlement takes the name of one of its defenders – the voidove Dimiter Madjarov. And on the spot where the pantheon is built, next to the chapel “St. Petka of Bulgaria”, every last Saturday of September there is a fair in memory of the dead Bulgarians, of friends and relatives. They call it the Day of Thracian Memory.

People have inhabited these parts for 6000 years. They made their living by breeding animals. There is little left of these first inhabitants. Later Thracians from the Ordrissi tribe settle here. They practiced the cult of the sun and the rocks. Accident brings me to an inscription by the road, shortly after the village of Goren Glavanak. It says that here stands Kromleh, a Thracian sacred temple compared to the legendary Stonehenge. I follow the signs and arrive in front of 12 large rocks arranged in a circle. They are a national monument of culture. They date back to the 5th - 4th c. B.C. Probably people made offerings here to receive the mercy of the gods. The silence around is full of secrets.

The territory of the village of Dolno Cherkovishte also hides its secrets. An ancient road passed by it. In Roman times it led to Adrianople and passed along the Arda River, whose name meant White River for the Thracians.

The small village is proud with the enormous rock called “The Bee” (Kovan kaya in the time of the Turkish oppression). It is likened to a bee hive because of the strange niches of trapezium shape cut in the rock. It is believed that they are more than 2000 years old and one can see them in other places in the Eastern Rhodope Mountain too. Hypotheses about their purpose fire up my imagination. According to one of them, in these niches are laid the souls of the Thracian warriors fallen in battle. To rest in peace, after the battle, far away from their home lands. Because in those remote times there was no other way for them to find peace and be buries by their relatives.

Another version claims that these rock niches were peculiar strategic orientation points, signs on the important trade route. It is possible that they had a cult function. They could have been parts of a temple in which the ritual lights were lighted. There is still another theory – the Thracians obtained gold from the rocks and it is possible that the niches were part of the water system for its processing.