THE DEEP ROOTS OF THE
1. The high status of the
The “early
civilisation” status can no longer limit itself to the regions which have long
attracted scholarly attention (i.e.
Some
markers of civilization in
southeastern
-
Development
of subsistence agrarian economy by
improvement
of agrarian land and technology. Agriculture is no longer limited to the best
patches of arable land around the settlements, but it is practiced also on more
difficult soil at some distance from the homestead. There is evidence of the use of the
plough and the irrigation.
- Refinement and improvement of techniques of pottery production.
The progress in pottery technology is equally fast in the west and in the
east.
-
The
emergence of metallurgy was an independent process which was not
influenced by Near Eastern traditions.
-
An
increase in trade can be observed since the mid-eight millennium
p.t. (present
time). It was a
long distance trade and involved shells, marble, obsidian and copper.
-
Urbanism. Within
the expanding settlement, a more effective layout can be observed in the course
of its development. The plans of
street patterns and the alignment of houses become more complex in time. As for the size of settlements, some
grow to offer homes for several thousand
inhabitants.
- Homes. There are changes as to the size and functions of
buildings. While the average size
of houses is about 8 by 5 m, buildings in the larger town may have a length of
up to 30 m, two stories, with three to four rooms on each
floor.
- The buildings assume more specialized functions. By the eight millennium p.t., there is a
tendency to either separate space according to stories in one house or, more
preferably, to erect separate buildings with specialized functions. In addition,
profane and sacral architecture tend to assume more distinctive features than in
previous periods. At several sites,
models of temples have been excavated.
Some of them must have been large structures on broad platforms.
- Sophisticated
patterns of religious imagery.
-
South-eastern
Europe developed its own system of writing (
- The origin of writing is
evidently linked to the quantitative growth of the information which had to be
recorded and transmit. For this reason the Danube Civilization developed a
complex system of communication: the Danube System of
Communication. It was composed of several elements: writing was only one of
them, even though important, original and unique.
Other communication channels of the Danube System of Communication were:
religious symbols, geometric decorations, figurative language, devices for
memory support, star and land charts, ritualistic markings, numeric notations,
family identity or community affiliation marks as well signs stating the
owner/manufacturer/destination/content of an
artefact.
- In a traditional
perspective, statehood, hierarchies of authority and a stratified society were
considered essential for achieving a higher organizational level of cultural
development: civilisation. The Danube
Civilization demonstrates that there were other major civilisations of the
2.
>From many point of views the Old
As for
the cultural chronology of crucial innovations, Old Europe holds the edge in
pace as compared with the development in other regions. In the span of two
thousand years from the mid-eight to the mid-sixt millennia p.t. compared with
Danube Civilization the pace of development in the Orient is moderate, although
steadily progressing. In particular, metallurgy and writing emerge much earlier
in
- Pyrotechnology which is a precondition for metal-working,
advances more swiftly in the Occident than comparably in the Orient.
-
There is
an earlier archaeological record for several of the basic smelting
technologies in
-
Urban agglomerations are known in
-
Writing makes an early appearance in Danube
Civilisation and
enters the sphere of ancient urban culture in
In
conclusion, if we are
to make sense of the history of
3. The classical theorem Ex Oriente lux is reversed in Ex Occidente lux
Before
the new chronology had been established, scholars readily assumed Sumerian
influence, not only in the sphere of writing but also in economic and cultural
affairs. But there is
evidence for a west-eastern drift of culture in the sixth millennium p.t.
(present time). In particular, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic
evidence is being gathered to demonstrate that the people in the Neolithic Old
World were engaged in long-distant trade contacts and intercultural relations
and that the impact of their influence was predominantly directed from west to
east.
This cultural drift
from
The European cultural
influx into
a.1 In the Near East, a
crude sign system with special functions (i.e. accounting and record keeping)
had developed in pre-deluge times (tenth millennium p.t.), and this became more
refined in the post-deluge era. But it is tempting to construct a direct link
between the system of count stones and early Sumerian writing. And yet, only some 30 of the 2,000 signs
of the Sumerian script have equivalents in the token system.
a.2 In addition to the
native token system there is another reservoir of visual signs for which local
origin can be assumed, and these are the iconic signs of ancient Sumerian
pictography, some of them highly stylised.
b. Before the
introduction of the modern cultural chronology of south-eastern
Those who base their
investigation on the new calibrated chronology are equally puzzled by the sign
similarities, but the reconstruction of an assumed historical relationship
between the Old Danube and the Sumerian writing has now to be associated with a
west–eastern drift. Did the Old Danube tradition of writing influence the
Mesopotamian tradition in its formative process?
Sign similarities of
the Old Danube and the ancient Sumerian scripts are not limited to "simple"
forms which might be explained as coincidental (e.g. motifs such as the head of
an animal or the outlines of a tree).
Parallelism in the
compared sign repertories also strikes the eye due to the many similarities in
the details. In the provisional list of sign convergence, there are more than 40
sign parallelisms (excluding "simple" forms). The convergent iconic material can be
extracted from the 230 Old Danube signs as compared with the 770 signs of the
ATU-list.
4. The
The Danube Civilization changes the idea of civilisation and its
historical formation, because witnesses another trajectory from foraging to complex agrarian societies far
from the state model (This is well known from the Mesopotamian tradition since
Sumerian times. The state model is a system of hierarchal and centralised
authority: state organisation, social class stratification, already centred
lay-out of the earliest towns, temple economy).
This newly
"discovered" path to civilisation is a network of
It is a complex society characterised by semi-equality in social
relations, the observance of reciprocal socio-economic interests, the absence of
the state, the rise of urbanism through expansion to oil spot from villages to
towns with thousands of inhabitants and without the need of many defence
structures.
It is also an agrarian society, where the villages were not oppressed by
the political authority of towns. The local economic surplus of villages is not
monopolised by the inhabitants of urban centres. There is an efficient, although
not centralised, relationship among towns. The distribution of goods and
resources is based on interregional trade. It is a relatively tranquil
confederation of strongly regionalised cultures with common roots. The
development of a script was associated with the religious sphere and not with
the economy and it was linked to images of female
divinities.
The network model
of society is present in the horizon of the
5. The deep roots of the
There is no "sudden rise" of any civilisation. Looking at the "checklist"
of cultural patterns which had evolved in the ninth millennium p.t., it is clear
the accumulative effect of cultural memory. In the structures of Danube
Civilization, we do not simply find elements relating to the Neolithic Age but
many bricks of older cultural periods which can be traced back even to the
Palaeolithic Age (e.g. the manufacture of figurines in different materials;
belief in female divinities as patrons of nature and
culture).
The impressive correspondences between prehistoric symbols and signs of
writing suggest, if not common meaning, at least a common principle of
representation lying behind the representative act.
The discovery and the stress of close correspondences and impressive
analogies between symbols and marks on rock art or on bone objects and Danube
Script is an important step to interpret some of the former as “precursors of
writing”. The Neolithic writing of proto-Europe was therefore preceded by a
cognitive and symbolic revolution: the invention, starting with a simple graphic
element, of complex geometrical motifs and their exceptionally logical
organisation.
In conclusion,
literacy has
inherited a clear propensity for abstraction, a familiarity with geometry and a
numerological knowledge from the older populations of hunter-gathers. These took
refuge during the last ice age in some temperate climate enclaves and invented
primitive forms of pre-writing.
6. The
acknowledgement of the
It brings an
enrichment and expansion of the historical and cultural matrix on which our
European identity is based, because the civilisation of the