Old Armenia and Vincha culture
- May 28, 2014
- 6 min read
Vincan symbols
The mainstream academic view holds that writing first appeared during the Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia, around 3300-3200 BC. in the form of the Cuneiform script.
This first writing system did not suddenly appear out of nowhere, but gradually developed from less stylized pictographic systems that used ideographic and mnemonic symbols that contained meaning, but did not have the linguistic flexibility of the natural language writing system that the Sumerians first conceived.
These earlier symbolic systems have been labeled as Proto-writing, examples of which have been discovered in a variety of places around the world, some dating back to the 7th Milennium BC.
One such early example of a proto-writing system is the Vinča script, which is a set of symbols depicted on clay artifacts associated with the Vinča culture, which flourished along the Danube River in the Pannonian Plain, between 6000-4000 BC.
The Vinča symbols, sometimes called the Vinča signs, Vinča script, Vinča-Turdaș script, Old European script, etc, are a set of symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennia BC) artifacts from the Vinča culture of southeastern Europe.
The symbols are mostly considered as constituting the oldest excavated example of “proto-writing” in the world; that is, they probably conveyed a message but did not encode language, predating the development of writing proper by more than a millennium.
The background
Vinca, Tryptillian & Hamangia cultures are all intertwined with each other and in my opinion, it would be better to unite them into one culture because all three share a common element … They would purposely burn their houses down for some reason that is still unknown.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and the following Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) were originally defined by Kathleen Kenyon in the type site of Jericho (Palestine). During this time, pottery was not in use yet. They precede the ceramic Neolithic (Yarmukian). PPNA succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipaleolithic (Mesolithic).
PPNA denotes the first stages in early Levantine Neolithic culture, dating around 8000 to 7000 BC. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent.
The time period is characterized by tiny circular mud brick dwellings, the cultivation of crops, the hunting of wild game, and unique burial customs in which bodies were buried below the floors of dwellings.
PPNB is a division of the Neolithic developed by Kathleen Kenyon during her archaeological excavations at Jericho in the southern Levant region. Like the earlier PPNA people, the PPNB culture developed from the Earlier Natufian but shows evidence of a northerly origin, possibly indicating an influx from the region of north eastern Anatolia.
Cultural tendencies of this period differ from that of the earlier PPNA period in that people living during this period began to depend heavily upon domesticated animals to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and hunter-gatherer diet. In addition the flint tool kit of the period is new and quite disparate from that of the earlier period. One of its major elements is the naviform core.
This is the first period in which architectural styles of the southern Levant became primarily rectilinear; earlier typical dwellings were circular, elliptical and occasionally even octagonal. Pyrotechnology was highly developed in this period.
During this period, one of the main features of houses is evidenced by a thick layer of white clay plaster floors highly polished and made of lime produced from limestone. It is believed that the use of clay plaster for floor and wall coverings during PPNB led to the discovery of pottery.
The earliest proto-pottery was White Ware vessels, made from lime and gray ash, built up around baskets before firing, for several centuries around 7000 BC at sites such as Tell Neba’a Faour (Beqaa Valley).
Sites from this period found in the Levant utilizing rectangular floor plans and plastered floor techniques were found at Ain Ghazal, Yiftahel (western Galilee), and Abu Hureyra (Upper Euphrates). The period is dated to between ca. 10,700 and ca. 8,000 BP or 7000 – 6000 BCE.
Danielle Stordeur’s recent work at Tell Aswad, a large agricultural village between Mount Hermon and Damascus could not validate Henri de Contenson’s earlier suggestion of a PPNA Aswadian culture. Instead, they found evidence of a fully established PPNB culture at 8700 BC at Aswad, pushing back the period’s generally accepted start date by 1,200 years. Similar sites to Tell Aswad in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at Tell Ramad and Tell Ghoraifé.
How a PPNB culture could spring up in this location, practicing domesticated farming from 8700 BC has been the subject of speculation. Whether it created its own culture or imported traditions from the North East or Southern Levant has been considered an important question for a site that poses a problem for the scientific community.
Portasar is an archaeological site at the top of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (984 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,493 ft) above sea level. It has been excavated by a German archaeological team that has been under the direction of Klaus Schmidt since 1996.
The Tell includes two phases of ritual use dating back to the 10th-8th millennium BC. During the first phase PPNA, circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected. More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and a weight of up to 20 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.
In the second phase PPNB, the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB-period. Younger structures date to classical times.
Çatalhöyük (çatal is Turkish for “fork”, höyük for “mound”) was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000BC. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. In July 2012, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In Greece, we find the earliest Neolithic culture in Europe, called the Sesklo culture. This culture probably derived from similar ancient cultures in Anatolia, and in turn influencing the Balkan cultures and, possibly, the Cardium Pottery culture, which probably originated in the eastern Mediterranean, but skips over Crete and Greece and leaves the rest of the Balkans untouched. The Sesklo people probably spoke an “Aegean” language, none of which survive, but which may have included Minoan and Eteocretan.
When exactly the westward movement of Neolithic communities into Greece and the Balkans began is still not clear. However, Neolithic communities were established as far west as the Aegean coastal strip of western Turkey by 7000 BC, as indicated by sites such as Ulucak, Ege Gübre and Keçi Çayırı, reached possibly by following the alluvial valley of the Büyük Menderes stream.
As the timing of this expansion coincided with the so-called “Neolithic collapse” of the Pre-Pottery to Pottery Neolithic transition in southeastern Turkey and the Levant generally, it seems possible to surmise that this initial wave of migration westwards was triggered by ecological problems.
This is further confirmed by the mixed presence of central Anatolian and Levantine elements in the areas of initial expansion in western Turkey. Whether or not this wave extended to the Balkans in its initial phase is not clear; what is evident is that the westward movement of Neolithic communities was not an instan-taneous event, but lasted with an increasing pace until about 6400 bce.
The parallels between central Anatolia and western Anatolian sites such as Ulucak and Yeşilova suggests that there was a continuous migration westwards, especially since the pottery sequence from dark-colored fine-burnished wares to red or cream slipped wares in central Anatolia is paralleled in the same chronological order in the newly inhabited areas.
By the final phases, migrant farmers seem to have expanded into the Marmara region following the valley of the Sakarya River, and also into the northern Balkans, reaching the Danube, as indicated by sites such as Koprivets. In places where there were local Mesolithic communities, both groups seem to has merged. In this regard, sites of the Fikirtepe culture around Istanbul display a clear mixture of local and introduced elements.
At around 6200 BC, there seems to have been another more intensive migratory movement that originated in the eastern regions of central Anatolia. Possibly, unstable climatic conditions related to the so-called Labrador/Hudson Bay Climatic Event had a triggering effect in this movement (Berger & Guillaine 2008).
The sites of this new wave are rarely in the same locations as before (Özdogˇan 2008), yet many maintained their locations over subsequent millennia, in time developing as major archaeological mounds. To this new group belong the Karanovo I, Sesklo, and Starčevo cultures in the Balkans, all associated with new Neolithic elements. The uniform composition of this secondary Neolithic package over a vast territory implies that the expansion was rather rapid.
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