Long before Egypt rose from the Nile, before Ancient Greece enlightened the world, and before the Romans rose to claim the lands around the Mediterranean. Dating to before 5000 B.C. along the lower Danube Valley in the Balkans a lost civilization flourished. There history starts sometime around 6200 B.C.
At the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University 250 artifacts from this lost world are on display titled “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C." As part of new research into this previously unexplored area for archeologists the exhibit is being shown with the intent of increasing interest in the lower Danube Valley.
No one knows what these people called themselves so the name "Old Europe" has been applied. Some scholars would classify this culture as reaching the threshold of civilization but without any written record studies are limited to piecing things together from archeology. What is left to us are their settlements and graves which have provided a wealth of information.
The findings are startling to the uninitiated as the Neolithic era was seen as a time of limited development and human association. Here we are presented with a culture more advanced than anything known in the Near East, often called the "Cradle of Civilization." This new area of study may change the way human progress is perceived, that of being an orderly progression from hunter-gather to farmer to city builder.
In this epoch migratory herders and farmers from the Macedonia and Black Sea regions started migrating bring with them Barley seeds and wheat with domesticated cattle. This culture is not known widely, but were making advancements while Mesopotamia was still undeveloped. These settlers were noted for making tools from copper, establishing trade routes, working in advanced pottery which according to Dr. Roger S. Bagnall, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, “the Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.”
The artifacts are pulled from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania, a first in putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Old Europe engaged in extensive trade that reached to the Aegean Sea as deduced by certain sea shells that have been found. The exhibit's guest curator, David W. Anthonysaid, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world and was developing many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”
Trade goods such as the sea shells indicate that a large effective system of bartering and trade routes were well established before being interrupted by (theoretically) horse nomads from the steppes that upset the settlements of Old Europe. The horsemen over took Old Europe and only isolate pockets were left such as the Basques in Spain.
Settlements took the form of single story one and two room houses nestled behind palisades. Common items were elaborately decorated. Models and figurines abound, with gold ornaments adorning the important dead. More than 3000 gold ornaments were found along with weapons and tools made of copper in the graves of people who must have been important. In simple graves and stashes many abstract female figurines have come to light.
The finds have only come to light in the West with the end of the Cold War. In 1972 local archeologists in Bulgaria un-earthed a large cemetery from the fifth millennium B.C. in Varna. Since then archeologists have pieced the larger picture of neolithic society in Old Europe. A culture that advanced long before the cradle of civilization became viable.
Written by Seamus Esparza
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