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The T&
The finds The tablets were found in 1961 some kilometres from the well-known site of Turda. Nicolae Vlassa, an archaeologist at the Cluj Museum, unearthed three inscribed but unbaked clay tablets, together with 26 clay and stone figurines and a shell bracelet, accompanied by the burnt, broken and disarticulated bones of an adult male. Dating The tablets are generally believed to have belonged to the Vinča culture, which at the time was believed by Serbian and Romanian archaeologists to have originated around 2700 BC. Vlassa interpreted the T& However, subsequent radiocarbon dating on the Tartaria finds pushed the date of the tablets (and therefore of the whole Vinča culture) much further back, to as long ago as 5500 BC, well before the Sumerian era (although this is disputed in the light of apparently contradictory stratigraphic evidence ). If the symbols are indeed a form of writing, then writing in the Danubian culture would far predate the earliest Sumerian cuneiform script or Egyptian *. They would thus be the world's earliest known form of writing. This claim remains controversial. Interpretation The meaning (if any) of the symbols is unknown, and their nature has been the subject of much debate. Scholars who conclude that the inscribed symbols are writing base their assessment on a few conclusions, which are not universally endorsed. First, the existence of similar signs on other artifacts of the Danube civilization suggest that there was an inventory of standard shapes of which scribes made use. Second, the symbols manifest a high degree of standardization and a rectilinear shape comparable to archaic writing systems. Third, that the information communicated by each character was a specific one with a unequivocal meaning. Finally, that the inscriptions are sequenced in rows, whether horizontal, vertical or circular. If they do comprise a script, it is not known what kind of writing system they represent. Some archaeologists who support the idea that they do represent writing, notably Marija Gimbutas, have proposed that they are fragments of a system dubbed the Old European Script. Others consider the pictograms to be accompanied by random scribbles. It has been suggested that they may have been merely uncomprehending imitations of more advanced cultures, although this explanation is rendered somewhat moot by the great antiquity of the tablets. Alternatively, the symbols may have been used as marks of ownership or as the focus of religious rituals. Sarunas Milisauskas comments that "it is extremely difficult to demonstrate archaeologically whether a corpus of symbols constitutes a writing system" and notes that the first known writing systems were all developed by early states to facilitate record-keeping in complex organised societies in the Middle East and Mediterranean. There is no evidence of organised states in the European Neolithic, so it is likely that they would not have needed the administrative systems facilitated by writing. David Anthony notes that Chinese characters were first used for ritual and commemorative purposes associated with the sacred power of kings; it is possible that a similar usage accounts for the T& Bibliography | ||||||||
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