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The Tărtăria tablets (Romanian pronunciation: [tərtəˈri.a] ) are three tablets, reportedly discovered in 1961 at a Neolithic site in the village of Tărtăria in Săliștea commune (about 30 km (19 mi) from Alba Iulia), from Transylvania. [1]
The tablets bear incised symbols associated with the corpus of the Vinča symbols and have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom have argued that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world. Accurately dating the tablets is difficult as the stratigraphy pertaining to their discovery is disputed, and a heat treatment performed after their discovery has prevented the possibility of directly radiocarbon dating the tablets. [2]
Based on the account of their discovery which associates the tablets with the Vinča culture and on indirect radiocarbon evidence, some scientists propose that the tablets date to around c. 5300 BC, predating Mesopotamian pictographic proto-writing. [3] Some scholars have disputed the authenticity of the account of their discovery, suggesting the tablets are an intrusion from the upper strata of the site. [4] Other scholars, contesting the radiocarbon dates for Neolithic Southeastern Europe, have suggested that Tărtăria signs are in some way related to Mesopotamian proto-writing, particularly Sumerian proto-cuneiform, which they argued was contemporary. [5]
In 1961, members of a team led by Nicolae Vlassa (an archaeologist at the National Museum of Transylvanian History, Cluj-Napoca) reportedly unearthed three inscribed but unfired clay tablets, twenty-six clay and stone figurines, a shell bracelet, and the burnt,[ dubious – discuss ] broken, and disarticulated bones of an adult female sometimes referred to as "Milady Tărtăria". [6]
There is no consensus on the interpretation of the burial, but it has been suggested that the body was likely that of a respected local wise-person, shaman, or spirit-medium. [7]
It is disputed whether the tablets were actually found at the reported site, and Vlassa never discussed the circumstances of the find of the stratigraphy. [8]
The authenticity of the engravings has also been disputed. A recent claim of forgery is based on the similarity between some of the symbols and reproductions of Sumerian symbols in popular Romanian literature available at the time of the discovery. [9]
Two of the tablets are rectangular and the third is round. [10] They are all small, the round one being only 6 cm (2+1⁄2 in) across, and two—the round one and one rectangular tablet—have holes drilled through them. All three have symbols inscribed on only one face. [10] The unpierced rectangular tablet depicts a horned animal, an unclear figure, and a vegetal motif such as a branch or tree. The others consist of a variety of mainly abstract symbols. [7]
Workers at the conservation department of the Cluj museum baked the originally unbaked clay tablets in order to preserve them, making it impossible to directly date the tablets with the carbon 14 method. [11]
The tablets are generally believed to have belonged to the Vinča-Turdaș culture, which was originally thought to have originated around 2700 BCE by Serbian and Romanian archaeologists. The discovery garnered attention from the archeological world because it predates the first Minoan writing, the oldest known writing in Europe.
Subsequent radiocarbon dating of the other Tărtăria finds, extended by association also to the tablets, pushed the date of the site (and therefore of the whole Vinča culture) to approximately 5500 BCE, the time of the early Eridu phase of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. [12] Still, this is disputed in light of apparently contradictory stratigraphic evidence. [13]
It has been controversially claimed that 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 hieroglyphs. Thus, they would be the world's earliest known form of writing.
The term Danubian culture was proposed by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first agrarian society in central and eastern Europe. This hypothesis and the appearance of writing in this space is supported by Marco Merlini, [14] Harald Haarmann, Joan Marler, [15] Gheorghe Lazarovici, [16] and many others.
Colin Renfrew argues that the apparent similarities with Sumerian symbols are deceptive:
"To me, the comparison made between the signs on the Tărtăria tablets and those of proto-literate Sumeria carry very little weight. They are all simple pictographs, and a sign for a goat in one culture is bound to look much like the sign for a goat in another. To call these Balkan signs 'writing' is perhaps to imply that they had an independent significance of their own communicable to another person without oral contact. This I doubt." [17]
The Vinča symbols have been known since the late 19th century excavation by Zsófia Torma (1832–1899) [18] at the Neolithic site of Turdaș (Hungarian: Tordos) in Transylvania, at the time part of Austria-Hungary, the type site of the Tordos culture, a late, regional variation of the Vinča culture.
This group of artifacts, including the tablets, have some relation with the culture developed in the Black Sea – Aegean Sea area. Similar artefacts have been found in Bulgaria (e.g. the Gradeshnitsa tablets) and northern Greece (the Dispilio Tablet). The material and the style used for the Tartaria artefacts show some similarities to those used in the Cyclades area, as two of the statuettes are made of alabaster.[ original research? ][ citation needed ]
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 are basing their assessment on a few assumptions that are not universally endorsed:
If they do comprise a script, it is not known what kind of writing system they represent. Vlassa interpreted one of the Tărtăria tablets as a hunting scene and the other two with signs as a kind of primitive writing similar to the early pictograms of the Sumerians.[ citation needed ] 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.
One problem is the lack of independent indications of literacy existing in the Balkans at this period. 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, thus it is unlikely they would 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 Tărtăria symbols. [19] Some scholars have suggested that the symbols may have been used as marks of ownership or as the focus of religious rituals. [12]
An alternative suggestion is that they may have been merely uncomprehending imitations of more advanced cultures, although this explanation is made rather unlikely by the great antiquity of the tablets—there were no known literate cultures at the time from which the symbols could have been adopted. [12]
Others consider the pictograms to be accompanied by random scribbles.[ dubious – discuss ] [12]
The 35th century BC in the Near East sees the gradual transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Proto-writing enters transitional stage, developing towards writing proper. Wheeled vehicles are now known beyond Mesopotamia, having spread north of the Caucasus and to Europe.
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions which form their signs. Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia.
Săliștea, known as Cioara until 1965, is a commune located in Alba County, Transylvania, Romania. The old name of Cioara is still widely used, especially by local residents.
The Vinča symbols are a set of undeciphered symbols found on artifacts from the Neolithic Vinča culture and other "Old European" cultures of Central and Southeast Europe. Whether this is one of the earliest writing systems or simply symbols of some sort is disputed. They have sometimes been described as an example of proto-writing. The symbols went out of use around 3500 BC.
The Vinča culture, also known as Turdaș culture, Turdaș–Vinča culture or Vinča-Turdaș culture, is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southeast Europe, dated to the period 5400–4500 BC. Named for its type site, Vinča-Belo Brdo, a large tell settlement discovered by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić in 1908, it represents the material remains of a prehistoric society mainly distinguished by its settlement pattern and ritual behaviour.
Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age culture or civilisation in Southeast Europe, centred in the Lower Danube Valley. Old Europe is also referred to in some literature as the Danube civilisation.
The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, also known as the Cucuteni culture, Trypillia culture or Tripolye culture is a Neolithic–Chalcolithic archaeological culture of Southeast Europe. It extended from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions, centered on modern-day Moldova and covering substantial parts of western Ukraine and northeastern Romania, encompassing an area of 350,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi), with a diameter of 500 km.
The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis's excavations of Dispilio in Greece, and carbon 14-dated to 5202 BC. It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, Greece.
Zsófia Torma was a Hungarian archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in China and southeastern Europe. They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols or both to represent a limited number of concepts, in contrast to true writing systems, which record the language of the writer.
The Bronocice pot is a ceramic vase incised with one of the earliest known depictions of a wheeled vehicle. It was discovered in the village of Bronocice near the Nidzica River in Poland. Attributed to the Funnelbeaker archaeological culture, radiocarbon tests dated the pot to the mid-fourth millennium BCE. Today it is housed at the Archaeological Museum of Kraków in southern Poland.
Many undeciphered writing systems exist today; most date back several thousand years, although some more modern examples do exist. The term "writing systems" is used here loosely to refer to groups of glyphs which appear to have representational symbolic meaning, but which may include "systems" that are largely artistic in nature and are thus not examples of actual writing.
Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, artifacts bearing markings dating to the Neolithic period have been unearthed at several archeological sites in China, mostly in the Yellow River valley. These symbols have been compared to the oracle bone script—the earliest known forms of Chinese characters, first attested c. 1200 BCE—and have been cited by some as evidence that Chinese writing has existed in some form for over six millennia. However, the Neolithic symbols have only been found in small numbers, and do not appear to go beyond pictorial techniques, as is required to obtain a true writing system representing spoken language.
The prehistory of Southeastern Europe, defined roughly as the territory of the wider Southeast Europe covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic, beginning with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area some 44,000 years ago, until the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity, in Greece. First Greek language is Linear A and follows Linear B, which is a syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1400 BC. It is descended from the older Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Kydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, but disappeared with the fall of the Mycenean civilisation during the Late Bronze Age collapse.
Parța is a commune in Timiș County, Romania. It is composed of a single village, Parța, and was part of Șag commune until 2004.
The Gumelniţa–Kodžadermen-Karanovo VI complex was a Chalcolithic cultural complex of the fifth millennium BC located in the eastern Balkans, comprising the Gumelnița, Kodžadermen and Karanovo cultures. It is also aggregated with the Varna culture. It formed part of the broader cultural complex known as Old Europe. Gumelniţa–Kodžadermen-Karanovo VI evolved out of the earlier Boian culture and phase V of the Karanovo culture. From c. 4000 BC Gumelniţa–Kodžadermen-Karanovo VI was replaced by the Cernavodă culture.
The Gumelniţa culture was a Chalcolithic culture of the 5th millennium BC, named after the Gumelniţa site on the left (Romanian) bank of the Danube.
The Starčevo–Karanovo I-II–Körös culture or Starčevo–Körös–Criș culture is a grouping of two related Neolithic archaeological cultures in Southeastern Europe: the Starčevo culture and the Körös or Criș culture.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to prehistoric technology.
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