The Mystery of the Danube Civilisation: The discovery of Europe's oldest civilisation

1.

THE TRANSITION TO THE NEOLITHIC IN EUROPE (CA. 7500–5500 BCE)

Like all of the world’s early civilisations, that of Old Europe was built by sedentary people who practised arable farming. This already gives rise to some fundamental questions and, often, the answers that we find to these questions will confront us with further questions. For it is precisely the transition from hunter-gathering to farming in Europe that presents one of the trickiest topics in archaeology. Discussing which conditions were responsible for bringing farming to Europe might seem to be an irrelevant topic when it comes to portraying the civilisation of Old Europe. But this is not the case, because the way in which the Old Europeans dealt with this new technology reveals a great deal about the development dynamics of their communities. Strictly speaking, arable farming is not a single technology either, but a whole package of individual technologies, the so-called Agrarian Package, which includes not only the know-how needed to cultivate crops, but also the basics of storing the harvest and animal husbandry.

Was the shift from hunter-gathering to crop cultivation a revolution or a gradual transition? There is a conclusive answer to this question. The transition to agriculture marked the beginning of the Neolithic (Younger Stone Age) era. The notion that the changeover to arable farming was a swift change, a kind of revolution, is now outdated. For a long time the term Neolithic Revolution was used, but for some years now there has been more cautious use of the term transition. After all, in the Near East, the changeover from the first experiments with the seeds of edible plants to fully developed arable farming took about 2,500 years, i.e. from about 10,000 to 7500 BCE. If it took such a long time, how can anyone call it a revolution? Did arable farming technology come from Asia to Europe, or did the Old European hunter-gatherers spontaneously develop their own form of agricultural food production? The transition to the Neolithic first started in the Near East. The beginnings of crop cultivation took place somewhat later in all other regions of the globe. However, this does not automatically mean that arable farming technology was exported from the Near East to the rest of the world, including to Europe. As is the case with other technologies, in different parts of the world and at different times, people were just as innovative in their transition to agriculture and succeeded in making the necessary changes – independently of the know-how gathered by the first farmers in the Near East.

Early farmers in Southeast Europe

A sedentary lifestyle is a prerequisite for crop cultivation, because once the field has been sown, the growth of the plants has to be supervised, the crop has to be harvested at the right time, and arrangements have to be made to store the harvested crops such as grains or legumes. The relationship between sedentary living and agriculture is generally understood to indicate that people deliberately chose to establish permanent settlements in order to produce food. In fact, however, recent research has shown that sedentariness does not necessarily lead to soil cultivation.

In the oldest archaeological layer of Can Hasan in Western Anatolia, evidence has been found of a largely sedentary population that had storehouses but no agriculture. Sedentariness is not directly linked to agriculture in Europe either. The earliest indications of at least seasonally sedentary communities (Thorpe 1996: 25) date from the 8th millennium BCE; they can be found in the Danube valley, at Lepenski Vir in the Iron Gates gorge on the Serbian-Romanian border. However, agriculture did not arrive there until much later (beginning of the 6th millennium BCE).

How the transition from the hunter-gatherer stage to crop cultivation and livestock keeping occurred is primarily dependent on the region’s climatic conditions and its local flora and fauna. And, during the Neolithic, conditions in the areas where the first farming settlements in Southeast Europe were founded differed from those in the Near East in a number of respects. There is no doubt that the developments in Anatolia were related to those in Europe. However, had the Old Europeans only remained at the technological level of Anatolian farmers, it would have taken a very long time for agriculture to spread throughout Europe. And it is also certain that arable farming and livestock keeping would not have reached all of the regions of Europe where they were later practised. In fact, crop cultivation spread relatively quickly from the Balkans to Central and Western Europe. In the search for an explanation, however, a number of other questions arise.

Phase 1: Contact via the Bosporus land bridge (ca. 7500–6700 BCE)

When, from where and how did agriculture reach Europe? Was the technology of crop cultivation brought to Europe by migrants, or did the new way of life spread through the transfer of ideas? How did people, agricultural implements and animals manage to cross the Aegean Sea? Although no remains of prehistoric boats have been found that could point to the construction of sea-going vessels, there are clear indications that the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) who lived on the west coast of the Aegean were also able to navigate coastal waters. Remains of tuna, which can only be caught in open waters, have been found at their campsites. The people of the Mesolithic were not only skilled fishermen, they were also the first to exploit maritime trade routes.

One of the earliest goods transported by sea was obsidian, a shiny black substance made of volcanic glass. This commodity was particularly valued because of the sharp-edged flakes that could be used as tools. The structure of obsidian is site-specific, meaning that modern analytical methods can be used to determine the precise origin of the volcanic material used to make a particular artefact. The material used to make the obsidian tools found in the Franchthi Cave on the Gulf of Argos in the eastern Peloponnese comes from the island of Melos in the Cyclades and dates back to around 11,000 BCE (Cunliffe 2008: 71). Melos is about 120 km away from the Greek coast, so the Mesolithic seafarers must have been able to cover that distance with their boats that long ago.

In the early Neolithic period, the time when agriculture came to Europe, it was certainly already possible to cross the Aegean – with intermediate stops at the islands. And those who built the boats and navigated the sea must have been proficient specialists. It must be remembered that boat construction reveals a level of planning and design and an understanding of the concept of seaworthiness (Farr 2010: 20). Longer sea voyages, possibly lasting several days, required nautical skills. It will probably never be known for sure exactly what methods these Neolithic seafarers used for orientation. We can only imagine that the configuration of the constellations, prevailing winds, or ocean currents played a role. In any case, the Neolithic peoples had already mastered amazing distances by sea.

1/2Early Neolithic figurines from the southern Aegean

Top: Crete, 7th millennium BCE (Sakellarakis 1985: 134)

Bottom: Karpathos, 5th millennium BCE (Fitton 1989: 19)

There is clear evidence of the seafaring skills of the inhabitants on the Aegean coasts and the seaworthiness of their vessels at the end of the 8th millennium BCE: by 7000 BCE at the latest, arable farming technology had reached Crete.

Those responsible for the transfer of know-how either came as traders or as new settlers to explore the island. The route taken by these early pioneers crossed the sea via the various islands between Crete and the Anatolian coast: Rhodes, Karpathos and Kasos. They brought agricultural implements and seeds to cultivate the fields in Crete. The first crop to be cultivated was wheat for bread (Triticum aestivum), which originated in Anatolia.

But there were a number of things that the migrants did not bring with them. There is no pottery to be found in the oldest archaeological layers of Knossos. The people who brought the Agrarian Package to Crete lived in the preceramic Neolithic period. As far as livestock farming was concerned, they only brought the basic idea, because they came without cattle or sheep. But Crete did have its own wildlife, which they domesticated in the course of the 7th millennium BCE. Aurochs, the beasts from which modern cattle descend, appear to have been domesticated by 6000 BCE in Crete (Roberts 1996: 11). Among other things, the colonists of the southern Aegean islands also produced items that were not intended for practical use. These were small stone sculptures, female figurines (Figs. 1/2). These artefacts reveal the stylistic and aesthetic features of early Neolithic artistic expression. The art of figurine making developed rapidly on the European mainland, both technically and stylistically (see Chap. 4).

On the one hand, the colonisation of Crete by arable farmers illustrates the technological ability of Neolithic people to build efficient vessels and to travel hundreds of kilometres across the open sea. On the other hand, the transfer of people and goods to Crete shows us that the capacity for transporting larger loads was still quite limited at that time. Thus, even though voyages across the sea were already being undertaken in prehistoric times, it is quite a different matter to assume that the migration across the Aegean was purposeful and involved large numbers of people. To this day, generalised explanations are still being given to describe how people and animals could have crossed the sea that separates Europe from Asia Minor. The images of early mass migrations require a great deal of imagination, and some belong in the realm of pure fantasy.

One theory holds that in the 7th millennium BCE, Europe experienced a mass immigration of farmers from Anatolia, who allegedly crossed the Aegean in open boats and came ashore on the coasts of Greece. This is the Diffusion theory, first put forward by Renfrew (1987). There is something almost comical about this imagined scenario:

Farmers in western Anatolia feel a collective urge to migrate, leave their fields and trek to the east coast of the Aegean. Exactly what the motivation for such a move might be remains a mystery, because there is no archaeological evidence of any overpopulation in Anatolia during the early Neolithic period. When they reach the coast, the farmers start building boats, even though they have never done this before. And they would have to build a lot of boats to be able to transport the masses of people and their belongings – even if the farmers had taken full advantage of the transport capacities of the coastal fishermen.

Some scholars believe that the farmers would have built rafts to transport all their possessions. However, wood suitable for raft construction simply does not exist on the Aegean coast, neither in the past nor in the present. The trees that grow there are twisted and gnarled. To build a raft you need long straight timbers, which have to be as light as possible, so that the raft does not sit too deeply in the water from its own weight – because if it did, it would not be able to carry much cargo. But even if the farmers had been able to successfully construct their boats and rafts, they would still face the problem of loading their seeds and various kinds of implements on board – not to mention their livestock. And at this point it really takes a fantastic imagination to be able to envision how sheep and cattle were loaded onto these ancient vessels.

The domesticated cattle of Anatolia were quite a heavy species. The cows weighed in at over 500 kg live weight, and bulls were over 700 kg, perhaps as much as 1,000 kg. It would be impossible to load such beasts onto small prehistoric boats. Not only that, the farmers-cum-seafarers would have to carry huge quantities of feed for the livestock they were transporting – even if the voyage was only going to take a few days. Nevertheless, there appears to be no lack of ludicrous speculation about prehistoric cattle transports.

Another hypothesis goes even further than migration theories about crossing the Aegean. This one claims that the early farmers on the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia, i.e. in the south of present-day Turkey, would have built rafts and then – along with their livestock – sailed hundreds of kilometres along the Mediterranean coast, into the Aegean Sea and through the chains of islands straight to the northern Aegean coast (Nikolov 2007 a: 18f.).

This theory makes no sense, its basis is clearly absurd. Nevertheless, the remains of cattle and sheep found in the oldest farming settlements in Greece really are domesticated animals of Anatolian origin. If the idea that the migrants brought their livestock to Europe over the sea is absurd, what alternative routes were available for the prehistoric cattle herders? The overland route, of course.

Some branches of science have been finding increasing evidence that Europe and Asia Minor were originally linked by a land bridge in the Bosporus region between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Up until the 7th millennium BCE, the area where today the Bosporus Strait separates Europe from Asia Minor was a hilly region where people and animals could wander unhindered from east to west and from west to east. To the south, the land bridge was bounded by the Sea of Marmara, which at the time was a body of water connected to the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles Strait. To the north stretched a large body of fresh water, the Euxine Lake of antiquity.

Both geologists and oceanographers agree that such a land bridge existed. Exactly when this land bridge was breached and whether this breakthrough resulted in a catastrophic flood event or was a gradual overflow is still debated today. In the meantime, a wealth of research literature documenting the various positions has become available (see the edited volumes of Marler/Haarmann 2006 and Yanko-Hombach et al. 2007).

The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis of William Ryan and Walter Pitman, who presented their spectacular discovery of Noah’s Flood to the world in 1998, asserts that the mass of sea water breaking through from the Mediterranean via the Sea of Marmara was the greatest natural disaster the region has ever experienced (see below). It is hardly surprising that this narrow strip of land was breached precisely at the Bosporus. The region is among the world’s most seismically active, and countless smaller or larger earth tremors shake the folded sandstone formations at irregular and unpredictable intervals (Yilmaz 2005, Yilmaz et al. 2010). Perhaps an earthquake triggered the cataclysmic flood. Just how violent such quakes can be was experienced in autumn 1999 by the people who live along the coast of the Sea of Marmara, when their villages were devastated by earth tremors.

Originally, Ryan and Pitman had calculated that the Great Flood had happened in about 5600 BCE. But it turned out that this was far too late, and based on new measurements of sediment layers, Ryan has pushed the date back to 6700 BCE. The new dating was first discussed by Ryan at a conference in Italy in June 2002. Since then, this time frame has been substantiated by investigations of sediments in the Marmara Sea and the Bosporus region (Ryan et al. 2003). Sometime between 6700 and 6400 BCE is currently being debated as the most probable period for the waters of the Mediterranean breaking through to form the Black Sea.

Whether the flood event happened at the beginning (6700 BCE) or the end of the range (6400 BCE) does not significantly impact the hypothesis that the farmers migrated via this prehistoric land bridge. In any case, there was sufficient time for the early wanderers from Anatolia to cross the isthmus to Europe with their cattle. The cattle and sheep could graze during the hike, and there would have been no shortage of food. The hike over the land bridge was certainly not a planned migration with a specific destination in mind. It makes much more sense to imagine that the farmers from the eastern side were going west in order to search for areas of land suitable for agriculture – possibly supported by information provided by the fishermen who had sailed along the coast. The westward migration of Anatolian farmers was most likely not a one-off event, but rather a succession of smaller groups that made the journey at different times.

If Anatolian arable farming technology crossed over into Europe and particular groups of people were involved in this transfer, passing on their know-how to the Europeans, then it is easy to imagine that these migrations across the land bridge took place exclusively from east to west. However, human geneticists have found that there must also have been population movements in the other direction, i.e. from Europe to Anatolia, and this genetic transfer has been dated to around 7100 BCE (Cinnioglu et al. 2004: 131ff.). This means that it was not only farmers migrating from Anatolia to Europe, but hunters were also following game on forays from Europe to Anatolia.

On the European side of the land bridge, it would have been possible for the migrants from Anatolia to travel northwards, along the west coast of the Black Sea. That would have brought them into the territory of present-day Bulgaria. However, the new arrivals did not take this route, and there was a good reason. The forested region of the eastern Balkans belonged to a different climate zone than the agricultural areas in Anatolia. To settle there, the newcomers would have had to adapt to another environment with climatic conditions different from those they were familiar with in Anatolia. So agriculture did indeed begin later in Bulgaria than it did further south. Instead, the farmers from Anatolia wandered along the north coast of the Aegean Sea and then turned south. They left traces along their migration route: the remains of old settlements have been found near the land bridge in the European part of modern Turkey (Çilingiroglu 2005: 2).

But the area that they eventually migrated to is much better known. The migrants obviously found ideal conditions for new settlements in the fertile plain of Thessaly, as well as further south in Arcadia and the Peloponnese. This is where the oldest remains of agricultural settlements on European soil have been found. These early Neolithic settlements in Greece date from between 7500 and 6500 BCE (Cunliffe 2008: 96f.). The pioneers from Anatolia made Thessaly their home, i.e. they began to build settlements and develop the land for farming (Fig. 3).

Recent genetic studies on the relationship between male Y chromosomes and female X chromosomes in this region have shown that the migrants from beyond the Aegean were predominantly men who took indigenous (i.e. European) wives (Budja 2005: 58f.).

The settlements in Thessaly formed a niche, which would later be integrated into the economic area and cultural fabric of Old Europe, at a time when the indigenous Old Europeans were becoming more accustomed to this new way of life. The exchange of goods, certain livestock species, and technologies may have accelerated the Neolithic transformation in some ecological niches, but the archaeological evidence for large-scale movements by farmers […] is, in my opinion, missing (Yakar 1997: 66f).

3Early Neolithic farming settlements in Greece (Gimbutas 1991: 14)

The settlement of Thessaly by sedentary farmers marks the beginning of an era that can be regarded as the incubation period of the Danube Civilisation. Here, the contacts between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic arable farmers manifest themselves in family ties and cohabitation. When, some generations later, descendants of the first settlers explored the region further north (up to the middle Danube), they were no longer pure Anatolians, their genes had become mixed. In Bulgaria, the proportion of Anatolian genes declines rapidly, suggesting that by the end of the 7th millennium BCE, it was acculturated Old Europeans who were determining the dynamics of population development and the spread of agriculture in the Balkans.

This part of the early Neolithic is called the preceramic era, meaning that the technology of fired pottery had not yet been introduced. No fragments of earthenware have been found in settlements from that time. This applies to both Anatolia and Southeast Europe. The craft of pottery did not develop until about 6500 BCE. It may never be known exactly when the first settlements in Thessaly were built, because some scholars believe it is possible that the plain of Thessaly was also affected by the Great Flood, as a side effect of the breach at the Bosporus. It is not difficult to imagine that the constant influx of meltwater from the melting Ice Age glaciers in the north caused the Mediterranean to rise to such a high level that the lowest parts of the coastline were flooded, such as in Thessaly, leaving the entire plain underwater. The floodwaters then ebbed away after the massive breakthrough at the Bosporus. The early settlers in Thessaly, whose homes and fields were affected by the local flood, probably built new settlements in other places that were safer.

The typical settlements of Thessaly are Tell settlements built on hillsides (e.g. Sesklo). The preference for elevated locations shaped the settlement geography of the future and is also characteristic of the settlements of the formative period of Old Europe, such as Karanovo in the Bulgarian lowlands and Parța in Romania (Chapman 2009). Settlements in river valleys were built on raised embankments (e.g. Vinča on the Danube, Tărtăria on the Mureș). The large Copper Age settlements in Ukraine also tended to prefer hilly terrain. Many settlements were inhabited for centuries and some, like Karanovo, for millennia. New buildings were erected on the foundations of the older ones and, over the generations, the settlements grew not only in size, but also in elevation. The mounds that settlements were built on grew higher with each successive layer of human habitation. In the Balkans and the fertile plains of the lower Danube valley, villages were rebuilt on the same spot generation after generation, creating stratified tells that grew to heights of 10–17 metres, lifting the village above its surrounding fields (Anthony 2007: 162).

It was not until the transition from the Copper to the Bronze Age (4th millennium BCE) that the settlement geography began to change: The Tells were abandoned and new, smaller settlements were founded on the plains (see Chap. 9).

4/5Early Neolithic marble figurines

Top: Thessaly, beginning of the 6th millennium BCE (Gimbutas 1982, 133)

Bottom: Sparta region, early 6th millennium BCE (Gimbutas 1989, plate 14)

Remarkably, there is a Greek flood myth that involves Thessaly and it tells of the recreation of the world after the waters receded. The oldest version is recounted by Pindar (ca. 522–446 BCE) in his Olympian Odes (Gantz 1993: 165f.). It is the story of Deucalion (son of Prometheus) and Pyrrha (daughter of Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus). The hero and heroine save themselves from the flood in an ark (Greek: larnax), which later comes to rest on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Zeus sees to it that the flood subsides and after their rescue at the behest of Hermes – Deucalion and Pyrrha set about creating (new) people from stones.

Are these perhaps allusions to the oldest sculptures, which the early farmers of Greece had carved out of marble and alabaster (Figs. 4/5)?

Phase 2: