Vinča symbols
[7] In 1875, archaeological excavations directed by the Hungarian archaeologist Baroness Zsófia Torma (1840–1899) at Tordos (present Turdaș, Romania) unearthed marble and fragments of pottery inscribed with previously unknown symbols.
At the site, on the Maros river, a feeder into a tributary of the Danube, female figurines, pots, and artifacts made of stone were also found.
[8] In 1908, a similar cache was found during excavations directed by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić (1869–1956) in Vinča, a suburb of Belgrade, some 245 km (152 mi) from Turdaș.
Other items found at the site of the discovery were subsequently radiocarbon-dated to before 4000 BC,[b] around 1,300 years earlier than the date Vlassa expected and pre-dating the writing systems of the Sumerians and Minoans.
Quantitative linguistic analysis leads to the conclusion that 59% of the signs share the properties of pottery marks, 11.5% are part of asymmetric ornaments typical for whorls of the Vinča culture, and 29.5% may represent some sort of symbolic (semasiographic) notation.
[16] This means that the Vinča finds predate the proto-Sumerian pictographic script from Uruk (modern Iraq), which is usually considered to be the oldest known writing system, by more than a thousand years.
The Vinča symbols may have served a range of purposes, such as representing ownership, individual or communal identities, or themes of a sacred or religious nature.
[citation needed] Other cultures, such as the Minoans and Sumerians, initially developed their scripts as accounting tools; the Vinča symbols may have served a similar purpose.
However, the use of the symbols seems to have been abandoned (along with the objects on which they appear) at the start of the Bronze Age, suggesting that the new technology brought with it significant changes in social organization or population, and beliefs.
[21] One argument in favour of the ritual explanation is that the objects on which the symbols appear do not seem to have had much long-term significance to their owners – they are commonly found in pits and other refuse areas.
This is consistent with the supposition that they were prepared for household religious ceremonies in which the signs incised on the objects represent expressions: a desire, request, vow, etc.
