Sometimes, discoveries arise from a strange set of circumstances. After the construction of the hydroelectric power plant and storage lake on Djerdap began in the 1960s, as part of a large-scale project in which two countries - Yugoslavia and Romania - participated, archaeological research quickly took place, both on the Serbian and Romanian sides of the Danube bank. Thus, in order to urgently examine this area, before one part is submerged, a discovery was made that will change the picture we had of European prehistory to a good extent.
Namely, while investigating the layer below the site from the Younger Neolithic period, in 1967, Professor Dragoslav Srejović, together with his colleagues, discovered the remains of an older settlement from the Mesolithic period. It was nothing less than a sensational discovery - first of all, photos of anthropomorphic sculptures, as well as forms decorated with reliefs in the form of abstract arabesques, went around the world. The sculptures were made by working large sandstone pebbles, and had no parallels with any known Mesolithic or early Neolithic culture in the world. Some of these sculptures seem to attract the attention of the modern observer, perhaps because we seem to recognize their facial expressions, which is not so often the case in prehistoric art in general. Even if all this is just our interpretation, the first impression is that the figures from Lepenski Vir have something grotesque, almost caricature. However, it may just be the result of the desire to shape a performance that reflects the characteristics of a fish and a man at the same time. Their expression is human, but the round eyes, lips turned down and the lack of a neck make us recognize the features of river creatures in these sculptures.
EIGHT MILLENNIUMS AGO: The finds, the earliest of which are dated to more than 8,5 thousand years ago, included the remains of numerous habitats of a unique trapezoidal shape, without upright walls (probably influenced by the style of construction of earlier, temporary huts), jewelry, stone tools, bones and horns, even artifacts that contained unusual and difficult to explain signs and engravings. Lepenski Vir abounds in peculiarities, among which are funeral rituals. For some reason, only selected individuals (mostly children or old men of both sexes) were buried in the settlement itself, most often in the square or inside the house (where the sculptures were also placed), behind a hearth made of heavy stone blocks.
The Lepenski Vir settlement was located inside a horseshoe-shaped area, facing the Danube bank, with a free space in the form of a square in the central part. That part of Djerdap is very colorful in terms of relief forms, geological base and amount of precipitation, which contributes to the existence of numerous micro-ecological zones with a specific climate that is significantly milder than the weather conditions in other parts of the Danube region. This modified climate is particularly noticeable in coves and terraces sheltered by high limestone rocks, which attracted members of the Lepenski Vir culture.
"The culture of Lepenski Vir developed in a specific ecological niche. If we were to compare different regions, we can say that the Djerdap culture is different from the Mesolithic in, say, Greece, Northern Europe, Northwestern Europe and so on, although even at that time there was movement and some kind of exchange of information and goods. What we call the 'Đerdap Mesolithic' or the culture of Lepenski Vir is absolutely original in terms of its content, with the fact that we do not know the culture of Lepenski Vir outside the region of Đerdap", emphasizes archaeologist Boban Tripković, assuming that in the future archeology will provide an even deeper insight into this unique culture. "Based on what is available to us, it is clear that there is continuity with previous Palaeolithic and Epipaleolithic communities, which are very few in the region, and which inhabited the underground and caves." There are traces that show that people were present in Djerdap and its surroundings thirty thousand years ago. When the Neolithic appeared in the area, it changed everything. The Neolithic brought innovations that we inherit to this day. If we were to remove the industrial revolution, we would see that exactly the cultural contents that appeared in the Neolithic remain, and last until our time."
With the achievements of the Neolithic, which were reflected in the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plants, the culture of Lepenski Vir was forced to leave its narrow habitats, and to conquer the expanses needed for the cultivation of plants and animals. Neolithization happened thanks to the contact with the culture called Starčevo.
"The culture of Starčevac and the culture of Lepenski Vir are closely related," continues Boban Tripković, "but that relationship is very complex." We are used to thinking about the Lepenski Vir culture as a cultural phenomenon that precedes the early Neolithic and Starčevo culture. However, during the past decade, radiometric dating was carried out at a larger number of sites, primarily thanks to our colleague Dušan Borić, who was working on his doctoral dissertation on the topic of Djerdap sites at the University of Cambridge. New series of dates show that the culture of Lepenski Vir is partly contemporaneous with the culture of Starčevo. So, what archaeologists call the developed phase of the Lepenski Vir culture, with its extraordinary trapezoidal architecture and plastered, red limestone floors, is actually at the same time as the Neolithic period in the region, so it happens around 6200 BC, at the time when the first Starčevac people appear in the area settlements, and at a time when contacts between those two cultures were already recorded. Further analyzes showed that in the region of Djerdapa there are people who were not born in that area, but according to some indications, they came from the area of Oltenia, in today's Romania."
Relocated location not far from the "Lepenski Vir" Museum
In 1970 and 1971, in order to save the remains of the Mesolithic settlement from submersion after the construction of the reservoir, the entire site was relocated to an area about a hundred meters away and raised by about thirty meters. At the same time, the objects were placed in a position identical to the original, taking care to preserve the orientation towards the sides of the world, as well as to make the Treskavica mountain massif as visible as in the original position. It was an undertaking of considerable proportions, as several houses were carried over in their entirety, together with the slabs of stone which form the hearths, the stone structure at the base, and the floor which was made of a kind of red plaster, and about a meter deep, so that the individual house weighed about twenty tons. By the end of the current year, the area of the site will finally be roofed and protected by a supporting structure made of steel, between which lattice elements weighing 350 tons are spread.
By the way, not far from the site is the "Lepenski Vir" Museum, which, unfortunately, is the only available museum exhibit in our country dedicated to a prehistoric site.
"The culture of Lepenski Vir is original and spontaneous, and its great accomplishments do not harmonize with the general economic and social circumstances and the spirit of the era in which it was created, with the relationship with the extremely simplified forms of culture of hunter-gatherer communities of the Middle Stone Age." Between 7000 and 6000 BC, in the period when a new economic and social structure was established in Đerdap, on the Lepenski Vir, and masterpieces were created in sculpture, in other areas of Europe people lived in natural shelters or tents, mostly from natural collected food, and artistic expression is limited to the occasional simplified engraving on stone, horn or bone. At this time, even the populated areas of Africa are uncreative both in the development of economic and social relations and in artistic creativity. Only in the Levant and in Anatolia, and only in a few places where the culture of the Younger Stone Age was established, did the traditional economy gradually change, and a special art was born, but devoid of monumental sculpture. All this shows that the creators of the culture of Lepenski Vir had no rivals among their contemporaries, that is, that the cultural center of the prehistoric world was located on the territory of Serbia for a whole millennium. In that center, two great cultural assets were realized: sacral architecture with monumental sculpture, which expresses a unique view of the world, close to the view of the first Greek philosophers, and the mastery of the method of domestication of plants and animals, which established a completely new economy based on food production.
In the cultural settlements of Lepenski Vir, a large number of habitations with shrines and various sacred objects were discovered. All these habitats have unusual foundations in the form of a hemmed circular section, designed by triangulation (triangular module), i.e. a method that was introduced into architecture only in our time by Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller. At the base of each habitat, from the front to the back, beveled stone thresholds, a rectangular hearth, a spherical stone altar and sculptures made of giant pebbles were placed. By axially connecting the sculpture, the altar, the hearth and the thresholds, an interesting composition that vividly resembles a stylized human figure was created at the base of each habitat.
It is unlikely that this association of a finite geometric image with an ephemeral human being is accidental. Rather, it must be concluded that the architecture of Lepenski Vir establishes a magical interdependence between the structure of the cosmos and the structure of the human body, that is, that it is a representation of the creation and structure of the universe. The basics of the habitat in the form of a hemmed circular section seem to illustrate the great creation of the world, which was described thousands of years later by Plato in the Timaeus: "The primordial chaos is resolved into figures with the help of numbers and shapes", the shaping of the body from elementary particles - right triangles and the birth of basic spatial forms - tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), hexahedron (earth) and dodecahedron (space)."
Dragoslav Srejović, Past experiences, Ars Libri, 2001.
