The Vinča Signs — Europe’s oldest proto-writing?

ABOUT THIS ATTRACTION

On the shoulders of Vinča’s black-burnished vessels, and on the backs of its figurines, appear short combinations of incised signs: chevrons, combs, crosses, brush-like strokes. They repeat, they combine, and they date to around 4500–4000 BC — which would make them the oldest written marks in Europe, and older than the Sumerian cuneiform tradition by centuries. The mainstream reading is cautious: no grammar-like structure has been shown, and most archaeologists see potters’ identification marks or clan symbols rather than recorded language. But the romance is real — the “Vinča script” hypothesis, pressed hardest by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas as “Old European writing”, keeps Vinča in every book on the origins of writing. See the marks themselves in the site museum’s pottery cases.