Prehistoric people had love of beauty
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European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress
for at least 7,500 years.
Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was
Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis
with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion,
archaeologists say.
In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers,
mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed
around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load
of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short
skirts.
"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully
dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore
bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-
Cvetkovic.
The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-
hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art
and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence
of Europe's oldest spa.
"They pursued beauty and produced 60 different forms of wonderful
pottery and figurines, not only to represent deities, but also out of
pure enjoyment," said Kuzmanovic.
The findings suggest an advanced division of labor and organization.
Houses had stoves, there were special holes
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Houses had stoves, there were special holes for trash, and the dead
were buried in a tidy necropolis. People slept on woolen mats and
fur,
made clothes of wool, flax and leather and kept animals.
The community was especially fond of children. Artifacts include toys
such as animals and rattles of clay, and small, clumsily crafted pots
apparently made by children at playtime.
COPPER AGE
One of the most exciting finds for archaeologists was the discovery
of
a sophisticated metal workshop with a furnace and tools including a
copper chisel and a two-headed hammer and axe.
"This might prove that the Copper Age started in Europe at least 500
years earlier than we thought," Kuzmanovic said.
The Copper Age marks the first stage of humans' use of metal, with
copper tools used alongside older stone implements. It is thought to
have started around the 4th millennium BC in south-east Europe, and
earlier in the Middle East.
The Vinca culture flourished from 5500 to 4000 BC on the territories
of what is now Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia.
It got its name from the present-day village of Vinca, 10 km east of
Belgrade on the Danube river, where early 20th-century excavations
uncovered the remains of eight Neolithic villages.
The discovery of a mine -- Europe's oldest -- at the nearby Mlava
river suggested at the time that Vinca could be Europe's first metal
culture, a theory now backed up by the Plocnik site.
"These latest findings show that the Vinca culture was from the very
beginning a metallurgical culture," said archaeologist Dusan Sljivar
of Serbia's National Museum. "They knew how to find minerals, to
transport them and melt them into tools."
The metal workshop in Plocnik was a room of some 25 square meters,
with walls built out of wood coated with clay.
The furnace, built on the outside of the room, featured earthen pipe-
like air vents with hundreds of tiny holes in them and a prototype
chimney to ensure air goes into the furnace to feed the fire and
smoke
comes out safely.
"In Bulgaria and Cyprus, where such workshops have also been found,
they didn't have chimneys but blew air on the fire with straws,
exposing man to heat and carbon dioxide," Sljivar said.
COLOURFUL MINERALS
He said the early metal workers very likely experimented with
colorful
minerals that caught their eye -- blue azurite, bright green
malachite
and red cuprite, all containing copper -- as evidenced by malachite
traces found on the inside of a pot.
The settlement was destroyed at some point, probably in the first
part
of the fifth millennium, by a huge fire.
The Plocnik site was first discovered in 1927 when the then Kingdom
of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was building a rail line from the southern
city of Nis to the province of Kosovo.
Some findings were published at the time but war, lack of funds and
objections from farmers meant it was investigated only sporadically
until digging started in earnest in 1996.
"The saddest thing for us is always the moment when we finish our
work
and everything has to be covered up with earth again," Kuzmanovic
said. "That's the easiest for the state, conservation is very
expensive and the land owners want to work in their fields."
But there was some hope that the latest excavation would be preserved
due to its importance, Kuzmanovic added.
"We dream of uncovering the entire town one day, and people will be
able to see prehistoric life at its fullest," she said.
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