Vinča culture

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The Vinča culture is a Neolithic culture in the lower Danube area, whose most fascinating aspect is perhaps that some artifacts of this culture, though being about 7,000 years old (and thus about 2,000 years older than the oldest Sumerian clay tablets) bear engravings which some scholars consider writing. If they are indeed writing, they would be the oldest writing system known. Yet, without any well-founded idea what kind of language may be represented in it, there is hardly any prospect of decipherment.

Jörg Rhiemeier and Taylor Selseth formerly speculated that the language of this culture could be a member of a branch called Danubian of the Europic language family. Rhiemeier, at least, no longer supports this hypothesis.

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