Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

A INQUIRY INTO CLUES OF LITERACY IN NEOLITHIC AND

COPPER AGE SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

Marco MERLINI
„Lucian Blaga” University Sibiu - IPCTE (Romania)
EURO INNOVANET, Rome (Italy)
Institute of Archaeomythology, Sebastopol (USA)
E-mail: marco.merlini@mclink.it

Key-words: Neolithic, Cooper Age, Danube script, literacy, Southeastern Europe.

Abstract: General and archaeological data concerning objects bearing signs,
distinct semiotic information on the inscribed artifacts, the inscriptions, and the
signs.

A few inscriptions as sample of more than 1000

A Middle Neolithic female figurine was found in the 1950s by Milutin Garašanin
at Supska (next to Cuprite, Republic of Serbia), but he did not comment on the
“A,” “I,” “M,” “H,” “Y” motifs positioned on a large triangle incised on the chest
(Starović 2004; Merlini 2004a). The object bears signs that echo capital letters of
the Latin alphabet, which are furthermore aligned in a row and underlined.

Figure 1. A Middle Neolithic female figurine from Supska (Republic of Serbia)

with signs that resemble capital letters of the Latin alphabet, are aligned in a row,
and are underlined.

Figure 2, an inscribed small clay cup from Ovčarovo tell (Bulgaria), belongs to
the Boian-Poljanica culture (Poljanica phase IV) (Bonev 1982, 2; Makkay 1990,

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26/2), i.e. Late Neolithic according to my own databank DatDas (Databank for the
Danube script), Middle Chalcolithic according to the Bulgarian timeline.
Chronologically, it is positioned between two famous Bulgarian inscribed
artifacts: the Gradešnica platter and the Karanovo seal.
The miniaturize vessel has a height of 2.4 cm and the maximal diameter is 2.2 cm.
It was discovered in 1972 during rescue excavations within a burned dwelling of
the fifth building level, associated with pottery resembling the one from Boian-
Spanţov culture. The cup is biconical with straight rim edge, cylindrical strip in
the middle area and slightly bended within the walls in the lower half. It is
manufactured from fine purified clay and has polished grayish-brown surface. The
firing is uneven.
Nine signs are incised on the middle strip. According to the archaeologist in
charge (Bonev 1982: 33), they are:
1) three oblique parallel strokes
2) down opened V
3) combination of one oblique and two vertical strokes
4) an acute angle
5) acute angle with elongated right shoulder
6) three vertical parallel strokes
7) irregular down opened V,
8) X shaped sign
9) acute angle with elongated shoulder

Figure 2. A Late Neolithic vase from Ovčarovo (central Bulgaria).

Bonev finds parallels with signs from Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeastern
Europe, insisting that the nine signs from Ovčarovo represent an “inscription” and
that Bulgaria is “one of the centers of the most ancient writing” (Bonev 1982: 33).
Other semiotic indicators point toward the presence of a script on the Ovčarovo
cup. Signs are intentional, identifiable, highly stylized, elementary in form, not

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ornamental, similar in size, standardized according to a model. The sign is a

ligature between a and a . The tri-lines are marked by a dot. The nine signs
are arranged in a horizontal sequence. A linear organization of signs is also found
in other pre-classical systems of writing such as cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Linear A and B, Cypriot-Minoan and Cypriot Syllabic. Finally, the inscription
from Ovčarovo is divided into three segments, which seem to express different
concepts of phrases/words.
The linear-elementary shape of the signs and their alignment in a sequential
arrangement are evident on a miniaturize vessel belonging to the Turdaş culture
(4900-4600 BCE) and recovered at the eponymous settlement. The y, Λ, and X
signs are framed within two horizontal lines according to the flow of concepts or
words/phrases (Torma Notebook: fig. 4.20; Winn 1990: 268, fig. 12.2.i, Winn
2004a).

Figure 3. Linear signs are structured along two registers on a Turdaş mignon
vessel. (D. Bulgarelli, Prehistory Knowledge Project 2007).

Numbers of artifacts from the Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame in

Southeastern Europe bear strange compound signs. All of the above-mentioned
examples have been discovered in a wide area having the Danube basin as axis.
My own databank DatDas organizes a catalogue of 1091 inscriptions composed of
two-more signs (Merlini 2008d) . The system of writing under scrutiny, the
Danube script, flourished from c. 5900-5800 BCE up to c. 3500-3400 BCE. It is
named Danube script because it appeared in the central Balkan area and had an
indigenous development. It was used only in the core area of the Danube
Civilization (c. 6400 BCE to c. 3500-3400 BCE), comprised within southern
Hungary, Ukraine, central Greece, and the Adriatic see.

The traps on the possible existence of a script in the Danube Basin and
beyond throughout the Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame

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The absent or retarded acknowledgment of some ancient scripts such as the Indus
script, the Danube script or, in the recent past, the Maya script is due to the
inadequate definitional approach to writing technology and the still partial
establishment of the research on it as an independent domain of cultural sciences.
Harald Haarmann and Joan Marler have recently recalled that studies on the
history of writing has remained, to this day, an arena where experts from different
fields (mainly linguists and archaeologists) and amateurs alike demonstrate their
expertise (or speculations) by making pronouncements about the emergence of
ancient scripts and their historical development (Haarmann and Marler 2008).
Linguists who are familiar with languages of antiquity and who study the scripts
in which they are written may have an understanding of the organization of sign
systems and how signs are applied to the sounds of a language in case of phonetic
scripts. However, their grasp on the historical mechanisms behind the origins of
this invention and on how writing skills unfolded is limited by the widespread
relegation of ars scribendi to a vicarial role as a more or less truthful mirror of the
spoken language and by the lack of comprehension on archaeological insights
about the cultural embedding of ancient societies and their motivation to introduce
writing. Archaeologists make authoritative declarations about writing systems
without even discussing basic definitional approaches to writing technology. They
are not engaged in the study of sign systems (language and non-language related)
within a network of communication, because that semiotic scientific terrain
extends beyond the archaeological sphere. Therefore, they often observe patterns
of consensus and adhere to conventional truisms such as, “We all know what
writing is”.
The state of art is even more problematic concerning the studies on the possibility
that Southeastern Europe could have developed an original script in the Neolithic
and Copper Age time, i.e. the “Danube script” within the frame of the “Danube
civilization” that developed between c. 6400-3500 BCE, because both linguists
and archaeologists put at work the entrenched old-fashioned truisms of the other
discipline that the proper specialists are in process of discarding.
Linguists discuss about “why” and “how” – and above all “if” - ars scribendi
came out in the villages of early farmers without becoming involved in
archaeological studies, examining assemblages of inscribed objects in museums
and in excavation sites, coping with the material and cultural fabric of the Danube
civilization, and dealing with the trajectories of institutional-socio-cultural
evolution of these communities, cultural groups and complexes as they emerge
from the archaeological record. In many cases, their archaeological and historical
background is anchored to out of fashion visions limited to contemplate the
occurrence of a European archaic script so unthinkable that the simple possibility
of it is ignored and its evidence given very scanty attention or to postulate a from
oriente lux drift for this technology.
Archaeologists make pronouncements about how writing technology came out in
ancient societies and its nature and role as an institution of early civilization
without proper semiotic methodological tools, intimate knowledge of the
infrastructure of sign systems and how various principles of writing apply to
different linguistic structures and even without discussing basic definitional

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approaches to writing technology. It is not for a case that the archaeological

record of inscribed artifacts from the Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeastern
Europe is cheapened persistently by many of them as bearing “pre-writing” signs,
“potter’s/owner’s marks”, magic-religious symbols, or generically “signs”,
despite the presence of features that lead clearly versus such a supposition.
Indeed, in its comprehensive meaning, the term “Danube script” indicates the
original successful experiment with writing technology of these ancient
populations and not, for example, a form of ‘pre-writing’ (see Winn 1981; Masson
1984).
The concept of ‘pre-writing’ has no firm theoretical or historical basis. A routine
of our mind is used to divide societies between “literate” or “illiterate”,
overestimating the role of writing technology in the advent of “civilization” and
utilizing the literate status as watershed line from prehistory to history. However,
we are discomfort with the earlier scripts where the value of a sign is not a strict
representation of a sound, but a conventional notation that the reader has to fill in
for himself and where grammar is a left option. Even the Mycenaean reader of
Linear B must have been left a lot of guesswork to understand words out of what
he/she read on a tablet. This situation would be quite intolerable if a script was
used for correspondence or legislation. However, Linear B has been employed for
lists and accounts read only by the writer and his colleagues working in the same
administration or archive.
Besides, the common opinion according to which an ancient script is deciphered
when every trained person would make the same sense of almost every word of a
given inscription is challenged by ancient scripts. Being much more complex and
subtle than our modern alphabets, they make reasonable a wide spectrum of
opinions between the poles of deciphered-undeciphered. In the case of Mayan
writing, for example, most scholars agree that a high proportion, as much as 85
per cent, of the inscriptions can be meaningfully read, and yet large numbers of
individual glyphs remain contentious or obscure. Scholars can often decipher the
numerical system, the arithmetical procedures, and/or the calendrical scheme of
an ancient script without knowing its underlying language. Even a not trained
person can sometimes obtain accurate sense merely from the pictographic/iconic
feature of certain signs, such as the recognizable humans, creatures, objects and
actions in some Egyptian hieroglyphs. In other words, there is not an indisputable
shibboleth by which scholarship judges a script to be deciphered or still
undeciphered. One has instead to deal with degrees of decipherment. The most
useful criterion is the degree to which the proposed decipherment can generate
consistent readings from new samples of the script, preferably produced by
persons other than the original decipherer (Robinson 2002: 18).
In this fluid and complex framework of the semiotic mechanisms of ancient
scripts, a hypothesized European ‘pre-writing’ is a key that does not open any
door being conceived to open simultaneously all the doors. In fact, it has been
interpreted both as a system of signs that does not constitute writing and as a
system of signs that precedes writing and is a step beyond it. The lexical
escamotage makes the idea of a Balkan-Danube script more plausible to
scholarship, avoiding challenging traditional notions about the Near Eastern origin

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of writing technology during the Bronze Age (Merlini 2008d) and restricting the
Danube script to the a stage in which concepts were expressed in ritual usage
(Winn 1981: 257). Shan Winn, who launched the idea of a European ‘pre-writing’
in the eighties, abandoned this approach through an article published in 1990
(Winn 1990; ibidem 2008). Paradoxically, at the same time it became a
mainstream viewpoint among the Southeastern European archaeologists exactly
because of its ambiguity. In particular, they give status of "pre-script" signs to the
incised ornaments that do not follow the known canons (see, for example,
Čohadžiev S. 2006: 71). On the one hand, they are acknowledged of the
communicational aim of these incisions. On the other, they do not grant the status
of writing to the Danube script adhering to the traditional and rigid usage of the
terminology in which “true writing” or “full writing” is reserved to mean
“phonetic writing” and doubting that the ancient European graphemes are capable
to convey linguistic messages setting in space words, syllables or letters.
According to some scholars, the category of “potter’s/owner’s marks” explains
almost all the occurrences of script signs from the Neolithic and Copper Age of
Southeastern Europe (Garašanin 1960-1961; ibidem 1973; Tringham, Krstić 1990:
609). Adhering to a traditional standpoint, a mark of this kind cannot be
considered a sign of writing, being a mere ensign. The category of the personal
markings is supposed do not comprise texts, having the function to directly link a
particular object with an individual, a group of persons, a workshop, an institution
or a locality. It serves as a identifying mark or unique signature indicating
ownership, actual or symbolic possession, authority, responsibility, affiliation,
authorship or producership (Kammerzell 2007). A mark of this kind can identify a
distinct person, but it is not a true “signature”, because it does not carry the
phoneticism of its name. It is a “visual mark” that might be abstract, arbitrary, and
synthetic, but in any case does not reflect any speech sound.
However, the notion that a personal mark is not "written", not corresponding to
discrete linguistic units, collides with the historical fact that in ancient societies
ars scribendi came out with tracing graphical signs in order to represent ideas that
may be not necessarily orally articulated. From the phenomenological point of
view, only a limited number of signs can be considered a “potter’s/owner’s mark”.
The copious presence of signs on the bottom of vessels, usually hidden to the sight
and therefore unbeneficial for utilitarian purposes, and their incision after a period
of vessels use or even breaking are argument against the interpretations of the
signs as marks identifying the producer, the possessor, the content, or the
destination of the pottery. The limited number of marked vases (about 1/3,
potshard included) comparing to the wide range of inscribed artifacts, which take
into account also human figurines, miniature altars, spindle-whorls, seals and
many other typological categories as well as the ritual and not utilitarian function
of most of the inscribed artifacts contribute to challenge the interpretation of the
signs on pottery as identity trademarks. Occurrence of long inscriptions with more
than 10-20 signs, recurrence of the same signs for two millennia and half on a
wide territory comprised within southern Hungary, Ukraine, central Greece, and
the Adriatic See, their recordability within a distinct and systematic inventory, and

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appearance of wide combinations of signs contrast to the interpretation of them as

marks that had to have a local and even a personal nature.
In the Danube civilization, there was actually a restrict number of personal
identifiers to express individual or collective identities. They include ownership or
manufacturer marks, family ID symbols, lineage recognition or community
affiliation insignia, glyphic monograms on seals, and tags. However, they belong
to the symbolic system of the Danube civilization and not to its writing system.
They were not enough common and widespread to be confused with units of a
script in use at tens of sites for hundreds of years. The choice to indicate
possession or authorship on an artifact through a distinct emblem was a very
personal decision that at least involved the family, the household, or the village.
Second, personal identifiers were not codified through a general organized system
of signs, being in the same situation of the heraldic insignia whose numbers and
shapes are not predetermined, but depend on how many aristocrats there are and
on the pedigree of their families. Third, these Neolithic and Copper Age marks go
beyond some important conventions that rule the outline and the organization of
the Danube script signs. For example, even if the identifier of a person can be
modified applying to it diacritical markers such as small strokes, crosses, dots and
arches possibly in order to express the position within the household, it cannot be
reversed or inverted as the script units. The divinity standards, which establish and
manifest the identity of a divine being, belong to the general category of the
personal marks.

Figure 4. A divinity mark is placed on the vulva of “Lady Vinča”. (After

Bulgarelli D. Prehistory Knowledge Project).

In conclusion, the category of the Danube identifiers pertains to the symbolic code
and not to the writing code, although some of them (in particular those employed
to symbolize distinct divinities) might constitute one of the roots for the earliest
signs of writing utilized by the Danube civilization, as the serekh of Predynastic

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Egypt (an emblem carved on ivory labels or ceramic potshard attached to trade
goods, which was used to indicate the extent of influence of a distinct regime or
identify military allegiances) lead to the development of the earliest hieroglyphs,
being replaced by the cartouche (Levy, van den Brink, Goren, and Alon 1995: 26-
36; Dodson, Hilton 2004).
A wave of scholars maintains that the strange signs incised or painted on the
Danube artifacts are some sort of magic-religious symbols (i.e. marks used as
conventional representations of something else in sacral or liturgical sphere).
Indeed, in the Danube civilization symbolism was a complementary and possibly
a more important means for storing and transmitting messages than literacy. One
of the still numerous crucial points we have not been comprehended yet is why
these early agrarian-stockbreeding communities preferred transmitting packaged
of information and even expressing themselves in symbols behind stylized, highly
abstract, and difficult to interpret representations. What did they want to
communicate covering the surface of vessels with combinations of spirals,
meanders, and linear symbols? Why did they employ frequently all kinds of
apotropaic motifs, as if asking constantly protection against malevolent forces?
The entire Danube communicative landscape was imbued by the symbolic code.
We are custom to associate emblematic and meaningful design to mobiliary art,
such as vessels or anthropomorphic figurines, or to rock art. However, symbolic
motifs were even applied in architecture as well as designing and constructing
furniture. In several dwellings of the Precucuteni-Ariuşd-Cucuteni-Trypillya
cultural complex (which developed in the fertile fields of the sylvan-steppe area
between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River from c. 5000 BCE to c. 3500/2750
BCE), the extremities of the poles sustaining the fronton were crisscrossing
joined, thus forming a kind of consecration horns, with a protecting and fertility
function symbolized by the virile force of the bull.

Figure 5. Symbolic consecration horns formed by crisscrossing joined extremities

of the sustaining poles on the fronton of a Trypillya dwelling miniaturized model
(Ukraine, c. 4000 BCE). (Photo Merlini 2004. Courtesy Platar collection).

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Symbols such as nets, spirals or horns were painted or engraved in relief on the
walls of dwellings, especially sanctuaries and temples, as in the instance of
Kormandin (Republic of Serbia), Parţa (Banat, Romania), or Ariuşd (southeastern
Transylvania). Prominences resembling horns characterize also the backrest of
chairs and thrones for divinities as documented by those recovered in miniaturize
cultic scene. Typical are the horn-like protuberances exhibited by ten small clay
chairs-thrones and a large throne in the sanctuary structure with a porch from
Sabatinovka (in the basin of the Southern Bug, Ukraine). The 13 small clay chairs
- found in the area of the fireplace in a Precucuteni sanctuary at Isaiia (Iaši
County, Romania) together with feminine statuettes and other cultic items - show
small horns in the upper part of the backrest. Special attention was given to the
representation of horns on pots rendered as protomes, because it was a stylized
symbol of virility placed on a recipient representing the feminine emblem.

Figure 6. A Precucuteni figurine from Isaiia (Iaşi County, Romania) is sitting on a

chair-throne characterized by symbolic consecration horns positioned at the upper
edge (c. 5000 BCE). (Photo Merlini 2007).

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The differentiation between the Danube symbolism and the Danube script is very
subtle because they can both be finalized for transmitting messages utilizing
marks similar for shape. However, in a subsequent paragraph I will present some
indications in order to operate a distinction in case of messages made of two or
more signs.
Much more generic and unfixed is the concept of “sign” and “sign system”, which
constitutes the fourth category according to which part of the archaeological
literature downgrades the script that developed in Southeastern Europe through
the Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame. The notion of “sign” is simply
identified applying a method of exclusive (negative) identification as a mark that
is neither a decoration, nor a symbol. Its main appeal consists in its elastic
indeterminateness.
Henrieta Todorova and Ivan Vajsov, for example, stated that “the sign system
appeared (italic is mine) during the Early Neolithic. It can be found in the incised
ornaments of ceramics or is independently met on pintaderas and lids or bottom of
pots. The latter is especially characteristic of the Late Neolithic... The pintaderas
are the basic bearers of the Neolithic sign complex... The Neolithic sign complex
developed within the VI millennium BC (and) lasted until the end of the existence
of the neo-aeneolithic social system... (around) the end of the V millennium BC.
The discussed signs and compositions obviously served for ‘recording’ and
transmitting important information of cult or maybe – social matter” (Todorova
and Vajsov 1993: 280, 233). According to this undetermined definition, Todorova
and Vajsov published a table with a corpus of basic motifs belonging to the
Neolithic pintaderas of Southeastern Europe. Unfortunately, it is useless for the
task of establishing an inventory of the Danube script, because it mixes
decorations (e.g. ns. 3; 17), symbols (e.g. n. 3), seal marks (e.g. ns. 2; 15; 20), and
possible numeric marks (e.g. n. 1; 18) without any semantic and typological
distinction. The table of these motifs does not include any sign of writing.
“Pre-writing” supporters, “potter’s/owner’s marks” activists, magic-religious
symbols advocaters, or “signs” proponents are anyway scholars aware of the
presence of marks that are neither decorations nor scratches in the Danube
communicative scenery.
Instead, one of the troubles when trying to detect marks with semiotic value
through the published images is due to the incorrect drawings made by the
decoration-addicted scholars. Being not capable to perceive the presence of any
sign of writing and considering every irregularity in shape and asymmetry in
patterns as hesitant decoration due to unskilled potters, they regularized the shape
of the signs and symmetrized their original patterns, when making a replica of an
inscribed artifact.
Scholarly engagement on the possibility that Southeastern Europe was involved
into an original experiment with literacy that is dated earlier than generally
assigned is at its first steps. Great efforts are made in order to debug various
hypotheses and network different researches on semiotic markers and
organizational principles of this script starting from some pioneering studies
(Gimbutas, Winn, Todorović, Makkay, Haarmann, Lazarovici, Starović, and
Merlini). It is also starting from the basics: searching out the inscribed artifacts in

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museum collections and storerooms, controlling the published drawings, refining

the methodological instrumentarium, building a semiotic framework for this script
in relationship with the other communicative codes such as symbols, divinity
identifiers, astronomic information, inspecting the semiotic infrastructure of it,
building a databank on the inscriptions, etc.

Figure 7. The basic signs from the Neolithic sign systems according to Vajsov
and Todorova. (After Vajsov and Todorova 1993: 229, fig. 226).

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If the anticipated invention of a European ars scribendi is generating controversial

and prudent statements in the scholarly field, it is triggering pernicious attention
among amateurs and dilettantes who are offering exotic and mass media appealing
"readings" based on hazardous associations with other ancient systems of writing.
For example, a considerable number of books and articles have been devoted
recently to a (para) scientific fiction aimed to “read” the “Vinča documents” as
alphabetic texts of this Middle Neolithic culture that had its hub in Central
Balkans.
Increasing of the dangerously mythical and romantic attention to a “Neolithic
alphabet” rooted in the Balkans is connected to the reinforcing of nationalistic
“archaeo-political” pushes in most of the Eastern European countries to create a
fictitious past for political ends. The postulated existence of an archaic original
script is used in reconstructing the prehistoric past of a golden exclusionary and
primordial homeland as crucial resource for addressing contemporary political
disputes with other ethnic groups. For example, in the Republic of Serbia
Radivoje Pešić is convinced that “the era of the Slavs is coming. For seven
decades, the Slav civilization has been living under a heavy pressure, and the
world, having accumulated sufferings for so long, could achieve its renaissance
for that reason only. Such are the orders of things. The West wanted to throw the
East on its knees without any knowledge of the “Slavdom”. The Slavdom does not
bear humiliations and failure, the Balkans as well” (Pešić 2001b. 28) The starting
point of Slavs’ renaissance is the acknowledgment that the Middle Danube basin
was the epicenter of the early European Civilization and that its “Neolithic
alphabet” was one of the main roots of our contemporary alphabet (Pešić 2001a).

Assessing the constitutive features of writing technology

The inspection of the semiotic infrastructure of the sign system developed by the
Danube civilization in order to substantiate possible clues of literacy moves in
sync with a general reassessment of the essential features of writing technology
that distinguish it from other communication channels that employ signs to store
and transmit information. According to the author, five essential features define
ars scribendi. Even if one of these criteria is missing, then one is in presence of
another means of communication. They are listened below in sharp synthesis.

A. The principle of one-to-one equivalence. A sign stands for a single idea or a

sound; an idea or a sound is indicated by a single sign (Merlini 2004a). In
pictographic writing, the formula contemplates one iconic sign to render one idea
or concept. In syllabic writing, the formula is one sign (iconic as in part of the
Mycenaean Linear B inventory or non-iconic as in cuneiform writing) as an
equivalent for one syllable of a given language. In alphabetic writing, the formula
is one abstract letter representing one sound of a given language (Haarmann
2008a: 24). The most ancient phase of writing technology demonstrates – in
Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indus civilizations – the correspondence between a
sign and an idea. A sign was not associated with a set of ideas, but with only one.

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B. Writing expresses necessary concepts and only optionally the sounds of a

language. The single idea represented by a sign is not unavoidably the graphic
echo of the spoken language; it does not inevitably have a linguistic significance.
If the written communication records concepts and not necessarily words, this
implies the possibility of reading a text in a visual way, leaving aside its oral
translation.
The dismissal of the concept of writing as a mirror of the spoken language, in
order to link it to the world of ideas, breaks away from the traditional concept that
signs are equivalent to sounds. According to a comparative view of ancient
scripts, the earliest experiments with writing were not intended to reproduce the
segmental structure of the spoken language (word, syllable, or letter) or to render
its grammatical system. The description of writing as a graphic system which
replicates the linguistic system is a historically hindsight judgment (Harris 1986).
Even if the elementary principle of writing is not phonetic and assuming that the
writer conveys a single concept through a single sign, it is not said that the reader
cannot associate that sign to a sound (e.g., a word) of her/his own idiom. In
ancient writings, the representation can be non-phonetic, but the reception can be
phonetic. The sender can communicate a nugget of wisdom through signs that
express its heart without the necessity to use words. The reader, however, is not
mute, conceptualizes ideas while reading, and speaks using language. Concepts
communicated by signs can be decoded and articulated according to the reader’s
orality. Therefore, the sender elaborates and transmits a message in a completely
different manner from how the reader can receive and understand it.
If the reader can follow the phonetic principle, why would the writer not have to
do the same? Since writing aims to express contents, it is not necessary to employ
words and sentences. Signs are directly able to communicate ideas. For example, a
pictogram can be used to render the concept of “plow” regardless of the fact that
the word for “plow” varies in different languages (plow/plough in English, aratro
in Italian, or charrue in French). Similarly, a child understands the concept of
mother long before he/she becomes capable to pronounce the word “mom”.
Consequently, the distinction between “conceptually-oriented writing” (definable
as “non-language writing,” “visual writing,” “pictorial writing,” “iconographic
writing,” or “figurative writing”) and “language-related writing” (“language
writing,” “phonetic writing,” or “verbal writing”) is neither rigid nor exclusive. In
history, human beings – completely uninterested in scholarly categorizations –
effectively faced the crucial connection between sounds and signs, inventing
systems of writing that combine different types of elements. Neither a 100%
logographic, nor a 100% phonetic system of writing existed. Even Western
literacy is comprised, not only by fifty-two alphabetic signs, but also by
logograms (‘whole word’ semantic symbols such as +, &, $, £, and so on),
numerals and punctuation marks (Robinson 1995: 13). The simple dichotomy of
“linguistic” vs. "not linguistic" systems is too abstract to be embedded inside the
factual framework of ars scribendi. The present work covers a third kind of
category where both the logographic and phonetic elements are present: the
logographic-phonetic systems. Within this category, one can distinguish among
three classes: logographic writing with a marginal phonetic component;

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logographic-phonetic systems with a balance between sound and concepts; and

logographic-syllabic writing.
In conclusion, the ancient systems of writing originated within a precise cultural
and linguistic environment that included, amongst other features, asymmetry
according to which the writer mainly represented concepts that could be decoded
by the reader into words.
The definition of writing that is detached from its dependence on spoken language
has a broad corpus of studies. Linguists like Haas (1976), Cardona (1981; ibidem
1990), Gaur (1984-1992), Twyman (1986), Larsen (1988), Crump (1990), and
Haarmann (1995; ibidem 1998a; ibidem 2002c; ibidem 2008b), semioticians like
Harris (1995; ibidem 2000) and Rotman (sketching a “semiotic model of
mathematics,” 1993; ibidem 1995), anthropologists (Aveni 1986; Wrolstad and
Fisher 1986), graphic designers (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), art historians
(Elkins 1999; Boone and Mignolo 1994) and scientists (Drake 1986; Owen 1986)
are proposing a broader view of writing. This standpoint “focuses more on
writing’s communicative function and less on its relation to language ... The point
being made is that writing should be recognized and studied as graphic
communication system rather than solely as a speech-recording system” (Boone
2004).

C. Writing needs a minimum number of signs. A single or few graphic elements

are not enough to substantiate a system of writing. For example, the discovery in
Turkmenistan of four signs on a fragment of ceramic from Gonur (Wilford 2001)
and other four on a stamp seal from Annau is still not a sound evidence for the
occurrence of a system of writing in the BMAC civilization (Bactria Margiana
Archaeology Complex, after the ancient Greek names for the two lands in the
region) about 2300 BCE, even if they look like characters of an evolved ancient
Chinese (see Mair in Wilford 2001).

D. Writing is a closed system of signs. It has a forced systematicity (i.e., signs are
associated with different single meanings and are inter-connected) and there is no
compositional freedom in the organization of signs. Each type of writing has
precise organizational criteria and a set of rules that administers sign use. It has to
be noticed that linearity, which is the succession of one sign after another, is not
necessary one of these principles. While linearity is often utilized in writing
technology, it is not mandatory.

E. Writing uses an inventory of signs that is limited and defined. Every system of
writing employs a precise and predetermined corpus of characters that are not
shaped according to the writer‘s individual expressiveness.

To sum up, writing is a technique for communication that utilizes visual markers
for fixing packages of information for reuse independently from any connection
with spoken language. Writing is not a means developed toward an abstract
optimum to serve the generic universal human need to build a linguistically based
script, but a social process of knowledge representation based on human

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interaction and historical depth. From an historical point of view, it cannot be

considered an incidental condition of the early systems of writing either that they
represent knowledge in various ways that do not presuppose necessarily the ability
to express oral language, or that they were initially used predominantly or even
exclusively in specific domains such as to document administrative activities or to
communicate with divinities. The use of signs for writing was oriented to the
meaning of words (not their sounds) and to the distinction between actual ideas
and abstract concepts. The restricted context of application, which influenced the
formal structure and semantics of the early scripts, is constitutive of their origin.
The earliest experiments with ars scribendi, when it was utilized to store and
transmit ideas rather than the sounds of a language in which ideas were expressed,
have to be considered as writing in statu nascenti (i.e. in formative stages of
development) and not “pre-writing”.
In conclusion, the basic requirements by which any form of writing distinguishes
itself from other channels aimed to convey information are: a minimum number of
signs, each of which corresponds to a single concept, is an unit of an inventory
and element of a structured system (i.e. a number N. of signs associated to
different single meanings and interconnected). This definitional apparatus is
coherent with the acknowledgement that the original writing systems of the
ancient world started exclusively or predominantly as logographic scripts.

Hits to a Balkan-Danube script from the comparative history of ancient

scripts

The proposed conceptual assessment of ars scribendi is not a theoretical

utterance, but a historical observation on cultural processes that grounds on a
comparative viewpoint. A plethora of historical examples on the genesis of the
homo scribens can be condensed in eight fundamentals that discard some of the
prevailing opinions for a long time.

A. An invention that matured in thousands of years vs. an ex nihilo act

The long path towards the innovation of writing and how it was scheduled by
gradual progression in signs systems over millennia interrupted by cognitive
jumps is documented by occurrence of, at least, computational systems based on
tokens dating back 8000 BC, early mark-notch based counting or recording
devices, symbolic code inherited from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic imagery,
communicational capability of linear decoration that evolved into script signs, and
marks employed to transmit information of tribal affiliation or family identity
since the Upper Palaeolithic.
Historical evidence makes no longer current today the conventional standpoint
according to which the achievement of writing was a sudden, unique, freeing act
of discontinuity (although not unexpected) with a long static past; a jump that
altered radically the world in a single human lifetime without having examples of
“what” people were building (Diamond 1997; Gould 1999: XXII; Michalowski
quoted by Wilford 1999; Houston 2004: 6). According to the extreme point of
view of Powell, the sudden explosion of signs was the achievement of a single

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genius, a citizen of the city Uruk, the "Literatus Sumericus Urukeus" (Powell
1981).

B. The multi-localized birth of homo scribens vs. a single incubating region

(Mesopotamia)
Even if it is hard to die the belief on the Fertile Crescent as uterus of homo
scribens, Egyptian writing may have predated the earliest Mesopotamian writing
with proto-hieroglyphics from Abydos (Dreyer 1998: 113-145, tables 27-35;
ibidem 1999; Mitchell 1999; Davies and Friedman 1998: 35-38; Baines 2004) and
Gebel Tjauti (Darnell J.C. and Darnell D. 1998; Darnell J.C., D. Darnell,
Friedman, and Hendrickx 2002). Specimen of writing originated independently or
partially independently in the Harappa civilization from the Indus valley (Wilford
1999). C. 4,000 years ago the nowadays desert area between northern Afghanistan
and Uzbekistan was the cradle of a blooming civilization that acted as
intermediary between West and East and archaeologists are now discovering clues
of a possibly “Bactria Margiana script” (Wilford 2001). Any dependence of
Chinese writing on Near Eastern stimulus is highly unlikely due to the occurrence
of signs in Neolithic China at Jiahu (Rincon 2003; Xueqin, Harbottle, Zhang,
Wang 2003: 31), Dadiwan, Shuangdun, Banpo (Guo 1972; Li 1974; Boltz 1986;
Woon 1987; Keightley 1989), Jiangzhai (Woon 1987), Damaidi, Yangshao,
Dawenkou (Woon 1987; Trigger 2004: 50), Chengziya-Longshan, Liangzhu.
Evidence of a “Proto-Iranian” script appeared in Halil River Valley (Iran)
(Madjidzadeh 2003; ibidem 2007). The emerging of a script in Mesoamerica (in
the third millennium p.t.) has to be considered a local conquest (Cahn and Winter
1993; Pohl, Pope, von Nagy 2002; Houston 2004; Saturno, Taube, and Stuart
2005: 41-48; Saturno, Stuart, Beltrán 2006). Formative mechanisms of early
literacy in several ancient civilizations indicate that it has been invented several
times, in a number of regions, as an autonomous and independent innovation in
response to local needs (concerning Sumer, Egypt, China and Maya see
Michalowski 1994: 53).
The multi-localized birth of homo scribens questions the canonical viewpoint
according to which this innovation was a brilliant idea developed once under
lucky conditions in a single region (Mesopotamia) and then copied over and over
again under cross-cultural influences (Gelb 1952: 212-220; ibidem 1963;
Baumgartel 1955; Frankfort 1956: 129-32; Diringer 1962: 47; Saggs 1989: 72;
Spencer 1993: 61-62; Postgate 1995: 56). As underlined by Trigger (2004: 42),
the diffusionist scenario concerning writing corresponded with more general
Eurocentric beliefs that, while western civilization had begun in Middle East, it
had been perfected in Europe (Montelius 1899; Childe 1925), idealized Greece as
a font of cultural perfection, and equated major cultural achievements with Aryan,
or Indo-European peoples (Bernal 1987).
The Mesopotamian model of civilization was certainly successful and the
achievements included the invention of a related writing technique. Nevertheless,
it was only one of the models historically created and not the original model
followed by any else civilization. Even other populations were the holders of an
original expertise concerning writing and reading.

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As a result, it would make sense to focus the analysis on circumstances and

internal mechanisms of the repeated emergence of this technique and not on the
supposed transfer procedure that induced the variety of different systems of
writing emerging one after the other from a hypothetical unique, solitary cradle
centre.

C. Writing technology as a conquest of Near Eastern Neolithic cultures vs. a

Bronze Age achievement
Sign systems discovered in the Fertile Crescent at Early Neolithic sites are
significantly different modes to store and transmit information from visual-
symbolic representation developed in the Upper Palaeolithic. Notable signs of this
type have been recovered at Qermez Dere in Northern Iraq, Nevali Çori, Göbekli,
and Çayönü in Southeastern Anatolia (Huebsch 2001), Jerf el Ahmar (Stordeur,
Jammous 1995: 129-130; Cauvin 1994: 10-11; Talon, Van Lerberghe 1998: 10,
fig. 2, 187, notes 1-2; Stordeur 1999; Aurenche, Kozlowski 1999: 45, pl. 2-7, pl.
2-12; Glassner 2000: 119-121; Marangou 2001: 23), Djaadé, Tell Qaramel
(Mazurowski, Jammous 2001, fig. 8 in the middle; Mazurowski 2002; ibidem
2003; Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe 2007: 107), and Mureybet in Syria
(Cauvin 1994: 43, fig. 7.1; Schmandt-Besserat 1998: fig. 12; Hansen I 2007: 58;
ibidem II fig. 7.4), as well as Kfar ha-Horesh in Israel (excavation lead by Prof.
Nigel Goring-Morris of Hebrew University, Institute of Archaeology).
Archaeological evidence compels backdating the roots of the earliest experiments
with literacy to the phase of transition from hunting to farming, from foraging to
agriculture and from nomadic to partially sedentary life. Under certain aspects, the
Neolithic revolution in the method to acquire food was preceded by a mental
transformation based on new beliefs and religious symbolisms, in addition to the
advent of experiments with an incipient writing technology.
Recent discoveries and re-examination of conditions and circumstances that
produced the earliest texts lead to a modification of the traditional canon
according to which only the autocratic and mercantile Bronze Age societies of the
Near East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) become “literate” motu proprio thanks to a
sudden and brilliant act that happened in discontinuity with the past.

D. Literacy from civilizations organized as network vs. tool for state bureaucracy
The absence of statehood and centralized political authority and, instead, the
presence of a considerable social equality and corporate political power in the
Indus Civilization, as well as in others where original systems of writing
appeared, challenge the most favored version among scholars of writing research
according to which the genesis of this technology has to be connected necessary to
the bureaucratic needs of centralized authoritarian city-states administered by a
powerful king who was surrounded by elite of ministers and priests and supported
by administrative bureaucracy (Crawford 1991: 48 ff.; 193 ff.).

E. Development of the written code exploited two “engines” (magic-religious

beliefs/liturgies and economic-administrative needs) vs. literacy driven
exclusively by budgetary necessity

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Sumerian, Egyptian, Cretan, Chinese (oracular bones), Tibetan, and

Mesoamerican ancient experiments with writing technology evidence that a
magic-religious matrix for them stood beside or foremost the economic-
administrative matrix. Some of the earliest written texts record sacred and
ideological information rather than administrative one: a way to create and
describe the world as the religious elite of the time wanted it to be. The narrations
about a supposedly mythic divine origin of writing was used by ancients to
highlight the fact that it was, amongst other things, the vehicle of communication
with the gods or at least the test paper of the supernatural origin of the power of
the monarchs (who in general did not know how to write or read).
Conversely, the traditional canon restricts to a categorical and exclusive must for
writing technology: storing and organizing economic-administrative data – such
as accounting and accountability, recording income, disbursement, and transfers -
under the requests placed from the monarch, the bureaucratic authority,
merchants, landowners and the clergy elite who managed the temples (Chiera
1938; Bernal J.D. 1954: 119; Toynbee 1958; Margueron 1965; Goody 1987;
Coulmas 1989: 9; Cooper 1989; ibidem 2004: 72; Schmandt-Besserat 1992a and
1992b; Nissen, Damerow, Englund 1993: chapter 4; Pittman 1993; Pollock 1999:
172; Englund 2004).

F. Visible concept vs. visible speech.

As stated above, ethnological and historical evidence documents that a written
representation fixes necessary thought and optionally sounds, whereas the
standard interpretation reduces writing to a sequence of signs aimed to faithfully
reproduce the sounds of a spoken language (de Saussure 1915; Bloomfield 1933;
Coulmas 1989; Daniels, Bright 1996: 8), as reflected in the title of DeFrancis'
(1989) book: Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. The term
'true writing' is used as synonymous of 'writing language' in order to draw a clear
boundary line between strictly language-related 'writing' and 'proto-writing'.
However, it is an awkward term since its opposite would be ‘false writing’
(Haarmann 2008b: 21). The traditional neglect the cognitive and social
significance of writing to propagate the spoken language as primary code of
communication on one hand is theoretical, abstract and a-historical, on the other
hand is historically rooted in the westerns’ penchant to alphabet considering to
have developed the optimum system of writing.
Even in the Sumerian “prototype”, scribes did not attempt to render the language
phonetically correct, exactly as it was spoken, still after the introduction of the
cuneiform technology of writing (c. 2700 BC) (Thomsen 1984: 20). Throughout
the period of Sumerian literacy, writing was never predominantly phonographic.
On the contrary, the use of logographic signs abounded constituting 60.3% -
42.8% of the montant global of signs (Civil 1973: 26). Scribes redacted texts
according to the “catchword principle”, writing the key words of a sentence and
often ignoring even vital grammatical elements and syntactic markers that native
speakers could supply from context (Bottéro 1992: 80; Cooper 1996: 37, 43;
ibidem 2004; Nissen, Damerow, Englund 1993: 123; Sampson 1985: 50). If the
later history of writing in Mesopotamia had its hub in a gradual process of

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reconciling sign sequences with the sound sequences of Sumerian (Haarmann

2008a: 22), Cooper highlights a paradox: Sumerian is an agglutinative language in
which nouns take suffixes and verbs both prefixes and suffixes. No trace of these
affixes can be found in the early archaic texts. They began appearing after 2900
BC, but in a selective way lacking in detail and this skeletal technique endured for
centuries. Curiously, they started to be fully expressed only in the early second
millennium, when Sumerian was probably extinct and spoken only in the scribal
schools (Cooper 1996: 43).
In the other ancient scripts too, early graphic representations were simple signs
recalling units of a conceptual whole that the reader/narrator knew by heart
(Février 1948: 17). Everything expected to be known by the reader was omitted
(Nissen, Damerow, Englund 1993: 20). Therefore, in the beginning, the written
messages did not correspond exactly to the forms of speech language and could be
'read' in several different ways, even in several languages (Gelb 1963: 14;
Marangou 2001: 24). Only in a second phase, the graphic representation merged
with the sound structure of a given language (Damerow 1999; Trigger 2004: 47).

G. Pictographic and abstract roots of writing vs. descriptive-figurative starting

point.
In Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeastern Europe, mnemonic devices and
magic-religious symbols were two major incubators of writing. They were based
mainly on abstract geometries, contradicting the traditional approach according to
which writing technology followed an evolutionary trajectory starting from the
figurative language and proceeded from an ever-growing stylization-
simplification of elementary iconic drawings.
Manuals still now popular among researchers on writing follow the late nineteenth
century proposal of Isaac Taylor regarding an evolutionary trajectory of ars
scribendi in five steps: from pictorials to pictograms, to logography as first verbal
forms, to syllabicity and, finally, to the absolutely efficiency of alphabet (Taylor
1883: I: 5-6; Gelb 1952; ibidem 1963: 205, 252; Goody 1987). According to this
assumption, the itinerary of the Sumerian script is “exemplar”, evolving from
painting of “things” (more or less realistic or essential), to embedding abstract
concepts and, finally, to putting oral language in writing. This linear path towards
writing is extended to other geographic areas and different periods. It is more or
less directly inspired by the semiotic of Aristotle according to which an object
conveys a concept, which gives rise to an oral sign, which produces a written sign,
which is by necessity derived from the categories of imitation
(pictogram/ideogram) or convention (abstract sign).
The descriptive-figurative starting point for writing is evidently inspired by a
minimalist definition of this technology as a mere derivative graphic transcription
of oral utterances and by the misconception that “primitives” can only imitate
nature. Concerning the first point, it is difficult today to accept the approach
founded on a reductive perception of ars scribendi as an essentially not creative
tool, i.e. as “a disguise". (Ferdinand de Saussure), “a dead trail" (Claude Hagège),
"a dead letter" (Jacques Derrida), "a tracing" (Anne-Marie Christin), "a purely
passive instrument of the pronounced word" (Eric A. Havelock), or even "a by-

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product of orality" (Marcel Detienne) (collection in Glassner 2000: 54). Jack

Goody has stressed with sufficient force the cognitive function of writing and its
capacity to create and develop means of communication in a conscious and
thoughtful manner that serves not only to elaborate an original cultural order, but
also to enlarge systematically human intelligence (Goody 1977).
Concerning the traditional supposition that primitive mind is incapable of abstract
thought and to conceive abstract shapes, only Greeks are credited to be the origin
of abstract mind with the invention of philosophy and meditation on language.
Sumerians, who came out of a long prehistoric night and being still “primitive”,
could only have been ignorant of such concerns. Their language lacked terms to
express concepts; they did not have a noun to indicate, for instance, animal as a
general term. “Innocence” and poverty of mode of thinking were two linked
cognitive features of these primitive Sumerians and limited their capability to
replicate what they saw. According to this view then, the first written signs were
necessarily sketches that imitated forms, beings or real objects that surrounded
them. The primitive signs could only have their foundation in nature. An example
from Glassner is sufficient to contradict the presumed Mesopotamian inability to
express concepts and abstractions. It is the expression me.nì.nam.ma, "quality
intrinsic in every state," which indicates the universality of the concept me, i.e. the
essence of objects and beings, their ability to act as translation and effects of the
powers of the gods (Glassner 2000: 8, 55-56).
The theoretical postulate concerning the inevitable pictographic origin of ars
scribendi and its progressive evolution into a phonological system has become
increasingly criticized since the 1960s (Leroi-Gourhan 1964: 268 ff.; Harris
2000). However, it is so deep rooted that still now it produces unexpected short
circuits. For example, the Neolithic inscriptions from the Chinese site of Banpo
(Yangshao culture 4770-4085 BC) are not pictographic, but rectilinear in shape.
This evidence contradicts the traditional principle according to which writing
characters are derived only from pictographs. Therefore, some scholars prefer to
liquidate Banpo signs as mere marks or symbols (Boltz 1986; Keightley 1989),
instead to conclude reasonably that the postulated theory is not always applicable
to Chinese writing, which characters have dual origins: one pictographic, and the
other ideographic, especially with respect to abstract counting (Lu 2004).

H. The beginnings of writing and alphabet do not coincide and the alphabet is
only one of the many written codes vs. the triumph of the alphabet as tool for
thought par excellence and historical fulfillment of writing technology.
Writing preceded the alphabet by thousands of years and cannot be reduced to its
recent alphabetical phase. Paul Bouissac arrives to propose that even the Upper
Palaeolithic parietal and mobiliary art could actually encode articulate language
rather than form loose symbolic configurations. According to him, it the plausible
that at least some Palaeolithic engraved and painted graphisms could be early
forms of scripts, that is, systematic representations of verbal messages (Bouissac
2007). Besides, the alphabet is not the benchmark to evaluate and classify the
other (judged imperfect and limited) forms of writing (Cardona 1981).

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Conversely, the mechanically evolutionistic paradigm narrates the development of

literacy as a universal process ordered along a path of growing perfection from a
crude representation of words through pictures to the more efficient representation
of words dismembered into phonemes through syllabic signs and, finally, to the
alphabetic approach (Sethe 1939; Gelb 1952). Often the terms “writing” and
“alphabet” are used as synonyms.
However, there is no sense in creating a hierarchy of writing systems giving to
them the titles of “more or less evolved”, because each society generates directly
or adopts from the outside the types of writing that are considered suitable and
necessary. The amount and the variety of the messages are not in relation to the
intrinsic richness or poverty of a script, but of what it is considered important to
transmit.

In conclusion, accumulated phenomenological evidence and recent studies discard

the pillars of the traditional vision on how, when and why writing came out. They
put forward for consideration an approach rooted in the history of writing and
based on a comparative view of the ancient scripts that allows exploring the
possible existence of the Danube homo scribens. It had original apparition in
Neolithic time, employed an inventory of mainly logographic abstract signs, and
was triggered by magic-religious communicational needs emerging from a society
characterized by networking and semi-equality paradigms. This possible ancient
system of writing is called Danube script.

Archaic traits of the Danube script and difficulties in distinguishing it from

other communicational codes

Writing technology did not emerge and function in isolation in any incubator
region. It played within a cultural milieu that was based on a complex and
historically determined communication system consisting – script apart - of
gestural code, spoken language, symbols of identification (e.g. divinity marks,
household logos), magic-religious symbolism, emblematic decoration, numerical
systems (e.g., calendrical notation, measures and weights), and sign systems
devoted to specific uses such as, for example, the musical notation. The
networking of the channels belonging to the communication system was the
common means to construct and convey culture. The distinctive profile of the
channels and their interactively operate individualize communication systems and
cultures throughout human history.
The changeover from a culture without writing technology to one with writing
technology is an intricate and long transitional process. Having the Danube script
pre-dated the other ancient scripts by up to two millennia and having been
“frozen” at an early developing stage by the collapse of the Danube civilization, it
is a laboratory case of this socially dramatic and semiotically unlinear landing to
literacy.
A script can be identified in terms of operational technology even without and
before being deciphered. The history of research on writing aligns several
prominent cases of scripts whose nature of writing system was not disputed before

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the crack of their codes (Haarmann 2008a: 14; viz. Pope 1975 and Robinson 2002
for the analysis of successful decipherments). It is the instance of ancient Aegean
scripts such as the Linear B prior to Michael Ventris’ decipherment and the Linear
A, even if the decipherment is not yet complete. The Mayan graphemes acquired
the status of writing system even before Michael Coe’s decipherment and
establishment that it was a logographic script with a syllabic component (Coe
1992). The ancient Indus script is generally acknowledged as a form of writing,
although its decipherment has not yet achieved success, despite initial progress
(Parpola 1994), and the reserves maintained by some scholars about the nature of
its signs (Maisels 1999: 343; Farmer 2003a; ibidem 2003b; ibidem 2004).
When inspecting the internal structuring of the communication conveyed by the
Neolithic and Copper Age communities from Southeastern Europe, evidence of a
sophisticated semiotic system becomes noticeable. The Danube Communication
System was comprised by ritualistic markings, emblematic decorations, symbols,
divinity identifiers, schematic but naturalistic representations of objects, structures
or natural events, calendric and chronographic annotations, sky atlases,
representations of constellations and motions of celestial bodies (sun, moon, and
planets), terrestrial maps, household identification marks, lineage recognition or
community affiliation logos; and markings representing bio-energetic points of the
human body. Within the Danube Communication System, clues of a system of
writing are apparent, too.
The Danube Communication System was composed of several channels. Even the
decorative canon did not function as pure aesthetic ornament, but carried a
symbolic meaning and transmitted messages. “In the time before the alphabet, the
pottery ornamentation was a main visual channel to hand out the tradition
(specially speaking)” (Nikolov and Karastoyanova 2004: 174). “The whole world
outlook of prehistoric farmers was expressed in the ornament: the Land and
Underground World, the Sky, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Plants, Animals
and People… Observant people can see complete ‘texts’ composed in ornaments:
it is raining, the grain is falling on the ground, it is sprouting...” (Videiko 2004).
As mentioned above, the entire communicative landscape was informed by the
symbolic code. If the Danube civilization employed both symbolism and writing
technology, the two modalities of treating information did not possess equal
salience and value. Even if our modern literate mind is excited from the discovery
of such an ancient European writing, this communicative channel was less
important and less frequently used than the symbolism to the point that, in the
occurrence of a single mark, it is more probable that it has to be framed within
“the figured language of the symbols” rather than within the Danube script.
Having the Danube script been frozen in statu nascenti, sign outlines and
organization of the reading space are not always confidently distinguishable from
marks and spatial arrangement of the other communicational means. I am
focusing below on three possible fonts of equivocation: a) some signs of the script
share the same geometrical roots (at times, employing alike outlines) with ritual
marks, decorations, symbols, divinity identifiers, chronographic representations,
and astral renderings; b) can coexist on the same artifact with them; and c) can
have similar space exploitation.

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I will discuss below these points, in order to illustrate how difficult is settling
writing technology in an archaic cultural milieu to the point that many scholars do
not recognize it. However, although characterized by primitive traits, among
which a weak association with phonetics, the Danube script should not be
confused with other informative channels used by the Danube civilization. After
the exploration of how subtle are the confines between a written text and marks
from other informative codes in case of this archaic and uncracked script, I will
provide some semiotic guideline in order to make the distinction achievable.
Concerning the first source of misunderstanding, depending on the semiotic
context some marks can be either units of the inscriptions or elements of other
communicational codes (Gimbutas 1991). In particular, a number of signs show
the same outlines of sacred symbols because they had origin as elements of the
religious-mythical frame and share the same silhouettes of the geometrical and
abstract symbols from which they had derived.
This close relationship between symbolic system and writing system could
originate uncertainty into the researchers employed to catch the semiotic code and
possibly to decipher the Danube script. However, it witnesses at the some time
that signs of this system of writing have their origin from the sacred language of
symbols.
Secondly, signs of writing could co-exist on the same object with marks from
other informative codes. Sometimes more than one channel of communication
was in use at the same time on the same vase, figurine, or spindle whorl. A
standing flat statuette of a bird from Hlebozavoda (a site westwards from Nova
Zagora, Bulgaria) (Kynchev 1981; Todorova and Vajsov 1993: 200 fig. 181/2a-
2b) is a case of study because it puts simultaneously on play three communicative
channels: symbolic, written and decorative. Symbolic marks occur on the head:
tri-lines instead of the eyes, tri-zigzags over the temples, and four horizontal lines
on the neck. Then looking downward one can note two inscriptions arranged
horizontally. The text under the neck is made-up of five aligned signs and divided
in two reading areas by a diagonal line. The other text is incised on the chest. It is
composed of at least 13 discernable signs (their script nature is much more
detectable from the photo than from the published drawing). Afterwards there are
two ornamental layers: vertical lines aligned to compose a belt-like and a garment
design based on vertical zigzags. It is significant that symbols and ornaments are
comprised of linear motifs exploiting the same geometric roots of the units of the
script. The decorative nature of the two lower patterns is revealed by the
symmetric arrangement of the marks that have also identical size, equal silhouette,
and tendency to saturate completely the available space. The zoomorphic figurine
is considered a “clay idol” in Bulgarian literature (Kynchev 1981: 84) and belongs
to the Karanovo IV-Kalojanovec culture (5300 – 4800 BCE).
In the Danube civilization, the script was fixed (alone or associated with other
communicational channels) not on rectangular, white, smooth, “odorless and
tasteless” leafs of paper, but on highly symbolic objects made of clay and bone
(human statuettes, seals, anthropomorphic pots, etc.) and their emblematic parts
(vulvas, chests, buttocks, etc) (Winn 1973; ibidem 1981; Merlini 2004a). In
general, the signs have been engraved when the clay was still wet. Therefore, the

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intentional positioning of signs on a distinct object and in a specific location of it

was an important element of the communicative act. This was not a technical
choice, but an essential phase of the writing process. The emblematic objects
themselves, on which signs were engraved (e.g., miniaturized altars – offering
tables, dwelling models, ritual vessels, seals, zoomorphic statuettes, and human
figurines), functioned as essential components of the messages as well as the
position of the signs on the mail-artifact (legs, transition leg-wall, wall, upper
surface concerning miniaturized altars, and so on).

Figure 8. Symbolic, written and decorative codes are simultaneously on play on

the body of a statuette in shape of a bird from Hlebozavoda (Bulgaria). (After
Todorova and Vajsov 1993: 200, fig. 181/2a on the left; photo Merlini M. 2005 on
the right).

When the writer decided to communicate a certain package of information, she/he

selected an appropriate artifact ― such as a human statuette ― with a specific
typology (e.g., female/male/androgynous/without evident gender;
young/mature/old, naked/dressed, etc.). Inscriptions were made only on the
anatomical areas considered “strategic” for the targeted message (e.g., the vulva,

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belly, buttocks, throat, and forehead). The particular silhouette of a figurine, a

special necklace or garment, a distinct design on the dress or an anatomical
peculiarity (such as “divine eyes,” for example) were additionally significant
elements to the meaning of the signs.
It is not for a case or due to absence of available reading space that the potter
decided to incise a long inscription around the belly and hips of a Vinča C (Late
Neolithic) corpulent and pregnant anthropomorphic statuette from Vinča
(Republic of Serbia). It has possibly an apotropaic meaning connected to the
gestational condition of the personage. The V around the neck, the bi-lines on the
shoulders and the three long horizontal lines at the end of the attire have a
decorative nature. Was it a special garment utilized for birthing? The perforations
on the shoulder indicate that the statuette has been conceived to be suspended.
Was it utilized as amulet during the giving birth to a child?

Figure 9. The potter decided to incise the long inscription around the belly and
hips of a Late Neolithic pregnant anthropomorphic statuette from Vinča (Republic
of Serbia).

The delivery of a message utilizing contemporaneously a range of informational

channels is not an antiquate and primitive feature when writing technology was
not yet entirely separate from the symbolic code and in some ways still
subordinate to it. It was an effective communicational method as documented,
among the others, by a fragmented figurine from Rast (Dumitrescu 1980: 64, Fig.
LXVIII), a Karanovo VI cylindrical four-sided figurine from Bereketskaja Mogila
(Stara Zagora, central Bulgaria) (Gimbutas 1989: 68. fig. 108), a Trypillya B
female statuette from Aleksandrovka (Ukraine) (Pogoževa 1985: P. 142, Abb. 85,

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88; Lazarovici C.-M. 2005: 148, fig. 4.7), and a statuette in shape of a bird from
Chlebosavoda (Bulgaria) (Todorova and Vaisov 1993: 200 fig. 181/2a-2b).
A holistic communication employing writing in association with other
communicative codes is widespread in the history, being powerful, complete, and
able to cope with nuances. Some examples from different periods and cultural
milieu can help us to comprehend the mind of the Danube literates.
A tablet from Knossos has the depiction of six horse heads two of which are
without manes. The Minoan world “polo” (resembling the same classical Greek
word) was added on the left of the maneless pictograms to make clear that they
are foals and not adult animals. The merge between iconic and script codes
evidences that the Minoans spoke and wrote an archaic form of Greek and
conveyed Ventris’ decipherment of Linear B (Robinson 2002: 83).

Figure 10. Tablet from Knossos after Evans with the drawings of two foals and
the term “polo” (foal) in Linear B.

A Southern Netherlands wool arras of 1500-1530 BC hold at the MET Museum of

New York depicts a shepherd couple entertaining themselves with music while
their flock frolics in the millefleurs background. On the left side, the shepherdess
holds up a sheet of music with the phrases she is singing (Let’s sign, on the grass /
with your bagpipe / a tune for two). The shepherd plays a bagpipe and responds
with a verse sprouting out from the instrument (When she signs / her voice is fair /
but I do the work). The arrangement of written poetry and iconography is essential
to understand the sexual double sense of the action.

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Figure 11. The arrangement of written poetry and iconography conveys the sexual
double sense of a shepherdess and a shepherd making music in a flowers and
leaves scenario.

Any angel on the bridge of Castel Sant’Angelo at Rome - used to expose the
bodies of the executed - holds a specific instrument of the Passion added by a
distinct written caption ("In flagella paratus sum", "Potaverunt me aceto", etc.), in
order to make indubitable what it represents.

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Figure 12. An Antonio Raggi’s angel on the bridge of Castel Sant’Angelo at

Rome holds the Column of the Passion added by a distinct written caption in order
to make certain what it represents. (Here, “Tronus meus in columna”, i.e. “My
throne is upon a column”). (Photo Merlini 2007).

In 1930, the logo of Le Cyclo was composed depicting a bicycle. It recalls the
technique of the Arabic calligraphy that - coping with the Islamic tradition of
cautioning against the "representation of living beings" (Schimmel, Islamic 11) -
uses the composition of a bird shape, specifically a stork, to incorporate the
Basmalah ("Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim" = “In the name of God, The
Compassionate, The Merciful”). In these instances, letterform, figurative
appearance, ornamental configuration and symbolic content merge. Any boundary
between writing and not-writing floats.

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Figure 13. The logo of Le Cyclo, 1930.

A famous photo of captain Fabio Cannavaro holding the Soccer World Cup won
by the Italian national team in 2006 shows the name of his son tattooed in Gothic
looking font on the inside of his upper right arm: “Andrea”. The name of the other
son “Christian” is tattooed, with the same characters, behind the back. His right
forearm is marked by "Daniela" (his wife) in Gothic, too. The name of the
daughter “Martina” is tattooed on the right ankle in Chinese ideograms. The
Tattoo Man exploits his skin to be surrounded by all the family during the long
travels around the world for matches. As the Neolithic figurines, has he associated
a message (the name of a specific relative) with a part of his body? Is the selection
of the writing fonts not for a case, but fitting his feeling with the different
members of the family?
The name of kinfolks engraved on the body, wife and children, is actually a
fixation for the transgressive, but family-driven, Italian soccer players. Marco
Materazzi has tattooed “Daniela I belong” (the wife) on the right wrist, along with
a butterfly (which symbolizes the idea he has of her). The names of the children
are imperative also for him: “Anna” (on the neck); “David“ and “Gianmarco“ on
the left arm, positioned next to a tattoo with “Lion” and his birth date in Roman
numerals. Materazzi has indelibly marked both arms with his philosophy of life
"If a problem can not be solved, that need to worry?”
Antonio Cassano is unmarried. Waiting for wife and children, he has tattooed his
own name on right arm. This is a Chinese ideogram, which is very fashionable
nowadays and has to help him never to forget how he is called.
For apotropaic reasons, calf and thigh are the areas usually filled by the soccer
players for the first. The messages marked on them are personal, confidential, not
made to be viewed by other people, being covered by shorts and knee sock. The
indelible signs assure protection without any need to be “read”, but though good
luck power.

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Figure 14. The soccer Cannavaro exploits his skin to have all the family with him
during the long journeys around the world for matches.

The third reason for the not always easy distinction between the Danube script
signs from marks belonging to other communicational channels is that they are
not inevitably arranged in linear sequence, whereas sometimes decorations,
symbols and calendrical marks are. Most of the inscriptions are aligned along a
horizontal row. Other inscriptions arrange the signs into a column, into a circle or
diagonal bands. However, the linear order of the signs is not a mandatory
criterion.

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Our Western-acculturated inclination to associate writing with signs that follow a

sequential organization is wrong-footed by the acknowledgment that the Danube
script can arrange signs haphazardly, whereas decorations or symbols can bee
aligned in succession (divinity identifiers can be positioned along a line according
to the divinities hierarchical position, bioenergetic marks can appear according to
symbolic patterns able to render the progressively stimulating energy and life,
etc.).
A potshard from the upper body of a vessel, belonging to the Turdaş culture and
recovered at the eponymous site, provides evidence for the presence of writing. It
bears the following signs: , , , , and . Some of them are connected by
ligature. However, their organization lacks any linear order (Torma Notebook tab
30.4; Winn 2004a online, fig. 9b).

Figure 15. Signs are unsystematically arranged in on a Turdaş potshard from the
eponymous settlement.
(D. Bulgarelli, Prehistory Knowledge Project 2007).

Contrariwise, symbols can be aligned in linear sequence when this arrangement is

part of the meaning. An unpublished little figurine from Cucuteni A culture (dated
circa 4300-4200 BC) hold by the Botoşani museum (Northeastern Romania, next
to Iaşi) is incised through a design of symbolic marks progressively stimulating
energy and life. They are a couple of opposing spirals contained within a series of
Λ on the legs, a double belt over the waist which is surrounded by Vs connected
to a giant triangle holding a cross in high relief within, Λ chevrons, triangular
motifs that remark the silhouette of the clavicle, and asymmetric marks of evident
symbolic nature punched on an emblematic mask. On the figurine, symbols are
clearly placed following a linear, logical, and energetic sequence from bottom to
top.

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Figure 16. On an unpublished Cucuteni figurine from Moldavia (Romania)

symbols are placed following a linear, logical sequence ascending from bottom to
top. (Photo Merlini M. 2005).

A Matrix of semiotic rules and markers for inspecting the sign system of the
Danube civilization and checking evidence of a script

Although the Danube script was frozen by the collapse of the related civilization
when it was still in an archaic phase and probably had a weak association with
phonetics, it should not be mixed up with the other communicational channels
composing the Danube Communication System. However, for the above-
synthesized reasons the distinction is not always evident. Coping with this
complexity, the author propones a “Matrix of semiotic rules and markers for
inspecting the sign system of the Danube civilization”. It is acknowledged of the
high communicative skills of these ancient populations, attested by the presence
of a sophisticated semiotic system (the Danube Communication System), and
plays in accord with a conceptual and historical revision of the definition of what
“writing” is and which its origins are throughout a comparison with the other
scripts of the ancient world. The matrix is intended:
a) To investigate the internal structuring of the sign system developed in
Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame in Southeastern Europe to verify the
possibility that these cultures might have expressed an early form of writing, i.e.
the Danube script.
b) To distinguish inscriptions of the Neolithic and Copper Age system of writing
composed of two or more signs, of course without knowing what each of them
stands for, from compound marks associated with other communicational
channels utilized by the Danube civilization. In the present phase, the matrix

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includes the distinctive criteria for ritual markings, decorations, symbols, and
divinity identifiers. In progress is its improvement concerning: schematic but
naturalistic representations of objects, structures or natural events; calendric and
chronographic annotations; sky atlases, constellations and motions of celestial
bodies (sun, moon, and planets); terrestrial maps; family identity, lineage
recognition or community affiliation; and markings representing bio-energetic
points of the human body.
c) To establish organizing principles that the Danube script shares with other
ancient scripts as well as distinct proprieties, even if it is far to be deciphered.
d) To input into the databank DatDas, developed by the author, inscribed artifacts,
inscriptions, and signs that have got through the filter of the Matrix.
On other occasions, versions in progress of the “Matrix of semiotic rules and
markers” have been published (Merlini 2005b). An extended edition concerning
the distinguishing guidelines between signs/inscriptions of the Danube script and
decorative motifs/patterns is available (Merlini 2007a). The “Matrix” was tested
according to a number of facets (typology of inscribed objects; category of marks;
geographical patterns, cultural subdivision) in order to improve its reliability. Up
to now, it was tested on marks from the core area of the Danube civilization
(Merlini 2005b; 2007a; 2008b; 2008c), the Turdaş culture (Merlini 2008c;
forthcoming), the Precucuteni, Ariuşd, Cucuteni, and Trypillia cultural complex
(Merlini 2007b; 2008c; in press), and some icons of the Danube script such as the
Gradešnica platter (Merlini 2005a; 2006a; 2008c) and the Tărtăria tablets (Merlini
2004a; 2004b; 2006d; 2008c).
The achieved result is fixing the fundamentals to settle the Danube script within
the Danube communication system. Of course, instructions and indicators of the
Matrix are in progress and under continuous test. It will be possible to distinguish
without errors when a sign or a combination of signs is unit of a written message
or, alternately, is a ritual marking, a decoration, a symbol, a divinity identifier, etc.
only when we will be capable to read the script. However, it will not even be
possible to read the script if we are not able to isolate its signs from the others. It
is really a loop that needs to be broken step by step and by progressive
approximations.

Semiotic guidelines to discern between ritual marks and Danube script signs

The first distinction established by the “Matrix of semiotic rules and markers” is
between Danube script signs and ritual marks: incisions or paintings not
necessarily associated with recognizable specific meanings, but with the energy
and emotion of cultic actions and magical purposes, including divine
manifestations or interventions. The ritual marks appearing on objects or in rock
art are connected to an emotional or mystical experience that is at the foundation
of a liturgy or has surfaced during it. They do not necessarily express a “literary”
message, which aim is to transmit structured packages of information. Another
indispensable distinction is between these marks, which are output of liturgies,
and erratic graffiti by confused artists, desecrating scratches, and fortuitous lines
made after firing.

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In the Neolithic and Copper Age time-scale, ritualistic marking were

differentiated into four distinct modes: empathic action-graffito, psychogram,
repeated testimony, and writing-like copy. They are correlated to diverse spiritual
moods and sketched during religious or magical acts of completely different
types.
The empathic action-graffito is the most frequent category of graphic depiction
within an emotional context. In fact, emotional outbursts are very compelling.
Most of the ceremonies are centered on words and gestures (not only prayers and
invocations, but also curses, viz. Draşovean 1997). Therefore, the energy that
arose from these liturgical acts was much more important than the distinctive
marks generated by them on an artifact, the wall/floor of a shrine or the wall of a
cave. As “derivate” mark, the “empathic” graffito has often indefinite and
confusing shape, since it fixes a graphic burst of energy, a private drawing that
carries pure desire, an emotion, acts of adoration, a promise, or other strong
spiritual feelings. An empathic action-graffito does not transmit packages of
information to either divine or human beings, nor does it guarantee a contact with
divinity. Rather it fulfills precise psycho-emotional and spiritual needs emerging
during ecstatic devotional acts and is a part of that activity.

Figure 17. An empathic action-graffito on a fifth millennium BC statuette

unearthed at Grădiştea-Coslogeni (Romania). (After Neagu 1998: 221, Pl. 16;
1999, fig. 9).

After having examined a series of Neolithic and Copper Age empathic action-
graffiti incised on artifacts from Gomolava-Hrtkovci, Vinča-Belo Brdo, Petnica,
Vršac-At, Potporani Kremenjak (Republic of Serbia), Cerje-Govrlevo
(F.Y.R.O.M.), Gradešnica, Obreshta and Tsarevets (Mezdra, Bulgaria), Isaiia
(Romania), the author proposes a semiotic matrix to distinguish between this kind
of ritual marks and signs of the Danube script. Guidelines are hinged on the
acknowledgment that an inscription attempts to express an intelligible message,

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whereas an empathic action-graffito is the concrete result of ecstatic religious

activities. The matrix can be synthesized as follows.

Contraposition Signs of writing Empathic action-graffiti

Global and The script and its inventory An empathic action-graffito is

social vs. local were in use in numerous unique.
and private sites over a wide area.

Distinctness vs. An inscription might be The graphic elements assembled to

indistinctness in executed imprecisely and create an empathic action-graffito
shape carelessly, but the are in general quite indistinct.
silhouettes of the signs are
distinct and identifiable.

Following a Geometric, abstract, high The shape of empathic action-

geometric code schematic, linear, and not graffiti does not follow any
vs. free from any very complex signs could geometric code.
geometrical belong to the script
code framework and in fact, in
many cases they do.

Occurrence of Signs of writing can be Empathic action-graffiti cannot be

an inventory vs. collected in a precise and gathered in a repertory being each of
absence of any systematic inventory. them unique.
standardized set
of marks

Homogeneity vs. The signs of an inscription Empathic action-graffiti are usually

heterogeneity in in general are incised with incised or too hesitantly or too
depth of incision a homogeneous grade of vigorously.
pressure.

Techniques and Signs of writing can be Empathic action-graffiti are not

restrictions in modified applying to them subjected to the technique of the
modifications diacritical markers such as multiple variations.
small strokes, crosses, dots
and arches as well as
duplicating-multiplying
them or reversing them as
in a mirror, inverting them,
reversing and inverting
them at the same time.

Use of An inscription can mix both Empathic action-graffiti are motifs

naturalistic abstract and naturalistic that never directly derive from or
depictions vs. signs. imitate real life or nature.
their absence
Speed of Signs of an inscription are Empathic action-graffiti are always

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execution made sometimes quickly made rapidly.

and sometimes slowly.

Space Signs of writing compose In general, the graphic elements

organizational an inscription through an comprising an empathic action-
principles asymmetric co-ordination graffito are arranged without any
and preferable linear order and often overlay one another.
alignment, even if a
sequential arrangement is
not an absolute prerequisite
of a writing system.

Superimposition Inscriptions are only Empathic action-graffiti are

of scratches and sometimes superimposed by normally superimposed by scratches
fingerprints scratches or maker’s or maker’s fingerprints.
fingerprints.
Presence of Signs of writing can be Ligatures are absent in the field of
ligatures vs. combined by ligatures the empathic action-graffiti in which
their absence (compound signs formed graphic elements can be overlaid,
from the merger of two or mingled, scrambled.
more elementary signs).
Presence of dots The use of dots and vertical Dots and vertical strokes generally
and vertical strokes to separate signs or are not utilized in an empathic
strokes vs. their groups of signs is strong action-graffito; in the remote case of
non-appearance evidence of an inscription. their appearance, they are not
employed to separate marks or
groups of marks.

Independent of A text is often incised In general, an empathic action-

firing vs. before firing, but it might graffito is scratched after firing.
after firing also be made after firing.

In conclusion, semiotic indicators rotate around an axis according to which an

inscription of the Danube script attempts to express an intelligible message that
has often a magic-religious meaning, whereas an empathic action-graffito is the
concrete result of ecstatic liturgical activities.
Therefore, usually empathic action-graffiti appear shapeless or misshapen, made
of indistinct graphic elements assembled without an evident order and/or
overlapping even if sometimes they seem to have script-like shape at a first
glance. They are hurriedly made and scratched too vigorously or too irresolutely.
In fact, this kind of marks has been made not to broadcast information to a
divinity or to human beings, but as output of distinct psycho-emotive and
devotional feelings. Empathic action-graffiti are output of ceremonies where
words, gestures, feelings, and energetic actions play a much more important role
than scratches derived from them on a statuette, an altar or the wall of a cultic
dwelling.

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Cases where sacred incisions and even liturgical artifacts have been made very
rapidly, probably during a highly emotional ritual are key test for the section of
the “Matrix of semiotic rules and markers” that distinguishes between script signs
and empathic action-graffiti. It is the instance of a human-zoomorphic altar
discovered at Tărtăria (Transylvania, Romania), composed of the body of a four
legs animal and a human face. The cultic hybrid is not very well done, not
finished and with a not very polished surface. The right side is broken. Similarly,
the signs are not careful made, even if their selection and arrangement appear to
be full of meaning: a double V under the neck, a bi-line inserted into a V on a hip,
a triple and a quadruple V on the side, and a little chevron on the shoulders. The
“writer” wanted to trace a V on the neck. Therefore, started to move a sharp tool
in diagonal from the left, but he/she changed mind and incised a new diagonal.
Regarding the sign on the hip, the “writer” closed a V with two vertical strokes
engraving a sign very close to a hand with three fingers. The tree-V is composed
by a V above a close bi-V. Scrutinizing the piece, it is easy to image a ceremony
centered on invocations and gestures – among which the incision of a sacred
inscription - that arose devotion, emotion and energy that were associated – and
perhaps much more important - than the distinctive signs generated by them on
the cultic artifact (Merlini, Lazarovici Gh. 2008). Literacy had the role to fix
permanently and precisely the sacred formula.
The archaeo-semiotic analysis of the inscribed miniaturized altar shows that it
bears an inscription of the Danube script and not an empathic action-graffito.
Signs are intentional and, even if executed imprecisely and carelessly, have
distinct and identifiable silhouette according to the expression of a meaning.
Signs are geometric, abstract, high schematic, linear, and elementary.
Signs can be collected in the inventory of the Danube script, which was in use in
numerous settlements over a wide area.
Signs are incised with a homogeneous grade of pressure.
Signs are modified applying to them diacritical markers as well as duplicating-
tripling them.
Signs show an asymmetric co-ordination and a linear alignment.
Signs have been made before firing.

In conclusion, even if the ritual action to model the artifact and engrave sacred
signs was in a rush and more important that the aesthetic and the clear rendering
of the inscription as well as the skilful finishing of the object, the human-
zoomorphic altar from Tărtăria does not bear an amorphous and personal
empathic action-graffito, but a still undecipherable text of the Danube script.

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Figure 18. An emblematic, inscribed human-zoomorphic altar discovered at

Tărtăria is incised with a rapidly and puzzling inscription of the Danube script and
not with an empathic action-graffito. (Photo Merlini 2005).

Contrasting ornamental motifs with the Danube script signs

The second series of guidelines established by the “Matrix of semiotic rules and
markers for inspecting the sign system of the Danube civilization” is to
distinguish between signs/inscriptions of the Danube script and decorative
motifs/patterns. If the Danube writing possesses peculiarities that differentiate it
from ornament, when working on the field the dividing line is not always
confident. To accomplish the task, a distinct matrix of semiotic guidelines can be
summarized as follows. As one can note, inscriptions and ornamentations have
different purposes, rule of composition and organizational principles.

Contraposition Signs of writing Decorations

Inventory of the If one sets apart for a moment If one sets apart
script vs. corpus of the exception of the ambivalent momentarily the
the ornamental signs that can be involved in exceptionality of signs that
motifs writing messages as well as in can be inserted in an
ornamental design, signs of ornamental design as well
writing can be collected in a as in a writing message,
precise and systematic artistic marks can be
inventory. gathered in a specific
corpus.
Sign outlines Geometric, abstract, high When dealing with
schematic, linear, and not very geometric, abstract, high
complex signs belong, with schematic, linear, and
more probability, to the script uncomplicated signs one is
framework. with less probability inside
the decorative framework.

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Techniques and Signs of writing can be The decorations are in

restrictions in modified applying to them general not subjected to the
modifications diacritical markers such as technique of the multiple
small strokes, crosses, dots and variations. They can be
arches as well as duplicating- varied – and not often
multiplying them or reversing anyway - only by
them as in a mirror, inverting duplicating-multiplying
them, reversing and inverting them or turning them round
them at the same time. as in a mirror, turning them
upside down, turning them
round and upside down at
the same time.

Balance between Signs of writing occur singly as Ornaments occur preferably

isolation and well as in groups. in groups.
grouping vs.
inclination to
grouping

Linear alignment When in groups, signs of An ornamental element is

and asymmetric co- writing prefer a linear alignment in general arranged with
ordination vs. (even if a linear alignment is not others in order to capture
symmetrical an absolute prerequisite of the the symmetrical balance
gravitation and Danube script) and show an able to exalt the aesthetic
rhythmic repetition asymmetric co-ordination value of the object. The
producing visually random rhythmic and symmetrical
compositions. Sometimes they repetition of a geometrical
are positioned along different motif in picture friezes is
registers, in columns or in lines. the principal feature of the
Danube decorative system.

Presence vs. absence Signs of writing can be Ligatures are absent in the
of ligatures combined by ligatures. field of decoration.

Functionality/ An inscription assembles signs The main purpose of the

aesthetics in a functional way (although decorations is aesthetic as
signs of writing are sometimes exemplified by the use of
positioned in an aesthetic way). slight variations in the
framework of general
homogeneity.

Dots and vertical The use of dots and vertical In a decorative design, dots
strokes strokes in separating signs or and vertical strokes are in
groups of signs is a strong general not used to separate
marker of the occurrence of an signs or groups of signs. If
inscription. so, they are positioned in a
symmetric way.

Abstract and An inscription can mix both In general, in

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naturalistic mix abstract and naturalistic signs. ornamentation there is no

mix between abstract and
naturalistic motifs.

Horror vacui Signs of writing never saturate It is non infrequent that a

the entire available space, decoration saturates the
because they carry a specific entire available space.
message.

To sum up, the system of artistic motifs and the system of writing were viewed as
separate codes in the mind of the Danube literates, even if strictly connected.
Observing in-group marks that are disposed in order to capture the symmetrical
balance able to exalt the aesthetic value of an object, have the tendency to saturate
the entire available space, are not modified by diacritical marks and are not
connected by ligatures, one has high probabilities of dealing with a decoration and
not with an inscription. Artistic signs can also be gathered in a specific corpus.
Contrariwise, observing geometric, abstract, high schematic, linear and not very
complex signs that have been modified by diacritical marks, are joint by ligatures
and are organized in an asymmetric way, one has high probabilities to be within
the script framework.
One can note clues of the Danube script, applying the “Matrix of semiotic rules
and markers” to an Early Neolithic cylinder from Parţa (Romania), which belongs
to the Banat IB cultural group that developed between ca. 5400-4900 BCE.
The engraved signs are all insertable within the inventory of the Danube script
signs.
Geometric, abstract, high schematic, elementary, linear, and not ornamental signs
occur as representative of a script.
Concerning the organization of the inscription, signs are assembled in a functional
way and not in an aesthetic way. Signs appear in groups. Signs are organized
according to a linear alignment. Within any cluster, they show a spatial
asymmetric co-ordination producing a visually random composition that is
antithetical to a harmonious design, but is functional to store and transmit
messages. Signs are organized at least in two different groups as to express
different packages of information. Finally, signs do not saturate the entire
available space, because they have not a decorative function, but carry a specific
message.
Briefly, the signs engraved on the Early Neolithic cylinder belong, with more
probability, to the writing framework than to the ornamental framework, because
they are consistent with most of the indicators related to the occurrence of the
Danube script.

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Figure 19. Clues of the script occur on an Early Neolithic cylinder from Parţa
(Romania).

Distinguishing symbols and Danube script signs

A distinct matrix of semiotic guidelines is provided to discern between Danube

symbolism and Danube writing system in case of messages made of two-more
signs. Being the symbolism often a blend language to express the visible unreality
of the sacred sphere, it was more important and frequently used than the script.
However, it had a natural and close association with the script being the main
source in shape as well as in significance of it, to the point that some marks have
the possibility to be a symbol and a writing unit as well, depending on the context.
The matrix can be synthesized as follows.

Contrapositions Signs of writing Symbols

Inventory of signs vs. There are signs that are There are marks that are used
repertoire of symbols used solely in the Danube only in symbolic messages. For
script. Therefore, one can that reason, one can build a
build an inventory of signs repertoire of pure symbols.
exclusively employed in
the written messages.

The identification of When “ambivalent signs” One is confident enough to

the nature of the (those which can be script assume to be outside the
marks that can be units or symbols as well) symbolic framework when
both writing units and are associated with signs signs of writing are associated
symbols of writing, one is dealing with “ambivalent signs” (those
with an inscription. that can be script units or
symbols as well).

Accuracy in making Sign of writing can be Symbols are in general

scratched. accurately made.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

Divergent inclination Signs are not necessarily Symbols are often in prominent
regarding the location in prominent position. position.
on objects

Different role In several instances, there Symbiotic relationship between

associated to the is a restrictive utilization symbols and an object and/or a
inscribed/painted of the signs on distinct strategic part of it, because the
artifact or its parts typology of artifacts and former can melt with them and
their portions. even become a substitute of
them.

Not emphatic vs. The signs of the Danube The symbols are outsize
oversized shapes script have outlines that oriented.
are modest in size.

Techniques and Signs of writing can be Symbols do not vary their basic
restrictions in outline modified applying to them outline.
modifications diacritical markers as
small strokes, crosses, and
arches.

Ligatures Signs of the script can be Ligatures are absent in the

combined from ligatures. symbolic communication.

Abstractness Abstract signs of writing Naturalistic symbols are much

are in greater numbers more than signs of writing with
than abstract symbols. a picture-like character.

Spatial rules vs. A text arranges the signs It is not infrequent that a
possibility of a according to spatial rules compound symbol disposes
haphazard aimed to organize its haphazardly its units
arrangement readability.

Systematization of the A linear sequence of the In case of a group of symbols,

space and linearity signs, when it occurs, is their linear arrangement, when
voted to organize the it occurs, is aimed to express a
process of reading. In the logical progression or
Danube script, this hierarchy. In the Danube
instance is much more symbolism, this instance is
frequent than in the much more frequent than in the
Danube symbolism. Danube script.

Dots and vertical The presence of dots, In the symbolic language dots,
strokes horizontal lines and horizontal lines and vertical
vertical strokes in strokes are not employed to
separating signs or groups separate signs or groups of
of signs is a strong signs.
indicator of the
occurrence of an
inscription.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

Independent of firing A text is often made In general, symbols are made

vs. before firing, but it might before firing, very rarely after.
before firing also be made after.

In brief, the symbolic language and the system of writing were considered distinct
informative channels, even if composing strictly connected key codes of the
Danube Communication system. Observing in-group marks on an artifact, at first
one has to check if they belong to the repertoire of pure symbols or to the
inventory of the Danube script signs. If an answer is not practicable, there are
more probability that the marks under scrutiny belong to the symbolic channel
than to the system of writing if they do not present any variation of their basic
outlines; are not connected by ligatures; are deeply incised with well rendered
shape; have a prominent position on the object; have oversized outline; show a
naturalistic root; are not separated by dots, horizontal lines and vertical strokes;
and are arranged haphazardly or according to a logical progression or hierarchy. It
is not required the simultaneously presence of the whole range of indicators to
state the presence of a compound symbol; the co-occurrence of three or four
markers is in general enough.
Contrariwise, one has more probability to be within the framework of the Danube
script if the marks under analysis show a simple, abstract silhouette, have small
shape, are modified applying to them diacritical marks, are incised on a peripheral
location, and are organized according to spatial rules aimed to convey their
readability (a linear alignment in sequence, the division of a text in different sub-
inscriptions through dots, horizontal lines, or vertical strokes, etc.). As in the case
of compound symbols, it is not necessary the concurrently occurrence of all the
indicators to maintain the presence of a written text.
A clay spoon from Kisunyom-Nàdasi (County Vas, Hungary) can test, among
other inscribed artifacts, the section of the “Matrix of semiotic rules and markers”
that points out difference between Danube symbols and Danube script signs. It
belongs to the western group at the end of the Lengyel II–Early Lasinja culture
(mid-fifth millennium BC) and was found in 1981 in a pit in association with
other fragmented finds inscribed with signs.
The discoverers maintained the written and not ornamental nature of the incised
signs due to their distinctive shapes and aligned order (Kàrolyi 1992: 24, 29;
ibidem 1994: 105; Makkay 1990: 72, who considered it to be the only piece
bearing signs of writing from the late Lengyel culture). The spoon is bigger than
the ones utilized in daily life and exhibits a peculiar shape having a round oval
handle with a wide opening and a flat bottom. A circular chain of signs has been
incised before firing on the leveled surface of the bottom, all around the hole.
Unfortunately, the writing sequence is not complete, but seven signs are
identifiable: five are compound signs and two are basic elementary signs. It is
significant to note that all of the five composite signs are arranged by juxtaposing,
interweaving, or merging elementary signs through the writing technique of the
ligature. All of the signs are present in DatDas inventory of the Danube script.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

Some signs occur repeatedly: one sign (X) recurs three times in the inscription and
another sign ( ) reappears twice. This is a strong indicator of the existence of
early literacy in the Danube basin.
Other semiotic indicators evidencing the occurrence of the Danube script and not
the symbolic code on the Hungarian spoon are the following.
Signs are intentional, identifiable, highly stylized, elementary in form, not
ornamental, similar in size, standardized according to a model.
These signs are employed exclusively in the written messages of the Danube
script, not in other communicational codes.
Sign are scratched and not accurately incised as symbols are.
Signs are not in outstanding position, but on the bottom.
Signs are not only combined from ligatures but also modified applying to them
diacritical marks as small strokes, crosses, and arches.

Figure 20. The inscribed Lengyel II spoon from Kisunyom-Nàdasi (County Vas,
Hungary) and its inscription. (D. Bulgarelli, Prehistory Knowledge Project
2007).

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

Addressing the Danube civilization and the Danube script

According to DatDas evidence, the earliest experiments with literacy started

around 5900-5800 BC - at Starčevo-Criş (Körös) IB, IC horizon - some two
thousand years earlier than any other known writing. The Danube script quickly
spread along the Danube valley northward to the Hungarian Great plain,
southward down to Thessaly, westward to the Adriatic coast, and eastward to
Ukraine (Merlini 2001; ibidem 2004a). A later, related script developed in
Precucuteni-Cucuteni-Trypillya area (Merlini 2004b; ibidem 2007c). The
experiment with writing technology developed up to about 3500-3400 BC, when a
social upheaval took place: according to some, there was an intrusion of new
populations, whilst others have hypothesized the emergence of new elites. At that
time, the Danube script eclipsed and was later to be lost.
As mentioned above, the term “Danube Civilization” refers to the Neolithic
and Copper Age societies of Southeastern Europe that flourished from c. 6400
BCE to c. 3500-3400 BCE. This terminology is coherent with the
acknowledgment that the Danube River and its tributaries favored the emergence
of an institutional, economic, and social network of developed cultural complexes,
cultures, and cultural groups that shared several key features over a wide territory.
They were characterized by extended subsistence agrarian economy and
lifestyle, urbanism, refined technologies (particularly in weaving, pottery,
building and metallurgy), long distance trade involving also status symbols
artifacts, complex belief system, sophisticated patterns of religious imagery, and
an effective system of communication using tallis, marks, symbols and signs (the
Danube Communication System) that included writing technology. The origin of
writing was evidently linked to the quantitative growth of the information that had
to be recorded and transmitted in the dynamic societies that comprised the Danube
civilization (Merlini 2005a; ibidem 2008b).
The term “Danube Civilization” is consistent also with the challenge to
demonstrate that “early civilization” status can no longer be limited to the regions
which have long attracted scholarly attention (i.e., Egypt-Nile, Mesopotamia-
Tigris and Euphrates, the ancient Indus valley), but has to be expanded to embrace
the Neolithic and Copper Age civilization of the Danube basin and beyond
(Merlini 2004a; Haarmann 2008a: 11).
The Danube civilization was organized as networks of nodes (central
settlements and regional cultures) linked by common cultural roots, exchange
relationships of mutual political advantage and shared socio-economic interests. It
was a complex society characterized by semi-equality in social relations and lack
of evidence for hereditary social ranking. However, it was increasing hinged on
segmented social relationships as documented by the layout of settlements
(subdivided into smaller and discrete social units of quite independent houses and
groups of houses) and the social ranked organization of burial practices at various
sites. The Danube civilization is also characterized by rise of urbanism and limited
necessities of defense structures, although there was a substantial and time-
resources consuming investment in systems of surrounding ditches and walls that

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may have served not only as fortifications for defense, but also as symbolic
boundaries that separated the site from its hinterland.
Most socioeconomic activities - from subsistence practices to pottery making
- seem to have been carried out by the members of individual households. The
family circle composed the vital social unit of the community. A "domestic and
communitarian mode of production" was on play, typical of tribal societies, within
which social status and political power usually are based not on inherited
relationships (ascribed ranking), but on the proven ability of each potential leader
to earn that status (achieved ranking) within a communal and inclusive network
In the present author’s view, the “Danube Civilization” is not a synonymous
with the term “Old Europe” coined by Marija Gimbutas, because she identified
under this blanket-expression an extended area that she described as the common
home of an ensemble of pre-Indo-European cultures (Gimbutas 1974-1982; 1989;
1991; 1999). Sometimes, “Old Europe” expanded from the islands of the Aegean
and Adriatic, as far north as Czechoslovakia, southern Poland, the western
Ukraine (Gimbutas 1974-1982: 17). Other times, it enlarged “from the Atlantic to
the Dnieper” (Gimbutas 1989: XIII). However, Gimbutas broadly documented the
richness of these cultural traditions, which included writing technology as one of
the major resources.
The development of an original script is an important mark of the high status
of the civilization that flourished in the Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeastern
Europe. In its comprehensive meaning, the term “Danube script” indicates the
original successful experiment with writing technology of these ancient
populations. The over-arching terminology of “Danube script/Danube signs”
includes what has been called the “Vinča script” and “Vinča signs” which has to
be strictly limited to the Vinča culture that developed in the Middle Neolithic in
the core area of the great Danube basin (Winn 1973; 1981, 2008: 126; Merlini
2004a: 54). The connection of the inscribed signs with the Vinča culture has a
reasonably long history. However, it categorizes only a specific period of the
Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame, has provincial boundaries and does not
evoke a clear geographical region. The Danube script has to be extended in time
(from Early Neolithic to Late Copper Age) and in space (embracing the whole
Southeastern Europe).
Other scholars use “Danube script” as synonymous with the “Old European
script,” coined by Gimbutas (Gimbutas 1991; Haarmann 2002: 17 ff.; ibidem
2008a: 12; Haarmann and Marler 2008: 1). However, this designation is based on
the vague concept of “Old Europe” conceived by the same author (Gimbutas
1974-1982; ibidem 1991) and elicits a distinct connection with Southeastern
Europe. In particular, the area involved by the Danube script extends in
Southeastern Europe from the Carpathian Basin south to the Thessalian Plain and
from the Austrian and Slovakian Alps and the Adriatic Sea east to the Ukrainian
steppe. It includes (in order of contribution to the experiment with writing), the
modern-day countries of the Republic of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece,
Hungary, Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.), Ukraine, Czech Republic,
Albania, Kosovo, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Republic of Moldova, Croatia, Montenegro and Austria. This macro region forms

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a relatively bounded and cohesive unit although the geographic layout, consisting
of several small and discrete micro-regions that exploited a distinct set of local
resources encouraging regional differentiation among the early farming societies
(as well as among the lexicon and interpretations of the archaeologists).
“Danube script” is an operational term that does not designate the unity of
literacy that lacks documentary evidence. Further investigation is required to
reach the needed critical mass of information for DatDas, in order to evaluate the
blanket term “Danube script” and to deal with distinct paths within the cultural
institution of writing in the regional traditions of the Danube civilization.
Although Owens refers to the occurrence of “Balkan scripts” (Owens 1999), his
statement has to be demonstrated based on the understanding of the
interconnections of sign use in the different cultural regions. Up to now, regional
and cultural subdivisions were successfully, although prototypically, tested by the
author creating some sub-databanks. DatTur is established from the signs utilized
by the Turdaş culture (Merlini 2008c; forthcoming); DatVinc registers data on
writing in the Vinča culture; DatPCAT records inscribed finds and inscriptions
from the Precucuteni-Cucuteni-Ariuşd-Trypilla cultural complex evidencing a late
script related to the Danube script (Merlini 2007c; in press).

The inventory of the Danube script signs

The presence of an inventory of signs is one of the five essential elements of

any system of writing which distinguish ars scribendi from other
communicational channels, such as calendars, symbols, accounting systems,
heraldic markings, etc. An inventory is a precise corpus of standardized signs and
not a list of marks drawn according to the writer‘s individual expression. Every
system of writing employs a catalogue of signs that is distinct, defined, and
limited.
The presence of an inventory is a key element for the script that developed in
Southeastern Europe during the Neolithic and Copper Age time-frame, too. Signs
were not invented “on the fly”, but shaped according to a model that was shared
and utilized for a long period over a wide area. The reoccurrence of the same
signs and groups of signs on artifacts of the Danube civilization evidences that
they included precise standard outlines and that scribes may have made use of a
common inventory. Though this system of writing is now lost and it is unlikely it
will ever be possible to decipher it, one can try to identify some elements of its
semiotic code and particularly shapes and typological categories of signs.
Therefore, a preliminary step in deciphering an ancient writing system as the
Danube script is to compile a catalogue of all the apparently different characters
occurring in the texts, and to identify the variations each character may undergo.
If one takes an article of a newspaper printed in English, it would be a
straightforward matter, through careful study and comparison of the thousands of
characters in the text, to work out that they could be classified into a set of signs.
However, in ancient scripts a text was incised on irregular surfaces of clay, rocks,
or bone which rough and restricted surfaces conditioned and limited the graphic
expression. The task of isolating and detecting the signs is made far more difficult

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

by the penmanship variability and the possibility to represent the same sign in
dissimilar ways as allographs, which are the alternative forms of a letter in an
alphabet or another unit in a different writing system (Hawthorn 2000).
Signs were also joined up by ligatures and positioned in spatial association
with symbols or other kinds of marks. A key challenge for the decipherer - who
cannot be sure in advance that different-looking signs are in fact allographs of the
same sign - is how to distinguish signs which are genuinely different (such as 'I'
and '1') from signs which are probably allographs (for example,
are all variations of an X due to different fonts), without knowing the conceptual
or phonetic values of the signs under examination.
Based on practice in known writing systems, the Danube script may contain
several allographs of the same basic sign. Unless epigraphers became able to
distinguish the allographs with a fair degree of confidence, generally comparing
their contexts in many very similar inscriptions, they can neither correctly classify
the signs in the Danube script in order to build an inventory of them; neither
establish the total number of the signs. However, in decipherment the number of
signs utilized by a script can be a clue to establish its type without revealing the
phonetic or conceptual values of the signs. Based on the number of Linear B
signs, Michael Ventris was convinced that it was a syllabic script, rather than an
alphabet or a logosyllabic script, which was an important historic step for
decipherment.
The in-progress inventory of the signs employed by the Danube script is
provided by DatDas statistics. It lists 286 sign types. Emerging from a catalogue
of 4,509 actual signs, it means that each inventoried sign has an average frequency
of nearly 16 times. The inventory of the Danube script is in a manageable form
and is conceived to permit the reader to have a rapid overview of it.
The inventory of the abstract signs is articulated in two sections: abstract root-
signs + variants and abstract unvaried signs. Concerning the first section, the
opening column is devoted to lists the root-signs, which are displayed according
to a decreasing order of frequency.
The subsequent columns are devoted to the derived signs, if any, of the root-
sign, which are divided into positional variants, variants from multiplication, and
diacritic variants.
The positional variants are sub-divided into rotated variants, reverse variants,
specular variants as in a mirror, and reverse and specular variants.
The derivations of root-signs are split up into simple diacritic single variants
(basic forms modified by a single auxiliary marker) and complex diacritic variants
(basic forms modified by manifold additions).
Building an inventory of the signs, their shapes (incised or painted on
artifacts) of the Danube civilization have not been forced, by rebuilding them at
the computer according to a normalized outline and aligning them along an
abstract space. DatDas rendering simply follows the conventional and
standardized silhouette of basic sign types according to which writers incised the
markings. ‘Writers’ conformed the production and transmission of packages of
information to a precise repertory of signs and definite organizational rules that

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had to deal with lack of space, constraint from the material or, sometimes, simply
inexperience.
The benchmark would be to identify the signs of the Danube script with the
same precision of Emmett Bennett jr., student of Blegen at the University of
Cincinnati, for the Linear B. Coping with thousands of text characters in the Pylos
tablets written by many different scribal hands and still unable to read them, he
produced a list of 87 signs figuring out which of them were actually different and
which were mere idiosyncratic variations of the same sign. Core signs -
presumably (but not yet provably) phonetic in function - and allographs have been
logically distinguished by Bennett one from the other and from a second class of
signs, pictographic/iconic, which were apparently used as logograms. Bennett’s
list is almost definitive and identical to the one used today.
The main partition of the 286 inventoried signs is between 197 abstract signs,
50 pictograms/ideograms, and 34 numerical signs. The categories of signs operate
in an integrated way. The boundaries of the tri-partition are in progress. Since the
Palaeolithic assemblage, there is evidence of the human capacity to produce
figurative images (depicting natural phenomena, living beings and objects in
representational style) as well as abstract signs and geometrical motifs such as
rows of dots and grids. Concerning the Danube script, DatDas categorizes as
abstract signs the basic geometric forms that lack any recognizable visual
association with natural or artificial objects and phenomena (V, X, Y, lozenge,
triangle...). DatDas identifies as pictograms/ideograms signs depicting
occurrences resulting from natural forces, living creatures or objects that can be
recognized in association with the figurative sense of that time and although the
high degree of stylization (e.g., the depiction of a sledge or a flag). The author
does not exclude the possibility that the refining of the analysis in light of the
tendency of the Danube civilization toward the stylization of sign forms will lead
to a reevaluation of some signs from the abstract field to the
pictographic/ideographic field, or reversely.
The proportions of abstract signs that render information outnumber iconic
signs. Abstractness and schematization of sign shape are among the prominent
features of the Danube script, in tune with the marked propensity toward
abstraction and stylization in symbolism and decoration. The culturally specific
sense of abstractness poses questions concerning the nature and function of the
Danube script. Messages transmitted by a system of writing with plenty of
pictograms and ideograms can be in a relevant part understood also by illiterate
people. Even in the Aegean Linear A and Linear B, it was enough to be familiar
with the decimal system and the meaning of the ideograms depicting objects,
products, animals and human beings to catch most of their information. The high
number of abstract and arbitrary signs belonging to the Danube script identifies
literacy for an elite or a shared elevated educational level. This figure is
apparently incongruent with the widespread distribution of the script. However, it
developed according to a model of civilization far from the traditional state-
bureaucratic political centered prototype, being based on a network of nodes
composed of settlements and micro-regions that exchanged relationships for

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economical and political mutual advantage, sharing the same milieu with different
level of authority.
Crossing territorial and chronological data, DatDas provides documentary
evidence that in the Neolithic and Copper Age of Southeastern Europe a
civilization emerged which was organized as a network of nodes along political-
institutional, socio-economic and cultural spheres. The Danube script envisages
also a historical situation similar to the Harappa one in the ancient Indus valley,
for which Maisels utilizes the term oecumene in order to define a kind of society
as opposite to “territorial state” and synonymous with commonwealth in the sense
of an “economically integrated commerce-and-culture area.” The qualification of
oecumene as consisting of “disparate, overlapping and interactive sphere of
authority: economic, political, religious and, only derivatively, territorial”
(Maisels 1999: 236-7, see also 224, 226, 252 ff.) could be applied to the Danube
civilization. Haarmann was the first to utilize this concept for the Danube
civilization (Haarmann 2003: 154 ff.; ibidem 2008a: 26-7). In particular, the
network or oecumene model of the Danube civilization, as appearing from the
standpoint of the script, centers on features of: a) a political ranking web of urban
centers and micro-regions; b) a socio-economic integrated commerce-and-culture
area (Maisels 1999: 236-7, 224, 226 for the general concept); and c) a common
cultural koine.
The abstract signs are organized in 31 root-signs (or font-signs), which are
subjected to the technique to vary the basic forms for creating 162 derivative
signs. The root-signs express most of the fundamental geometric outlines that are
subjected to formal variations (V, Λ, <, >, X, y, П, Y, +, Δ...), but not to the extent
that one sign becomes confused with another. Only four abstract signs are
invariable.
The root-signs can be varied in three ways to enlarge their repertory (see
Winn 1981: 60 ff.; Gimbutas 1991: 309; Haarmann 1995: 38 ff.; Merlini 2001;
2002b; 2003c; 2004a; 2008c). First, they can be rotated (Rotated variant), turned
upside down (Reverse variant), turned round as in a mirror (Specular variant), and
turned round plus upside down at the same time (Reverse and specular variant).
According to this variational rule, a root-sign such as can be turned round to
become or a , reversed as , mirrored as , and reversed and mirrored as
. In the section of the abstract signs of the Danube script, the positional variants
of the root-signs are 60.
Second, the root-signs can be duplicated or multiplied. These derivative signs
are 17.
Third, the root-signs can be varied by the application of diacritical markers
(auxiliary markers added to a basic sign), such as small strokes, crosses, dots, and
arches. Based on the last technique (multiple variations), a V can be transformed,
for example, into a V+, a V/ or into a \I/. There are 54 simple variations (when
applying only one diacritical mark to the root-sign). The complex variations
(when applying simultaneously two or more diacritical marks to it) are 31.
The sophisticated technique of systematic variations of basic signs using
diacritical markers characterized other archaic systems of writing such as the

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Indus script, but it was used for the first time in the Danube script (Haarmann
1998b). Although less recognizable, it is at work also in the ancient Sumerian
pictography and in the Proto-Elamite script (Haarmann 2008a: 33).

ABSTRACT ROOT-SIGNS

Root- Positional variant Variant Diacritic variant

sign from
multiplicat
ion
Rotated Reverse Specular Reverse Simp Comple
variant variant variant as and le x
in a mirror specular diacr diacriti
(A in (A (A in a variant itic c
in a (A Varia variant
a ). ). nt
). in a ).

DS
DS DS 001.1 001.4 DS
001.0 001.13

DS
DS 001.2 DS 001.14
001.5

DS 001.3 DS
001.15

DS
001.6 DS
001.16

DS
001.7

DS
001.8 DS
001.17

DS
001.9 DS

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

001.18

DS
001.1
0

DS
001.1 DS
1 001.19

DS
001.1 DS
2 001.20

DS
001.21

DS
DS DS 002.1 002.4 DS
002.0 002.12

DS
DS 002.2 002.5

DS
002.6 DS
DS 002.3 002.13

DS
002.14

a DS
002.15

b
DS
002.7

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS DS
002.8 002.16

DS DS
002.9 002.17

DS DS
002.1 002.18
0

DS DS
002.1 002.19
1

DS DS 003.1 DS DS
003.0 003. 003.6
3

DS 003.2 DS
003.
4

DS
003.
5

DS DS 004.1 DS
004.0 004.
3

DS
DS 004.2 004.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS DS
005.0 005.
1

DS
005.
2

DS
005.
3

DS
005.
7

DS
005.
4

DS DS
005. 005.6
5

DS DS DS
006.0 006.1 006.2

DS
DS 007.1 DS DS 007.4 DS DS
007.0 007.3 007.5 007.
6

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS DS
007.2 007.
7

DS DS DS
008.0 008.1 008.
2

DS
DS DS DS 09.4 09.5
DS 09.1 09.3
09.0

DS
DS 09.6
09.2

DS
09.7

DS 010.2
DS DS
010.0 010.1

DS
DS 011.
011.0 1 DS
011.2

DS
011.
3

DS
012.1
DS DS
012.0 012.3

DS

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

012.2

DS
DS DS DS 013.4
013.1
013.0 013.3

DS 013.8

DS DS 013.5
013.2

DS 013.6

DS 013.7

DS DS
014.0 014.1

DS a DS
015.0 DS 015.3 015.
4
b
DS
015.1

DS
a
015.
5
b
DS
015.2

DS
015.
6

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS
015.
7

DS
DS 016.1 DS DS 016.5 DS
016.0 016.4 016.6 DS
016.
7

DS
016.2

DS
016.3

DS DS DS
017.0 017.1 017.3

DS
017.2

DS
DS DS 018.1 018. DS
018.0 2 018.5

DS
018. DS
3 018.6

DS
018.
4

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS DS DS 019.3 DS DS
019.0 019.1 019. 019.7
4

DS DS
DS 019. 019.8
019.2 5

DS
019.
6

DS
a 020. DS
DS
2 020.3
020.0

b
DS
020.1

DS 021.2
DS DS 021.1
021.0

DS DS 022.5 DS
022.0 DS DS DS 022.
022.1 022.4 022.6 7

DS
022.2

DS
022.3

DS DS
DS DS 023. 023.4
DS

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

023.0 023.1 023.2 3

DS DS
024.0 024.1

DS DS DS 025.2
025.0 025.1

DS DS DS DS 026.4 DS
026.0 026.1 026.3 026.5

DS
026.2

DS DS DS
DS 027.4
027.0 027.1 027.5

DS
027.2

DS
027.3

DS DS028.
028.0 1

DS
DS DS 029.
029.0 029.1 DS
2
029.5

DS

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

029.
3

DS
029.6

DS
029.
4

DS
029.
7

DS DS
030.0 030.1

DS DS
031.0 031.1

DS
DS DS
032.0
032. 032.2
1

DS
032.3

ABSTRACT UNVARIED SIGNS

DS DS 034.0 DS 035.0 DS 036.0

033.0

Figure 21. The list of the abstract signs of the Danube script.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

Pictograms and ideograms employed by the Danube script are not “schematic
drawings,” but distinct signs of the writing system. Pictograms are not stylized
and simplified pictures of things, animals or natural phenomena as well as
ideograms are not representations of abstract ideas through iconic outlines. Both
are not draft images schematized by the arbitrary inventiveness of a “scribe”, but
signs that, even representing real objects and phenomena, have three properties: i)
show silhouettes in accordance with a standard; ii) are inserted in a precise
inventory of writing signs; and iii) have definite meanings. In conclusion,
pictograms and ideograms are not simply “images”, but those distinct images that
settle in the inventory of the Danube script as signs of writing with a naturalistic
root. DatDas subdivides the typology of pictographic/ideographic signs as
depicting: animals; human beings and parts of the body; plants; tools, utensils,
implements with different functions, vehicles; dwellings and structures; natural
phenomena; S-shapes; Meanders; and Miscellanea.

ICONIC SIGNS

Pictographic/ideographic signs depicting animals

DS
DS 040.0 DS 041.0 DS 042.0 087.0

Pictographic/ideographic signs representing human beings and parts of the body

DS 043.0 DS 044.0 DS
DS 045.0 DS 047.0
046.0

DS 048.0 DS 049.0
b

DS 050.0

Pictographic/ideographic signs rendering plants and trees

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS 051.0 DS 052.0

Pictographic/ideographic signs depicting tools, utensils, implements with different

functions, vehicles

DS 053.0

A A
DS 056.0
DS 055.0 D
B S
058.0
B
DS 057.0
DS 054.0

A DS 062.0
DS 060.0
DS 061.0

DS 059.0

DS 063.0

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS 064.0 DS 065.0

DS 066.0

DS 068.0
DS 067.0

Pictographic/ideographic signs related to dwellings and structures

DS 069.0 DS 070.0

Pictographic/ideographic signs connected to natural surroundings or phenomena

D
S
DS 071.0 DS 073.0 DS 074.0 075.0
DS 072.0

S-shape

a a
DS 078.0

b b

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

DS 077.0
DS 076.0

Meanders

DS 079.0 DS 080.0 DS 081.0 D

DS 082.0 S
083.0

DS 084.0

Spirals

DS 087.0

Miscellanea

DS 088.0
DS 085.0 DS 086.0

Figure 22. The list of the pictograms/ideograms of the Danube script.

Statistical evidence leads to identify some sign that functioned as numerals,

although the detection is still rather putative. The inventory of the signs that may
be assumed to function as numerals is sub-divided in five categories: vertical
lines, diagonal lines, horizontal lines, strokes, and dots. If these shapes have a
high probability to be signs representing quantities, future semiotic research has to
test if also other signs with shape not intuitive as numeral express arithmetical
values (as for example O = 1 hundred in the Linear B).
Under investigation is also the question if the above-presented signs are units
of a number system or if they have only a numerological value. Having the
inventory listed up to six vertical lines and up to eight horizontal lines (but with
nine “on bench” being a singleton), one can hypothesize that there was a simple

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

numeral system. Is it decimal as the Linear B? If the Danube scrip possesses a

numbering system, the distinction between the numerical system and the system
of measurement will be necessary as well as the explication how the system of
measurement worked.

POSSIBLE NUMERIC SIGNS

Vertical lines Diagonal Horizontal Stroke Dots

lines lines s

DS DS DS DS DS
DS DS DS
DS 106. 106. 111.0 111. 119.0
100.0 100.2 123.
100.1 0 1 1
0

DS DS DS DS
DS DS
107. 107. 112.0 124.
101.0 120.0
0 1 0

DS DS DS
DS DS DS 113.0 121.0 125.
102.0 108. 108. 0
0 1

DS DS DS DS
DS
103.0 109. 109. 114.0
122.0
0 1

DS DS
DS DS
104.0 115.0
110. 110.
0 1

DS DS
105.0 116.0

DS
117.0

DS
118.0

Figure 23. The list of the possible numeric signs of the Danube script.

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 Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, VIII, 2009

This systematic structuring of the signs of the Danube script documents that
nearly two hundred literate settlements shared an organizational asset of the
inventory characterized by signs that were conventionally conceived,
standardized, applied, typologically organized in a systematic way (with outlines
not haphazardly selected and developed), and applied according to accepted
conventions coherently designed for readability. This organizational infrastructure
alone would be enough as a benchmark to classify the Danube script as a writing
system.
It is also noteworthy that, despite the high occurrence of mono-sign
inscriptions, longer texts comprised of two-more signs prevail and most of them
align several signs (in one instance 45 signs).
Due to the wide geographic area and long period under investigation, the
recorded inscriptions and inscribed artifacts are not definitive enough to complete
the inventory of signs. However, only a small number of new signs are expected
to be found. In particular, the discovery of new inscriptions will allow the
insertion into the databank of signs that now are kept out as being singletons (i.e.
signs that appear just once). If the critical mass of information gathered by
DatDas is not enough to attempt a decipherment of the script based on a
computerized statistical analysis of the signs, it is definitely as much as necessary
to determine that it was actually a system of writing. For example, a statistical test
concerns the quota of singletons and very rare signs over the total number of
known signs (n/N). Even with the mentioned limitations, the critical mass of
information gathered by DatDas is enough to determine that the ratio of
singletons over the total number of known signs (n/N) is decreasing. As the
number of known inscriptions grows (N), the percentage of singletons and very
rare signs diminish (n). This statistical test provides a challenge to the critics who
argue that the Danube script is not a linguistic system of writing at all, claiming
that the percentage of singletons and very low-frequency signs is going up, not
down, over time – something that is inconsistent with any known writing system
(Farmer 2003a: 17; 2003b: 39 referring directly to the Indus script and indirectly
to the Danube script). Conversely, the figure evidences that even if the Danube
script is mainly non-linguistic in nature, it has some phonetic elements at least
marked marginally or occasionally
The same feature of a logographic system with some phonetic components is
evidenced by the number of the inventoried signs. All ancient scripts are
composed of a high number of signs (from hundreds to thousands of signs),
because the logographic principle of writing demands individual signs for
rendering individual concepts or ideas. In a comparative view, the more than 300-
350 signs of the Danube script, documented in the inventory, are much less than
the 760 individual signs of the Egyptian hieroglyphic in the second millennium
BC, the 770 signs operated by the Ancient Sumerian pictography (of the Uruk III
and IV periods) or the nearly 1000 signs belonging to the repertory of the Proto-
Elamite script. The analogous number of signs listed by the Danube script and the
ancient Indus (410) is not a coincidence, but indicate similar functions according
to a networking oecumene society.

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The amount of signs employed by the Danube script poses the question of the
function and developing path of this system of writing. Was the relatively low
number of signs due to the specialized nature of the script as a sacral tool mainly
utilized in liturgies? Alternatively, are they in limited figures because the system
of writing was “frozen” by the collapse of the Danube civilization when it was in
transition from a primarily logographic system, which neglected the sound
sequences of spoken words in favor of the transmission of concepts?
In conclusion, the inscriptions are composed in terms of a logically coherent
system of signs targeted to the readability of the text, although in a very archaic
and rudimentary way. Metabolizing and summarizing semiotic information from
the corpus of inscribed artifacts, according to the DatDas databank, the traits of an
archaic script become apparent.

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