The Earliest Civilisation? Vinca Culture with Ben Elliott

The Vinca culture of Serbia is one of the first human civilisations. Possibly the first to smelt copper, one of the earliest uses of a symbolic proto-script and a hyper industrious producer of advanced ceramics including the earliest anthropomorphic life size clay busts. Yet few know of the wonders of this ancient culture. In this episode, I spoke to the historian Ben Elliott who travelled to Serbia to make a film called Quest for Vinca which aims to increase awareness of these fascinating Neolithic people.

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Ben's linkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-elliott-292612282/

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Welcome to Jive Talk. Today.I have a guest, Ben Elliott,
a historian and a filmmaker like myselfwho has a special interest in an archaeological
culture that is probably one of themost important archaeological cultures in the history of
the world, but many people don'teven know about it, surprisingly, and

(00:32):
Ben's done a lot of good workto try and end that. Ben,
Welcome to jive Talk. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you for
inviting me to your home. Youhave these beautiful artifacts here which you've made
as recreations of those that come fromthe Venture culture. So Burn, what's

(00:53):
the venture culture? Okay? Soventure culture is a culture that has effectively
emanated from the Balkans, which isin southeastern Europe, and it dates to
roughly around five thousand, three hundredBC. It's relevance and its importance though,
is in it is the first manifestationof the Neolithic on that scale in

(01:17):
European history. It's the first ofits type. And what categorizes the Neolithic
in general, just in case peopledon't know, is fixed settlements and agriculture.
They're the fundamental tropes. And whenyou look at venture culture across the
board, across the entire area ofthe Balkans in which you find them,
you find that high degree or thathigh level of Neolithic development, and that

(01:42):
covers not just the trop site Ihighlighted, but also industrialized ceramic manufacturing and
even copper metallurgy way before the aNeolithic period. Yeah, and that's something
really interesting because the Anatolians who leftAnatolia and triggered the Neolithic in Europe around

(02:02):
eight thousand years ago, within seventhousand years that I'm sorry, within the
thousand years, they're in this areaof the Balkans, mainly Serbia, correct
mainly centered in Serbia, but eveninto Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Bosnia,
Montenegro, Macedonia, northern Greece,parts of southern Hungary, and even

(02:24):
parts of Romania and Bulgaria. InSack Pervasis. Yeah, it does expand
quite a lot at that whole region. And they've got beautiful anthropomorphic figures and
zoomorphic figures clay, they're producing enormousamount of pottery, and they have metallurgy.

(02:44):
Whereas the Anatolian like European Anatolians elsewhere, who spread across the continent,
going you know as far as Scandinaviaand the British Isles. I mean they
didn't even get to the British Islesuntil like six thousand years ago or something,
and I mean seven thousand years ago. In most of Europe, they

(03:06):
didn't have any metal. They weren'tdoing metallurgy, and in fact, like
six thousand years ago, still nometallergy. Five thousand years ago, most
of Europe had no metallurgy. Butthe Balkans had copper working way before the
rest of Europe, very early,in fact, not just before the rest
of Europe, if I'm i correctlysaying before the rest of the entire world,

(03:27):
not necessarily before the rest of theentire world. The significance of Venture
is that although copper metallurgy does popup in other parts of the world prior
to Venture, Venture discovers it autonomously. So it's actually the autonomous discovery of
copper by very early Neolithic Europeans,that is, that's the remarkable thing,

(03:52):
and how they discovered it autonomously.As part of a very rich debates which
I'm forture I don't think we've gottime for, but we know that they
were discovering copper very very early becauseof the Neolithic copper minds that we find
locally. They're not importing there,they're not importing it, they're actually making
it themselves. And they're trading inthe raw oars so azurite and malachite,

(04:15):
so they know what they're looking for. They have they have mining practices,
and then they have practices for smelting, which ties in with pyrotechnology. So
to smelt metals it's at a lowertemperature than it is to fire ceramics.
So these people are more than capableof creating copper. And they're trading the

(04:38):
raw oars, and they use allof the waterways across the Balkans, Sava,
Danu, Morava and so on,so they're able to spread that technology
on. You could call them theequivalents of r M one, where all
the lorries very goods up and downthe country. They have their own versions
of the M one, which arethese these waterways. Is it possible correct

(05:01):
me if I'm wrong, that thelearning to smelt and work with metals is
likely somehow connected to their enormous productionof ceramics. So they were used to
you having furnaces and things like that, and this kind of in this technology
and almost industrial level production, iswould have aided a transition to a different

(05:26):
mode of production with metals. Quitepossibly, quite possibly, did they discover
it by accident. I wouldn't wantto hazard a guess, but when you
look at sites, there's some veryimportant venture sites. One's called plotch Neck,
and when they were going through thestratigraphy or all the different horizons and
the cultural layers of the site,which is a venture site, they discovered

(05:47):
copper in the very earliest layers,and a lot of academics at the time
basically said no, no, no, no, it's fallen through the layers
over time they didn't have access toit. But now the modern interpretation of
that data is that no, actuallythey had copper from the out almost the
outset of the founding of the cultureitself. That's incredible and maybe instrumental in

(06:13):
the foundation of the culture somehow,quite possibly. There's one theory that I'm
inclined towards, though I probably needto do a little more research on it.
But they actually think that copper isone of the primary materials that created
a class based system in that culture. I think that's highly plausible. It's

(06:34):
certainly the case in the British Neolithic, or like the an any Elithic,
like with the from four and ahalf thousand years onwards, that the first
people to possess have to be buriedwith metal items are high statas, and
the more high status they are,the more metal items they are buried with.
So that's a long time later,and it's an obvious conclusion to make.

(06:56):
And of course the oldest known exampleof gold working I'm aware of is
the Varna culture, which is alsoin the Balkans and just comes slightly after
the Vinure culture. It's slightly tothe east of it and slightly after,
so very likely the Varna culture hassome cultural relationship to the preceding Venture culture,
and they are the gold within thatculture is certainly status say it always

(07:21):
has been, and that you havethe very wealthy burials of people with gold
items. And interestingly, the theVanna culture does have my knowledge, cultural
connections and similarities to things on theother side of Neolithic Europe in France,
where similar symbols that have been madeof gold by Varna are being carved onto

(07:42):
rocks in France, and the sameItalian jadeite axe heads that there are being
exported from Italian Alps to western Franceand Scotland. Even are also being exported
to the Varna culture in the Balkans. Do we know whether the Venture culture
also had any kind of long distanceconnections in Europe or elsewhere. Well,

(08:03):
fundamentally, at its core, theNeolithic technologies that they had were essential to
the spread of that technology across therest of Europe. It's basically farmers.
We always like to sort of sensationalizeand romanticize Mesolithic peoples, but really the

(08:26):
Venture people, being near of theNeolithic epoch, their technologies that they had
spread across Europe and displaced and pushedto the peripheries Mesolithic people. So that's
one thing that they've they've that they'vegot in terms of that, what else
would there be? I mean,there's always a transmission of cultural symbols and

(08:50):
things like that. So when youlook at altars, ceramic altars, you
find horned animals, which could bemaybe something like a goat or an ibex,
And we've we had that conversation before, and you see images of ibex
spreading across certainly parts of Eastern Europe. So I think there's an inheritance on
that front as well. And Iwould say copper metallurgy as well. Yeah,

(09:13):
you remember where you see that there'ssomewhere else that has earlier metal evidence
of metallurgy than Vina culture. Doyou know what that is? It would
be in Anatolia. It is inAnatolia, and I believe the culture is
I think it's Chattel Hoyok. Ithink, but the far later stages of
Chapel Hook because that was founded asfar as we know around seven thousand,

(09:37):
four hundred BC. That comes afterlike Goubecky, Tepe. Yeah, I
think like that, which is apre pottery culture. Yeah, but we
do, we do see copper inthe Near East. I should add that
the europe the early Neolithic Europeans wholeft Anatolia that came from western Anatolia,
and they were related to the peoplewho have made cattle hyak, So not

(10:03):
too much go Birdley Teppe, butperhaps more distantly to go back to Tepe.
But there is a cultural relationship betweenthem. But it does just seem
strange that so early in the migrationinto Europe you have this quite advanced winter
culture. Then the rest of Europedoesn't share. In most of the advancements
that it makes. It's worth bearingin minds that if you've got farming people's

(10:26):
coming from Anatolia into the Balkans,they're going there for one essential reason farmland,
farmland exactly. That's it. It'sthe quality of the soil. It's
the reason the Romans went there,and it's the reason that even today in
Croatia, Serbia, even Romania andplaces like that and Bulgaria, they produce
some of the best wine in Europe. And yet well, we don't see

(10:48):
in if it here, do we. It's a funny thing. It's a
sort of you know, you cansee it's sort of a bit of history
repeating itself on that front. Butthey've got just such good quality soil there.
It makes perfect sense that you've gotAnatolian farmers coming into the region and
thinking it's actually quite nice here.I'm aware that the farmers who the first

(11:11):
farmers who who traveled up the Danubefrom the Balkans into Central Europe were limited
in the regions of their expansion tothose places that had lowest soils, which
was the kind that the soil thatwas required for the kind of farming that
they were able to do. Atthat time, farming was in its infancy
and many of the techniques that peoplenow have didn't exist, so they needed

(11:35):
the specific kind of soil. Wasthat limitation also the case in the Balkans
with the vinter culture to a certainextent. To a certain extent, you
notice that when you find a venturesettlement, it has to almost be by
water if it's not, and andyou do the relevant studies on the geography
of that area, you can seethat they would have on at one point

(11:56):
been a waterway of some description.It's why you find them clustered. And
when I say clustered, we're talkinghundreds of sites clustered all along the Morava
Valley. It's absolutely essential. Andone of the big sites, which is
it's a tell site and it's alsoa type site, is the site of
Bella Brodo, which is just outsideof Belgrade, which is the capital of
Serbia. Same thing, same thing. Essential to have these waterways obviously for

(12:24):
trade, but that's where you getthese extremely rich hinterlands. And yeah,
that's exactly what they're looking for.So why is it that people don't know
about the Vinca culture and what areyou doing to change it? I'm not
entirely sure why people don't know enoughabout it. I think when you look

(12:46):
at the development, and I won'tget into this in too much detail,
when you look at the development ofhistorical NAP narratives within Western academia, it
does tend to focus pretty predominantly onGreece and Rome and the cultures that are
more specific to the now emerged nationsthat they now belong to. Okay,

(13:07):
so for example, we're fairly we'refairly well versed on Anglo Saxon culture in
England as well as Romano British culture. But would you know anything about,
you know, the Roman cultures ofSerbia. No, And it's because it's
sort of unique to that region whenit comes to venture. Though, I
think the European narrative when it comesto history, trying to present European narratives

(13:33):
is actually quite difficult because when youlook at that region, there are so
many small scale cultures that you couldstudy, and when you look at the
conflicts and the tumultuous nature of theBalkans. Again, without getting into that,
that's a whole subject, all ofit. I'm sure the comment section,
when you look at it that way, that region has got such a

(13:56):
bad reputation that anything coming out ofthere is either in dribs and drabs or
people are people just don't think anyone'sgoing to be interested, because who would
be interested in the Balkans? That'sthe and that's the attitude I picked up
from a lot of fellow academics inthose parts of the world. Really,

(14:16):
they seem surprised that people would beinterested in this. That's a shame.
But do you think that people inthe Balkans Serbia specifically where you've traveled along,
are all very aware and conscious ofthe significance of the venture culture.
Those who study it are, butthe general public aren't. Saying that some
are, but there's a great dealof people who aren't interested in it,

(14:39):
and I think it is generally becausethey've got such a I'd be careful how
I say this. Some people havea very low opinion of their nation's history
and as such that that can createa great deal of negativity for his stock
aspects of history, even if theydon't belong to that. Yeah, pre
national exactly, that's it. Thisis pre nations though saying that the other

(15:03):
side of it is they are exceedinglyproud of what they do know, but
there's a lot of misinterpretation of thedata, and there's there's many many websites
online which push conspiracy theories and UFOtheories as an explanation for this culture.
Well, it's an alien obviously,it is obviously, I've seen the X
files. Yeah, So that makesit extremely difficult to You've got to cut

(15:28):
through the fat of the subject toget down to the lean stuff. And
I think sometimes people either aren't interestingor they don't have the time. And
if if, if, if anation for whatever reason can't put funding the
money into promoting aspects of this history, it will just remain lost and left
beneath the surface, almost literally.I don't know if that's a decent enough

(15:50):
explanation for it's very hard to talkabout the Balkans. Well, most of
the audit here is British and American, and I was really asked mostly I
want to know about why we don'tknow, because I think the significance of
the Vinture culture is not anything todo with It's not a regional curiosity,
No, it's a it's an unfoldingof the human story, very international relevance,

(16:15):
and it's just not but we peoplerecognize the significance of gabeckle Tepe now
and it's not been discovered very longago. You've worked on a marvelous film
which is going to make more peopleaware of the venture culture. Can you
tell us about how that came about? Sure, I've I was working on

(16:36):
a project actually at the time inSerbia that never came to Fruition for one
reason or another over the past threeyears. I think you can imagine why.
So I was chatting with my colleaguewho's a Serb, and I said
to him, look, listen,on my last trip to Serbia, I
found out about venture culture and Isaid, why don't we just do something

(16:56):
on that. Keep it simple,and he said, that sounds amazing.
Let's just do it. I hadabout six months to catch up on about
one hundred and ten years worth ofdevelopment in the field and traveled out to
Serbia on a shoe string. Andthat's basically how the whole thing came to

(17:17):
fruition. Vlad's passion for film andmusic meant that he was just more than
happy to film the thing, andhe created the score for it as well.
So that's the score as well.Thank you. Yeah, it's it's
got it's got that lovely ancient qualitytoo that I think works. But it's
got a sentimental quality which I thinkaids the documentary and makes it, makes

(17:37):
it palatable, doesn't make it tooheavy. And then with my own passion
for history and my now sort ofemerging passion for venture, it just made
the documentary just an absolute labor oflove. We traveled pretty extensively, north,
south east and western Serbia. Wehad to stick to Serbia for obvious
reasons, but that's that's the centerof venture anyway. So we traveled from

(18:03):
literally one archaeological site to another,sometimes sleeping in the car, sometimes in
hostels or wherever it was that somebodyasked me to describe what the process was
like. I said it was it'slike a cross between Raiders of the Lost
Ark and Fear and Loathing in LasVegas. It had that general kind of
feeling about it. It's just ustwo in the car and it was in

(18:26):
all seriousness though. It was anunbelievable journey and we got to meet literally
some of the best people in thefield literally doing doing of all of that
work, all of the digging,all of the excavations, and you're meeting
people who have discovered some of thegreatest Neolithic finds ever. We're talking figures

(18:55):
and things like that, some ofthe largest Neolithic ceramic figures I believe in
the world. Incredible. Yeah,the film is called The Quest for Venture
and it can be It can beseen online, can't it not? Yet,
We've got to finish its festival run. I think it's it's on its
like thirteenth festival or something. We'vegot to finish the festival run. Then

(19:15):
we're in negotiations with RTS, whichis basically Serbia's version of the BBC,
where it's going to be broadcast andthen it will be available online. I
believe so in it within a year, I hope. I watch this space,
watch this space definitely. Let's talka bit more about some of the

(19:37):
anthromorphic figures. These weren't discovered untilquite recently, were they. That's it.
That's it. So this this isa half scale version that I made
of what's referred to as the Ladyof Alexandro Vadz And she she came out
of the ground intact. She didn'tneed to be reassembled in any way,
perfectly preserved and She's found in thelocality of what's called Vico actual Polier,

(20:03):
which are the Viccovo fields where there'sa lot of agriculture and they grow grow
vines for wine. It's a wineregion and she was found there and she
was recently. One was discovered intwo thousand nineteen, which is double her
size. It's I mean, she'sshe's almost life size. She's she's not

(20:23):
about this big. In reality,I could only do a small scale one.
But the other is I think Ibelieve over fifty centimeters in height,
and that's the Vita figure and itconforms to the same star. This is
what they refer to as the SoboKosovan variants, the venture figures, which
are the most ornate. It can'treally be much other than idol, I

(20:44):
suppose, I mean, what isit? What it could be? It
would be otherwise. I wrote apaper on them, so when I was
producing these, I wanted to understandthe the skill and the craft that needed
to be employed in order to physicallymake these. And it was actually an
amazing experiment in and of itself.But when you're left with these, where

(21:08):
do you put them? Where doyou put them? Where do they go?
What? I realized was that theyhave to go into a space.
They belong in a corner, orthey belong they belong in a space which
they can dominate and watch. Isthere any from the context of the discovery.
Is there any clue as to howthey were positioned or how they were

(21:30):
used in the time of their life, We don't know. Many of them
are found on what are basically seenas neolithic rubbish heaps, meaning that they
might have been disposed of once they'dlift out their usefulness, or maybe broken
because the venture didn't repair very much. If something broke, it was thrown

(21:51):
away. And we do find thatwith figures there could have been a ritualistic
breaking off them though, because whenyou find broken figures, it's especially smaller
versions. They're missing a head.You know, you can't find the head.
You can find the body, youdon't find the head, as if
they've sort of thrown it up oryou know, I don't know, offered
it up to offered it up tothe winds or whatever you want to call

(22:15):
it, cast to the four winds. But when we look at these,
when we look at these figures,I won't I won't touch them. But
trust me, when I say thaton the backs of these there's barely anything,
which means that they're not supposed tobe seen from behind. They're only
supposed to be seen from the front. And I've likened them to, you
know, like Byzantine icons. Yes, they take a presence in the room.

(22:38):
It's like a window into heaven,and they're there to hold you to
account, moral account, and that'show I see these. They sit there
in judgment. They're very bossy aswell, and they're found in proximity to
settlements completely, so they could havebeen they could have been sat in the
in the domos, in the homerather than a dedicated temple. They could

(22:59):
have been exactly exactly at Yeah,that's very interesting. Besides the anthropomorphic busts,
you also have these very peculiar zoomorphics. I'm calling them owl figures or
whatever they are. What are thesedo you think in an archaeological sense,
it's a prosopomorphic lid. It's alid. It's a lid. You find

(23:23):
them, you either find them independentlyon their own, but they're supposed to
go on top of vessels. Oneof the theories I heard is that the
reason they think they might be owlsis that the vessels have found they found
trace elements of grain, and owlsare the natural predators of mice, so
they've obviously observed a bird of preyand probably thought, well, an owl's

(23:45):
head is probably a very apt lidto have on to keep our grain.
I think it's very compelling speculation.They do have an owl like quality,
but they could very well not beowls as well. But it's very hard
to tell what they are. Butyeah, that that the relationship to the
contents of the vessel is interesting.Is it certain that these vessels were all

(24:07):
for grains? Not all of them. Know, there's trace elements found even
of cannabis in some in some vesselscannabis. That's a very old example of
cannabis. Yeah. What they wereusing it for, no one knows.
At the moment you say that,people just want to say, oh,
they were obviously smoking it. There'sno evidence to suggest they were doing that,
but it was being at least processedor something. Hemp rope. Is

(24:32):
there any evidence of hemp clothing oranything. There's no evidence of clothes.
It's all anything that there was asdeteriorated. The only thing we've got to
go on, are the figures totell us what kind of clothing they may
have worn? Well, but evenalcohol was present. Yeah, my assumption
would be that ritualistic alcohol grains,you know, great fermented grains of some

(24:55):
sort, were a part of theirculture, because it's an obvious thing.
Cannabis is more unusual and I wouldn'tI wouldn't have expected to learn that it
was there, but yeah, itwould perfectly possibly be involved in some kind
of ritual used. Some people sayBritish archaeology are the most the worst culprits

(25:15):
in the world. Have been sayingeverything is ritual, and everything everything's a
god, and everything is a ritualor yet I'm not an archaeologist, but
I'm as guilty of bad as anyone. But it this way, I've heard
from everybody that these must be gods. Though that's perfectly reasonable. It's perfectly
plausible as well, though I alsothink that maybe they could be the idealized,

(25:42):
idealized form or a stylized form ofcommunity leaders. Quite possibly they could
be trying to portray a state ofexistence maybe as well. When you look
at this figure here, this iscalled the Goddess on the throne. She
has a slightly raised belly, maybeindicating that she could be pregnant when you

(26:03):
look at the lady of Alexandra Fats. Now, we don't know that these
are feminine, though when I spokewith an actual modern sculptor, they said
that shoulders in this configuration are extremelyfeminine when you're sculpting, even by today's
standards. Yeah, they do giveoff a feminine vibe, although they're also
quite ambiguous in that respect. He'scertainly not obvious. Yeah, they could

(26:25):
well have been painted, and youcan see sometimes on these you find these
little holes. Something could have beenplaced in them, maybe hair, yes,
pieces of rope or something to representhair. That's exactly it. So
they form part of the mystery thatpeople love when they study ancient cultures,
and the figures are part of myone of the key aspects of my interest

(26:48):
in venture culture, which was somethingthat I was very keen to capture in
the documentary. And we were solucky to see the Vita figure because that
museum was actually shut so they letus into it box stuff in a crate
ready for conservation. So when wewhenever I get to see the figures,
I don't know what it is butthey this is subjective, I know,

(27:10):
but they are magical. They aremagical. They have an enchanting quality and
it speaks of the people who gotan intricate nature and an intricate understanding of
the human form and of beauty.Yeah, it's just shockingly advanced when you
look at later examples that are justI mean, anthropomorphic art is not actually

(27:37):
as widespread in Neolithic cultures that you'dthink some of them just didn't do it
very frequently, or if they did, most of it didn't survive because it
was in the wrong materials for preservation. We have scarce examples from Neolithic Britain,
the corn Dolly Somerset as it's called, which is a small wooden,
very crude idol, but it mayhave been less crude. There's a whalebone

(27:57):
idol from the Orkney, but thereare not I can't think of a single
stone anthropomorphic idol from Neolithic Britain,but there are plenty of plaque idols from
Iberia which are vaguely anthropomorphic. Andalso some of them although the anthromorphics,
some people argue they're not humans,they're owls. So the same problem happens

(28:18):
there in the Iberia, whether there'san owl like quality two faces of the
Neolithic, and that's another topic altogether. How well has the film been received
in film festivals and search really well? Really, we were so lucky to
be featured in that. We didn'twin an award. That would have been
just the crown on the event,I think. But we were in the

(28:44):
Archaeological Festival in Sicily, which isa pretty big, pretty big festival.
Did you fly out for that?I was supposed to, but I couldn't
make it. In the ends ofmy colleague had to go for him.
He said he drank too much graphas well as of that. But it's
been really well received, especially inthe East Romania. We won an award

(29:06):
in Romania actually, and it justgoes to show how how people are receiving
it in terms of in terms ofit are lighting up their imagination. Because
when we've spoken to people who haveseen the documentary in Eastern Europe, when

(29:26):
you get people coming up to youand shaking your hand and saying thank you,
not bravo, but thank you,it's quite I say quite, it's
actually exceedingly touching. So you're reallytouching, You're you're touching a soft spot
in people with the subject. Evenin England when we screened it at Festival's
hair people who have been more blownaway, like I didn't even know anything

(29:48):
about that. Every single aspect ofwhat you were talking about was completely new.
I think that's that and that makesit special. I think, yeah,
it's so important because it's such amom's private history that significant. It's
part of history which is just noton most people's radar. And I guess
that's why. And also some ofthe people thanking you are thanking you for

(30:10):
making them aware, and others arethanking you for making others aware because they
they are. Especially some people fromthe region are probably very proud and want
other people around the world to knowabout it. Somebody I know who's a
doctor of doctor of archaeology and specializesin venture ceramics. She lives she lives
in Serbia. When she saw thedocumentary, I was a little worried.

(30:30):
I was hoping it was going tobe received well by her. She said,
I don't know where to start,and she shows no, no,
she said, I don't know whereto start. That's a medium that you
could do so much with and thatcould do so much for the subject,
and I was like, well,please, please, you've said that because
that's exactly That's exactly what I thinkas well. And that's the beauty of

(30:52):
documentary making. You have to youhave to present it in an understandable format
because you write an academic paper.I mean, they can be stuffy unless
you're really into the subject. Soyou have to touch on things very lightly
and broadly, but also be factualat the same time. You know,
they say you can if you wantno one to read it, then just

(31:12):
make sure it's published in an academicjournal and that Yeah, what do you
have any I mean growing up haveand in recent times, like do you
have influences in the world of historicaldocumentaries that or styles of historical documentary that
like made you think I can thebest way for me to communicate Vincha is

(31:36):
through video? Do you mean interms of my what's inspired me? Yeah?
Well, David Attenborough and you knowas well as I do. The
Tribal I the Tribal Eye is brilliantfar that that blew my mind when I
saw it about six seven years ago, absolutely blew my mind. The trianble
Ee is not historical documentary, butit is a documentary series I Adniver commissioned

(32:01):
by himself when he was in chargeof the BBC, and it's actually an
anthropological documentary about different human cultures andI highly recommend it. It is absolutely
incredible and seeing that ground level engagingwith the subject. I mean Dan Cruikshank,
he's another one, that ground levelof really engaging with something that's not

(32:24):
actually just in a museum or beingheld with white gloves, where you're actually
involved almost in the very process ofthings being discovered. That's almost in the
film you do that. You hevisits the sites where it's believed there was
extraction of metals, and he's scamperingup the mountainside and you're going to the

(32:47):
archaeological sites and looking at the peopleas they're digging, and they're uncovering and
finding bits of pottery as you're there. So it's very tactile, hands on
documentary completely when you do that.When you but when you present that and
you give that to somebody to watch, you hope that they want to fill
as though they're there as well.There's that bit where I'm climbing up the

(33:07):
mountain and everyone goes there's no ropesand I've got a pair of smart boots
on, you know, and thenoh god, the thought that you might
have slipped or something. And thenagain when we're walking, I think with
the site of Grivats or Kragovats,I forget which one. Dr Miroslav Kochich,
who's you know, one of thebig names in this subject. He

(33:30):
found he found a half a polishedstone axe head, just lying in the
tops or just picked it up.Remarkable and it is absolutely remarkable. I've
I even brought home some bits andbobs from one of those sites. He
said, Help yourself, he says, because when we do a we do
a surface excavations, a single archaeologistcould find a thousand pieces within one square

(33:55):
meter of material culture fragments, Yes, but about thousand people unreal levels of
the density of archaeology or find inthis field are so impressive, and it's
really brought home in the documentary becausethey're just walking around in a field and
they're like, oh, there's someand then that's how you read the obvious

(34:19):
conclusive. This is a production,a center of production, if I can
say this. This is the bitthat really excites me is the industrial scale
in which they were producing ceramics onall levels of both utility and beauty.
When you do soil analysis of thesites, you can actually find the borders
of settlements, the very edge orthe periphery of the settlement, because the

(34:43):
soil composition has changed through mass industry, so the mass production of ceramics has
changed the nature of the soil.So you can actually see where a settlement
ends and where woodland begins. Whenyou do further soil analysis of venture sites,
I think there's soul fates or soulfights in the soil which indicate deteriorating
matter. You don't find anything verysmall trace elements, but you barely find

(35:08):
any of those soul fights in domesticsettings. Is an ash from the kilns
and things like that that they're throwingout into the cerreveries of the settlement.
It's possible, it's possible. Butthe soul fights indicating deteriorating matter and a
lack of it means that they musthave some waste management. We always we

(35:30):
always attribute this time to people beingsort of filthy and dirty, But these
people must have understood the nature ofcleanliness in order that we can't really find
what they were doing with all oftheir waste. I mean, once you
decide you're going to live in afixed location and not be of what I'm
nomadic, you've cut you need somesystem of waste management. Employ you'll do

(35:52):
oh, you'll die very quickly.So I'm sure that part of the early
agricultural package, including the things thatwe can look at in the archaeological and
genetic records such as pottery and domesticatedgrains, includes things we can't like waste
management. There must have been away of getting all the human waste away

(36:13):
from the settlement precisely, and weknow that from sites like Stablina. When
you do geophysical surveys, we cansee that I don't use I don't need
to use the word roads or streetsbecause that's that's a modern term. But
we can see that when they werebuilding building up their settlements, you can
see almost good referenced plots for domesticsettings, and you can even find what

(36:37):
could be communal spaces, large openspaces within or surrounded by potential domestic settings.
So these people were planning the placesthat they've built, and we see
we see early plan in going backto the Late Mesolithic as well, on
sites like the Pensky Veer. Iwon't get into all of that, but
there are links between the two,especially on a genetically. So when we

(37:01):
when we look at venture, we'reseeing this, we're seeing the beginning of
our modern era today, fixed andplanned settlements, industry, agriculture. We're
still we're still living, but we'reliving in an advanced version of what they
created. Yeah, except I thinkit should be added that there isn't necessarily

(37:24):
a direct line between us and them, because it seems that these advancements of
the venture culture, many of themseem to have gone disappeared and then come
back again. I know the cookattending Cropilia cultures had planned what looked like
planned urban centers almost but in Romaniain the Neolithic a fair bit after Venture

(37:46):
but still in the Late Stone Age. But then that's all stops. And
the majority of settlements across the ElithicEurope and nothing like nothing, nothing could
not be called urban. The dominantculture of Neolithic eu Europe throughout most of
it, i'd say, really endedup being the one that most of us
descend from is the LBK of CentralEurope, and that had some apparent custom

(38:14):
I'm not sure why, of burningdown their home their homes from time to
time, and which is what theficture did. No, do you have
any theories about why that might havebeen. I do. It's just a
theory. So, and there's manytheories on the subject. It could have
been one a possible invasion into thearea of other peoples who could have been

(38:37):
inherently warlike, maybe proto window Europeans. The thing is, though you don't
find any human remains as a consequence, there's no there's no When you do
the analysis of the very limited bonesof finture people, we find you find
very little in the way of necropolis. But you don't see would you do

(38:58):
find people haven't died violently. Doesn'tseem to be like a heavy blow or
stripe to the head or anything likethat. The other theory is that there
could have been a widespread plague andthese people would have had extremely advanced pyrotechnology.
They would have understood the nature offire and its purifying capabilities, and
they could well have just burnt theirsettlements to the ground and moved on.

(39:22):
Because when you correlate, obviously ina chronological sense, when you look at
the end of the venture period,so it spanned roughly about a thousand years,
just shy of a thousand years whenyou look at these enormous that's a
very long put that in there,because most Arcaeltic cultures don't last that long.
No, this is exactly it,and you're looking at them ending around

(39:44):
four thousand, two hundred. Aroundthat same time, you see the spread
of Neolithic technologies across across An intoWestern Europe. So you can actually make
that link when they burn the settlementsand then Neolithic technologies start to appear in
a more in a more advanced statein Central Europe. Besides your replica,

(40:06):
your replicas which you make, andI'm sure that's given the process of making
them itself is provides insight into theculture because sometimes with that hands on composers,
but you also have acquired fear ofself. A collection of real entreats,
haven't you, Ones that I've eitherbeen gifted or ones that I've I've

(40:28):
purchased from antiquity dealers, and Ihave, and they range from vessels,
fragments of vessels, and even downto a very tiny little tool which is
what we call a microblade, normallylike flint napping. But the vessels that
are found sometimes come within size markings, and it's those in size markings that

(40:49):
lead people to think that they couldwell have been a very early form of
the written language in Venture. Butbut I don't agree with that. Let's
talk about that. This is calledthe Venture script. What's the Venture script?
And why do people think it mightbe writing? What is the Venture
script? It's sometimes called Danubian script, and it's a collection of symbols that

(41:14):
have been brought together that have beenfound on ceramic vessels and sometimes found on
figures, and they can be allsorts of different things, from what could
be perceived to be solar or lunarsymbols, symbols that look like plants,
symbols even like the swastikas found inVenture, all sorts of symbols that look

(41:37):
like animals, and people believe thatit is some form of early written language.
The only reason people think that,though, is because somebody's smart,
I don't know who it was justcompiled all of the symbols together and just
put them all together. I don'tknow that. You can find them online
if you look them up, lookup Venture symbols or Nubian script, and

(41:58):
it looks as though they've compiled analphabet, but there's symbols from all different
periods of venture culture all jumbled uptogether, so you can't you can't ascertain
anything from that. So you can'tascertain from these jumbled up examples of the
script from diverse different sources, ceramicsources, whether those would actually have,

(42:19):
you know, comprised a script.And in do are there any actual individual
artifacts where the symbols on them couldhave constituted a script? There are very
few examples, but there are.So when you when you come down to
understanding a written language, you can'tdo it by just finding one isolated little
symbol. It has to be astring or a line of symbols, and

(42:43):
that might mean something. So whenthey made the discoveries of the Tartaria tablets
in Romania, which is attributed toventure culture, and they're basically three ceramic
tablets that have something akin to someform of symbology on them, that could
be hinting at some kind of meaning, though again I don't feel that it's

(43:06):
It is a collection of symbols inthat sense, but I don't know whether
it's actually a written language with asyllabic value that's the point, it certainly
doesn't seem to from my understanding,and not a linguists that it cannot possibly
constitute a phonetic script because of theway that the symbols and combined in a
consistent way where you see vowels andwhatever, So it's not phonetic. And

(43:31):
whether the symbols do have can becombined in a way that would make you
know, sentences or complex concept that'sdebatable. But then the question of what
is a script sort of brings upbecause this is it. If I put
a McDonald's logo inside and no sign, that clearly makes a concept of anti

(43:55):
McDonald's. But those we would normallyconsider the anti sign and the McDonald's sign
combined to constitute a sentence. Butcombining sentences and combining symbols can vote complicated
concepts. But does that mean it'sa script? I don't think so.
Are they conveying meaning? Of coursethey are, because the ventures seem to

(44:17):
want to convey meaning on all levelsof what they're producing. I mean that
conveys meaning, Yes, it hasto even swirls on the on the belly.
It's conveying conveying some kind of meaning. But you know, when you
look at and I urge people actuallylook up the tartar rear tablets, make
you know, come to your ownconclusions about them, because to me,
when I look at them, Isee lunar symbols and plant symbols, and

(44:42):
symbols that are or figures that arealmost like animals. And these people are
farmers. So you live by youryour your livestock, by the crops.
The way you may rotate them lunarcycles, maybe that's something you know,
something is being conveyed there. Butthose symbol do not have a syllabic value
that we know of, and there'snothing to suggest that they do. If

(45:05):
they were a script, which youdon't think they are, and I don't
think it's a script either, Butif they were a script, it would
be the oldest script in the world. It would be the oldest known script.
So finture is five thousand, threehundred, there is symboc BC sorry
yes, BC, so so overseven thousand years ago. Yeah, and
that would predate Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Wow s. Bearing in mind that

(45:29):
they predate the Pyramids, they predateor I should say venture predates the Pyramids.
It predates Babylon. Yeah, thisis the dawn of history. How
a script it would be the oldest, probably doesn't that, Okay, It's
got some kind of symbology, complexuse of symbology, one of one of
it. Not the earliest example ofmetallurgy, certainly independently invented and not dependent

(45:52):
on Tomraud. It's part of aconstellation of different cultures, which the earliest
farmers in Europe. And it haswhat the largest anthropomorphic Neolithic ceramics figures figures
not just ceramics figures of Europe thatI'm that I am aware of, and

(46:14):
I've tried to do an extensive studyof it. And the largest one is
the Vita figure find online. Yeah, and where's the Vita figure that's from
from vintera culture that comes from thesame site as the Lady of Alexandro Vats
and it's found yes on vicovatrical Polioor the Victovo fields. There are the
sugar idol as it called. Ithink there's a there's a very very old

(46:39):
wooden sculpture of a god or afigure or some kind from Russia which is
much older than this. But thatwouldn't But I mean so, yeah,
that might be the oldest, butI'm not sure the oldest. But this
kind of ceramics figures certainly are notand and certainly of high, high precision

(47:02):
and high detail. The Vita figure, they've done analysis of it, and
it is perfectly it is not perfectlybut almost perfectly symmetrical, and it's been
made by hand. Beautiful, andthat just I mean these pale in comparison
because these people have they have hadabout a thousand years to develop an art

(47:22):
form. I've just had to sortof do this from from scratch in the
past couple of years. But youcan see if I can achieve that.
Go and look up the Vita figure, because that's just there's a process of
creating these and did it what otherinsights did it give you into the way
that they would have if there's aproduction process, and as it was in

(47:44):
the olden times, they took time, they took time to produce, and
they were made up in layers.You literally start at the base and these
arms. I've half theorized that thearms being in this configuration could actually be
in the interests of structural integrity,because if you don't have this, the
integrity of the arms here it causesthe top section of the torso to slump

(48:05):
during the drying process. So itcould have been a practicality that then became
a cultural trope, but again justa theory. The head is the final
thing that has to go on again, because it's fairly it's a sort of
a top down a bottom up constructionmethod that seemed to work out to be
the most practical way of producing these. You needed to dry as you're building

(48:32):
it up. Then partially the detailshave to go in far later on,
because otherwise they just become sloppy.It's got to be a little firmer in
order to take the incised impressions orthe incised markings. So there's that aspect
to it. Also, I foundthat it's almost a ritual process in and

(48:53):
of itself to make one. Itried again subjective, but I tried a
variety of different a variety of differentmusic when I made each one, to
see if it lent any kind ofany anything additional to the process of making
them, and it genuinely does.So there could have been a ritual process

(49:15):
in the in the making of themas well. That would not surprise me
in the slightest and there's certainly anthropologicalexamples where that is the case in different
cultures. And what people in ancienttimes would call the sunthamatada. They're like,
and the divine forces into the idolsand making them in the form that

(49:37):
was welcoming to the presence of thatGod was essential. And I mean I
could imagine devotional hymns being sung inthe creation of them, or or who
knows whether they had to be createdin a special environment or clay sourced from
a sacred river or something of thiskind. Like of course, the entire
process could be utterly imbued with thesacrof from start to finish. Will you

(50:01):
can find that again that I meanit brings me onto this, which is
that with regards to the copper minesof rod Mcglava, they found they found
altars there that could be Ibex inthe shape of Ibex. And it's a
very hilly and mountainous region which iswhere Ibex live. So maybe in the
process of mining for copper ores asyou're right, and malakite, they're honoring

(50:27):
something in the process of doing that. The Ibex could even be a symbol
of that region for them, maybesomething on a spiritual level, possibly possible
the presence of the you know,the mountains. If they had a celestial
guard, which many cultures do,then that would be the Ibex would be
an obvious sort of link to thecelestial perhaps as being a mountain dwelling creature.

(50:49):
Well, I'm not aware of howthe Venture disposed of their dead.
Is much known about that, Thereisn't very little. There are sites such
as Goamo Lava where you find whereyou find venture remains and actual graves with
grave goods ceramic grave goods, butthere's They all seem to be an anomaly.

(51:13):
Some are men, some are women, and some are children, which
means that they might well have beenof some communal or community or social importance
that they were buried like that,because you don't find them like that really.
On any other side, they foundthe craniums of human beings on Venture
sites in ditches or things akin tomoats, and that was only in the

(51:37):
only in the last year or so. I only found out about that from
the guy who actually discovered them thistime last summer. So that's but nobody
knows. Why do you mean thatthey were discarded in a ditch? They
don't know, they've just found thetops of tops of human skulls, could
be sacrifice or victims, or quitepossibly or panished criminals or victims in a

(52:04):
conflict. Not really certain on that. But so there's no clues about social
stratification from burial customs, not really, not like you would find in something
like we were saying Vana culture orgamil Nitze culture, and Gamilnitz culture is
contemporaneous with Venture, not only towardsits latter stage. And again with Gamelitze
culture you find very rich grave goods, but you don't see that in Venture.

(52:28):
No, you don't see that atall. But there are other clues
perhaps about their social stratification. Well, when it comes to when it comes
to copper, that could be amark of prestige within that culture. And
they actually think that the characteristics ofthe copper period in Venture wherever we see

(52:52):
it, could have insticated a classsystem. It could be because there are
several theories obviously some people obviously sayingthat copper was there very beginning, or
maybe it was only at the beginningon certain sites, or that copper did
come later and it was because ofthe copper and the class based systems that
it potentially created, in other words, creating hierarchy that could have actually put

(53:15):
play to the people themselves. Thoughthere are so many theories on that,
and I think that's that's actually worthemphasizing. Is what I love about studying
venture is it's still anybody's game.It's not like Egypt or Greece or Rome
or anything like that, where,of course you can still build a career
on it. Of course you can. You can still make amazing discoveries.

(53:37):
This it's still so mysterious. Canyou could build a lifetime's worth of work
on it? Yeah, Any youngarchaeology students, Yeah, wondering what they
ought to get yourself over to Serbiaand definitely get involved with this fascinating subject.
And there's plenty of archaeologists out thereat the top of their game,

(53:58):
and they are looking for a newinflux of foreign archaeologists into that into that
area because it promotes what they're doing, but it also it furthers our development
and our understanding really of who thesepeople were. Well said Ben, Well,
thank you very much. There's beena pleasure talking to you. This
has been jive talk. If youwant to watch the film, as Ben

(54:21):
said is not quite available for publicconsumption yet, but it will be.
I'll let you know. Yeah,yeah, And if you're watching this in
the in the year's time, thenyou'll probably see that. I've already added
a link to the video in thedescription. Otherwise, is there anywhere else
people can keep up to date withyour work? Besides you can find my
academic papers on academia dot du.I have a LinkedIn account, Benjamin Elliott.

(54:44):
You can find me on there,and that will keep people up to
date with what I'm working on,which is we're working on a new documentary
at the moment, just waiting forfunding, so I'm updating people as we
go there. I don't have asocial media presence outside of that somewhat of
a re in that regard, butI can. Yeah, if you follow

(55:04):
me on my LinkedIn account and things, you'll see what I'm up to all
the time. Okay, I'll putthose links in the description. Thanks for
watching, goodbye, and head overto Patreon if you want to act as
some exclusive videos that only my patronscan see, such as one on the
genetics of Iberia and another one onfocus versus universalism paganism. You should also

(55:25):
make sure to check up my TeaSpring store to get some very Indo European
dance and see you next time.