What if prehistoric humans were never primitive?
(Part 5) Encounters with the Deep Past
Good morning.
If you’ve been here a little while, you might remember my essay series for paid subscribers called Encounters with the Deep Past from a few months ago.
Here is the snippet on it:
The series will comprise an archive and a resource for anyone interested in the origins of religious experience, the fabulous animistic cosmologies of our earliest ancestors, academic evidence for prehistoric religious and ritual behaviour, the exploration and importance of other ways of knowing (besides—but not instead of!—academia), and a voyage into what some researchers refer to as the world’s oldest religion: shamanism.
After a little pause, I’m continuing on with this series. I want to share some more on Old Europe, a deeply rooted Neolithic civilisation in the Balkan Peninsula marked by goddess veneration, artistic sophistication, and peaceful agrarian life, long before the rise of Indo-European warrior cultures.
If you read last Sunday’s piece, you might remember I’m currently in the Balkans. Last week I went to visit one of the oldest and most important archaeological sites in Europe. Some scholars call it Europe’s first civilisation. And the first modern age.
What really qualifies a civilisation?
The American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that the earliest sign of civilisation was not a tool or a piece of art, but a healed femur.
In the wild, she explained, a broken leg is a death sentence—an animal can’t flee, hunt, or survive long on its own. But a healed bone tells another story: it tells of someone who stayed behind, brought food and water, and watched over the wounded. It tells of care and of kinship. For Mead, this was the beginning of what it meant to be truly human.
By this definition, civilisation is a place where people are truly human. Wonder when we’ll have that again…!
Though her words were not tied to any specific archaeological site, her insight resonates with what we find in the remnants of the Neolithic Vinča culture—one of the earliest known settled societies in Europe, flourishing along the banks of the Danube River some 7,000 years ago. Everything about this culture speaks of a life that required mutual support: villages with long-lasting homes, advanced craft production, symbolic gynocentric and animal figurines that suggest shared meaning and ritual, and, strikingly, no clear signs of fortification or warfare. It was not a world ruled by conquest, but likely one shaped by cooperation.
Civilisation, in the Neolithic culture of Old Europe, was not built on domination, but on the radical act of collaboration.
I’m writing to you today from a cafe in the city of Belgrade. It’s morning and the heat is already rising up to the usual scorching July temperatures. I’m nestled at a table under the shade of a linden tree. There is soft jazz music playing. And mainly older men at other tables smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers.
Over the next few days I’ll be visiting the National Museum which houses the other archaeological finds from Vinca that aren’t at the site museum. I’ve also been there at least a dozen times. But it’s a pilgrimage that always seems to reveal something new.
I believe this Neolithic culture is the heritage of the later Minoan and ancient Aegean priestesshoods and goddess-venerating cosmologies which I am writing about in my upcoming book. But more on that another time!
It certainly feels like the right order to come here as the last stop on my book research trip before I return to the UK to hone in on the final writing part.
At some point during the lifespan of Under a Fig Tree, I started a series of conversations with elders. So far, these include meetings with Balinese healers, the Catholic priest who married my parents and who had custodianship over one of the oldest books in the world, and a chat with the Serbian archaeologist of the Balkan Neolithic, Dragan Jankovic. Here is the essay on him and the Vinča culture:
I have been to Vinča numerous times now. Though there is nothing to see as there is no money to display the site and it remains buried under overgrowth to preserve it, there is a small museum displaying some of the artefacts excavated at the site. Physically going to these ancient sites is informative in and of itself, as I believe the land itself holds memory and informs the imagination in subtle ways that later seep into the conscious mind.
But the real gem there is Dragan. He is an expert on the Vinča civilisation. As you’ll see if you have a read of my piece from my previous visit some 4 years ago, he studied the Vinca site as an archaeology student, and fell so deeply in love with it that he moved there! For the last thirty years, he has lived in a wooden cabin by the site, and is on call for the odd (and rare!) tourist that goes for a visit.
I have dragged one of my dearest friends Andrea—who is Serbian and fluent in English—to the site on every visit. With Dragan speaking no English, these conversations wouldn’t be possible without her devoted translations (I know you are reading this and am so grateful to you! Xx)
It turns out visiting now was a good move, as he told us he will be retiring in a couple of months!
I consider Dragan Jankovic to be an elder. He is an expert on the Vinča culture and has dedicated his life to its preservation and education. He is very strong minded and opinionated. Marry that with the vigorous Slavic mannerism, and you have yourself an absolute firecracker.
When the Danube River flooded near the village of Vinča in 1908, it wasn’t just water that surged over the land—it was history. As the river rose and eroded the banks, it unearthed remnants of an ancient settlement buried beneath layers of soil. Figurines, pottery shards, and hearths emerged from the mud, and caught the attention of curious locals and archaeologists alike.
In a way, it was as if the Danube herself had revealed the secret she’d been keeping for millennia.
When we arrived at the site, one of the first things Dragan started talking about was his veneration for the natural world.
‘The greatness of nature is the only law that really matters, human titles don’t have any weight,’ he proclaimed. ‘Her Majesty the Danube discovered the site, and she’s the only majesty I accept.’
Here is the first part of our conversation. I will add my questions and comments in italics. I’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections in the comments section!
