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Lost Artifacts of Old Europe Arrived in New York
By Christine Lin
Epoch Times Staff Created: Nov 13, 2009 Last Updated: Nov 13, 2009
NEW YORK—For the first time ever, artifacts from the lost world of Old Europe have come to America. Old Europe encompasses modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldavia in 5000-3500 B.C.—a civilization that has been largely unknown to the West due to restrictions on excavation during communist years. Now, clay, copper, and gold artifacts from this period are on display in New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW).
A Mysterious Culture
Archaeologists know that the inhabitants of what is called “Old Europe” were a farming people who migrated north from Greece to settle in the middle and lower Danube Valley. They know from objects found in graves that these people had a hierarchical society—there was a small upper class, a middle class, and a vast lower class who spent their days working the fields.
Archaeologists also know that Old Europeans had metallurgy—in fact, of copper artifacts dating earlier than 3500 BC, five tons were recovered from this area—more than what has been found in the rest of the Old World, according to guest curator Dr. David Anthony.
Metallurgy is what set off the development of this society, Anthony said. He theorizes that because metallurgy and ceramics share the same basis in pyrotechnology, it was women who discovered metallurgy. “In most of the prehistoric tribal cultures around the world, ceramics made for household consumption … are made by women—and so it was probably women, female potters, who discovered metallurgy. We normally think of metallurgy as being conducted by large, hairy-chested, sweating men.”
But what archaeologists don’t know is why these people seemingly disappeared as a civilization around 5000 B.C. “Five to six hundred large-scale settlements that were occupied for 200 years were abandoned almost simultaneously. What could lead to the sudden and cataclysmic abandonment of a way of life that was so well established?”
This question is the center of heated debate among the academic community—some say they were taken over by pastoral nomads; others say they it was due to rising sea levels; still others speculate that they took up a nomadic way of life.
The exhibit follows the rise and fall of Old European. It is the first exhibit to include, with Old European artifacts, objects from the steppe people who some scholars believe contributed to the downfall of Old Europe.
Largely Unknown to the West
To read more go to : http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/exhibitions/oldeurope/
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/25181/
The exhibition website: http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/exhibitions/oldeurope/
The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 – 3500 BC
November 11, 2009 – April 25, 2010
Open: Tues – Sun 11-6, Fri 11-8, Closed Monday
Free admission
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Please visit the Lost World of Old Europe Exhibition Website for complete information, images of items in the exhibition, a full public programming schedule (lectures, film series, musical performances) and more!
The Lost World of Old Europe brings to the United States for the first time more than 160 objects recovered by archaeologists from the graves, towns, and villages of Old Europe, a cycle of related cultures that achieved a precocious peak of sophistication and creativity in what is now southeastern Europe between 5000 and 4000 BC, and then mysteriously collapsed by 3500 BC. Long before Egypt or Mesopotamia rose to an equivalent level of achievement, Old Europe was among the most sophisticated places that humans inhabited. Some of its towns grew to city-like sizes. Potters developed striking designs, and the ubiquitous goddess figurines found in houses and shrines have triggered intense debates about women’s roles in Old European society. Old European copper-smiths were, in their day, the most advanced metal artisans in the world. Their intense interest in acquiring copper, gold, Aegean shells, and other rare valuables created networks of negotiation that reached surprisingly far, permitting some of their chiefs to be buried with pounds of gold and copper in funerals without parallel in the Near East or Egypt at the time. The exhibition, arranged through loan agreements with 20 museums in three countries (Romania, The Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldova), brings the exuberant art, enigmatic goddess cults, and precocious metal ornaments and weapons of Old Europe to American audiences.
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