I - GEOGRAPHICAL CONFIGURATION OF THE BALKANS

I - GEOGRAPHICAL CONFIGURATION OF THE BALKANS

The geographical location and environmental changes in the Balkan Peninsula very much influenced the socio-economic conditions of the prehistoric Aegean people living there. Due to geological processes in the earth’s crust the Balkans were transformed into an archipelago of islands in the ocean which extended between Northern Africa and the former palaeo-Europe including the Black and Caspian Seas. The African tectonic plate pushing northward, submerged under the sea, gave rise to the Dinaridi and Carpathian Mountains. In the course of the Neogen Period, about 25 million years ago, the Panonska, Dakiska, Black and Caspian Seas were part of the Paratetis, epi-continental Sea. The rise of the Gierdar Mountains during the Upper Miocene period created a barrier between the Panonska and Dakiska Seas. During this period, the Panonska Sea became closed off from the other seas and so did the Caspian Sea whose salinity became diluted by the flow of the nearby rivers. During the “Pontsko” period a link was established between the Panonska and Dakiska Seas though the Gierdap Mountains. Since the level of the Black and Dakiska Seas was 30 to 80 metres lower than that of the Panonska Sea, water from Panonska began to flow into Dakiska through the “iron doors of Gierdap” which in mythology was known as Poseidon’s “bronze gates”. And this is how the link between the Black Sea and the Panonska Sea was restored, which formed the great Panonska array with the confluence of the Danube River hydrological system.

Similar geomorphologic changes have occurred in the Central and Southern Balkans Regions, especially in Thessaly, Boeotia and the Argolitska plain. Regarding this, Herodotus (Херодот, Историја, VII, 129, Матица Српска, Београд, 1988) wrote that Thessaly was once a large lake surrounded on all sides by high mountains. This was known as Lake Bebeidska. According to Thessalian accounts, Poseidon dug a gorge between Mount Olympus and Mount Oss through which the river Peneus flows into the Aegean Sea.

In time, fertile valleys formed between the high 2500 metre high mountain which in prehistoric and ancient times enabled the establishment of the City States.

With the formation of the Balkan mainland, remnants of the ocean Tetis, with help from the five seas, surrounded the peninsula from the east, south and west. Many parts of the peninsula were penetrated by the sea from the south which flowed deep into the mainland, creating bays, capes and

islands which influenced the formation of separate states and the development of communications and trade. This process also created many major continental rivers.

With the melt of the last ice cap over 12,000 years ago, and with a favorable climate, the Balkans possessed the best conditions for the survival of a large human population in the Sredno Podunaive Region. There was also a major find of an Arhantropus skull in Petralon (stone threshing floor) cave in Halkidiki in Macedonia, near Solun, which dates from 160,000-750,000 BC.

II - ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

Archaeological findings have established the first major human communities consisting of fishermen, hunters, fruit pickers and later farmers to have lived in the Balkans and to have developed the Lipinski Vir Culture in Gierdal, purported to be one of the oldest spiritual manifestations in Europe, in the period of about 8330-6700 BC. (Срејовић, Д., Бабовић, Љ.: Уметност Лепенског Вира, Младинска књига, 1983) On the ruins of the Lipinski Vir culture and along the Sredno Podunavie, Moreva, Vardar, Bistritsa, Peneus and the Aegean Sea, during the Neolithic period (6500-5500) the first agricultural settlements arose which produced various items of baked ceramic goods. These were the Starchevo, Techiki, Padina, Rudnik, Gradina etc., Cultures in Serbia; Obra, Kakani etc., Cultures in Bosnia; Karanovo and Bania Cultures in Bulgaria; Porodin, Anza, Vrshik, Zelenikovo, Nea Nikomidea and Sitargi Iti Cultures in Macedonia. The Cultures found in Thessaly were Proto-Sesklo and Sesklo, Otzaki, Pirasos, Tzangli and others. The cultures found on the continental part were Haeronea, Elatia, Nea Makri and on the Peloponnesus were Corinth and Lerna. Belonging to the Halkolic or copper-stone culture, between 5500-3100 BC, were the Vincha Culture of the Central Balkans, the Karanova Culture of the Eastern Balkans and the Dimini Culture of the Southern Balkans.

The Enolitska Culture (3100-1900) on the shores of the Aegean Sea developed into the Minoan, Kikladska, Mycenaean or generally into early (2500-1900), middle (1900-1550) and late (1500-1200) “Hellenic” Cultures. From the analysis of archaeological findings belonging to these various periods, it can be concluded that the Lipinski Vir Culture is the oldest and most spread out like rays in the peninsula, extending to the southernmost part of the Balkans. The bearers of the Lipinski Vir culture, language, religion, mythology, philosophy and ethnonomy were Boreans and Hyperboreans and those of the southern Balkans were known as Aeolians.

In subsequent analysis, before we present the situation of the prehistoric Aegean, under the term “Aegean culture”, we will include the Dimini, Minoan and Mycenaean Cultures, found in the peninsula south of 40 degrees latitude. We will then present the results of our epistemological research on the Pannonian onomastics of the Sredno Podunavie Lipinski Vir archetypal Culture.