poisongalore

The primary advocate of the idea that the markings represent writing, and the person who coined the name “Old European Script”, was Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), an important 20th century archaeologist and advocate of the notion that the Kurgan culture of Central Asia was an early culture of Proto-Indo-Europeans. She reconstructed a hypothetical pre-Indo-European “Old European civilization”, which she defines as having occupied the area between the Dniester valley and the Sicily-Crete line. Gimbutas observed that neolithic European iconography was predominantly female—a trend also visible in the inscribed figurines of the Vinča culture— and concluded the existence of a “matristic” (woman-centered, but not necessarily matriarchal) culture that worshipped a range of goddesses and gods. (Gimbutas did not posit a single universal Great Goddess.) She also incorporated the Vinča markings into her model of Old Europe, suggesting that they might either be the writing system for an Old European language, or, more probably, a kind of “pre-writing” symbolic system. (fonte)