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VUČEDOL SECRETS

ARCHEOASTRONOMY

The Vučedol world view is expressed in the ideograms (the first European writing) on their pots. All their pottery decorations bear celestial symbolism, in which one can read representations of the horizon above the waters in which the Earth floats, the daily birth of the Sun, the planets Venus and Mars and characteristic constellations in the night sky. Remarkably, the Moon is never shown; given their clear conception of the sky we would expect it to appear as a half-moon or a sickle, but these are lacking on Vučedol’s ceramics. As in other ancient civilizations, the Moon would stand for matriarchy, while Vučedolians belonged to the Indo-European patriarchal world.

Terrines as well as shallow dishes are often decorated on the widest (biconic) part with a zigzag band. This represents water on the horizon (a river, a sea), and appears from the beginnings of the Vučedol Culture. Water for the Vučedolians, as it did for the Near Eastern peoples of the time, symbolized the ends of the earth–depth, darkness, the unknown (as is later recorded in the Bible). It separates the invisible part of the world (below the horizon) from the visible world (above the horizon)–the lowlands, the elevated landscape with mountains, and, dominant over all, the night sky.