Bronocice pot

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Bronocice pot
A drawing of the Bronocice pot
A representation of the key element on the pot

The Bronocice pot is a

BCE.[2] Today it is housed at the Archaeological Museum of Kraków
in southern Poland.

Discovery

The pot was discovered between 1974 and 1976 during the archaeological

excavation of a large Neolithic settlement in Bronocice, ca. 50 km to north east of Kraków. The excavations were carried out between 1974 and 1980 by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences and the State University of New York
at Buffalo (United States).

Sarunas Milisauskas, one of several archaeologists who worked on Bronocice excavation project wrote: "The 1974 field season yielded data beyond our expectations. An incised wagon motif was found on a

Małopolska."[4]

Inscription

The picture on the pot symbolically depicts key elements of the

prehistoric human environment. The most important component of the decoration are five rudimentary representations of what seems to be a wagon. They represent a vehicle with a shaft for a draught animal, and four wheels. The lines connecting them probably represent axles. The circle in the middle possibly symbolizes a container for harvest. Other images on the pot include a tree, a river and what may be fields intersected by roads/ditches or the layout of a village
.

The Bronocice pot inscription markings may represent a kind of "pre-writing" symbolic system that was suggested by Marija Gimbutas in her model of Old European language, similar to Vinča culture logographics (5700–4500 BCE).

Historical implications

Position of Bronocice

The image on the pot is one of the oldest well-dated representations of a four-wheeled vehicle in the world.[1][5] It suggests the existence of wagons in Central Europe as early as in the late 4th millennium BCE. They were presumably drawn by aurochs whose remains were found with the pot. Their horns were worn out as if tied with a rope, possibly a result of using a kind of yoke.[6]

Based on the Bronocice discovery, several researchers (Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan),[7] pointed out that "Indo-European languages possess inherited vocabulary related to wheeled transport", thus providing new research information about the origin of the Indo-European language family. They argue that "the wheeled vehicles were first invented around the middle of the fourth millennium BCE". In his review Theoretical Structural Archeology, Geoff Carter writes: "The site was occupied during the

pictographs at the Eanna district of Uruk, in the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), dated c. 3500–3350 BCE.[1] Several historians argue that there was a diffusion of the wheeled vehicle from the Near East to Europe around the mid-4th millennium BCE.[9] However, all of the earliest evidence for wheeled vehicles, including models, pictorial representations, wheels and vehicle remains, is in Europe, rather than in the Near East.[10] According to Schier (2015), “The present evidence for early wheeled transport does not support the traditional belief in the oriental invention of wheel and wagon", and either wheeled vehicles were invented independently in Europe and Mesopotamia, or else the technology was transferred from Europe to Mesopotamia.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c Attema, P. A. J.; Los-Weijns, Ma; Pers, N. D. Maring-Van der (December 2006). "Bronocice, Flintbek, Uruk, Jebel Aruda and Arslantepe: The Earliest Evidence Of Wheeled Vehicles In Europe And The Near East". Palaeohistoria. 47/48. University of Groningen: 10–28 (11).
  2. ^ Wozy z Bronocic (in Polish), Strona oficjalna Muzeum Archeologicznego w Krakowie, archived from the original on 22 May 2015, retrieved 8 November 2009
  3. ^ Milisauskas, Sarunas (2015). "Myth Making by Jan Machnik: The American and Polish Cooperative Archaeological Project 1966–1978" (PDF). Sprawozdania Archeologiczne 67. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  4. ^ Piotrowska, Danuta (1990). "Comptes - Rendus Notes Critiques". Archeologia Polana XXVIII. Ossolineum - Wydawnictwo Wroclaw: 216.
  5. ^ Anthony (2007), p. 67.
  6. ^ David W. Anthony, 2007
  7. ^ Parpola, 2005
  8. ^ Geoff, Carter (October 2009). "Theoretical Structural Archeology". Theoretical Structural Archeology. by Geoff Carter. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  9. ^ Attema, P. A. J.; Los-Weijns, Ma; Maring-Van der Pers, N. D. (December 2006). "Bronocice, Flintbek, Uruk, Jebel Aruda and Arslantepe: The Earliest Evidence of Wheeled Vehicles in Europe and the Near East". Palaeohistoria. 47/48. University of Groningen: 10-28 (19-20).
  10. ^ Klimscha, Florian (2017). "Wheeled Vehicles". Digital Atlas of Innovations.
  11. ISBN 978-0-19-954584-1
    .

External links
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