The Global Prehistory Consortium at EURO INNOVANET
Republic of Serbia and Montenegro
THE ORACULAR SPHERICAL STONE FROM LEPENSKI VIR

The oracular spherical stone from Lepenski Vir

Parallel lines, various types of crosses, Vs opened by a vertical segment, trees of life, Ys, Hs… A mysterious spherical stone, found in Lepenski Vir (former Yugoslavia), has been inscribed 7,500 years ago with root-signs of proto-European script. The surface has horizontal and vertical lines engraved on it: a kind of map of the world divided into meridians and parallels. Most of the grid sections are covered with script signs, the rest are completely empty.
Shan Winn hypotheses that a rod was inserted in the sphere to rotate it.
The sphere has the longest and most extraordinary inscription of ancient European script . The writing is developed along four horizontal bands. Three of these bands have ten boxes arranged perpendicularly to each other and almost all are full of glyphs. The last band has only eight sections and is partly filled by three signs, including an X that occupies a large space; the other compartments are empty. Probably either this band contained a kind of addition or else the triad of signs served as heading or marker. The white sections could signify a pause in the message or mark its beginning-end.
Harald Haarmann compares the distribution of the writing signs on the Lepenski Vir stone to that of the geometric patterns on the divinatory bones of ancient China. And he hazards a guess: perhaps the strange object was inscribed for divinatory purposes.
We are perhaps looking at the oldest documentation on the use of writing for oracular purposes.

Haarmann H., Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe. An Inquiry Into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World, Berlino, New York, 1995.
Winn, Shan M.M., Pre-writing in Southeastern Europe: The Sign System of the
Vincha Culture ca 4000 BC, Western Publishers, Calgary, 1981
Merlini M., Was Writing Born in Europe? Searching for a Sacred Script, Rome ( in preparation )
Winn, Shan M.M., A Neolithic Sign System in Southeastern Europe, in M. Le Cron Foster, L. Botscharow J. "The Life of Symbols" Westview Press, Boulder San Francisco 1990