Marco Merlini (Italy)
Inscriptions and messages of the Balkan-Danube script
a semiotic approach
Daniela Bulgarelli is the author of the paintings appearing on the study. Images and text are "Copyright© 2002 The Global Prehistory Consortium at EURO INNOVANET - www.prehistory.it. All rights reserved World Wide. May not be reproduced without permission".
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3. The principles characterising the organisation of the written text and of inscriptions. 
3.a. What is the appearance of the Balkan-Danube inscriptions? They have the most varied patterns,  in horizontal, vertical or circular rows. However this variety is not prompted by an individual or random disposition, but has an order: there is a specific sequence in the signs. 

In the majority of cases, the writing had a linear organization, a feature it shares with other pre-classic writings (Minoan Linear A, Cypriot-Minoan and Cypriot Syllabic). When the signs are grouped together (as in Uruk tablets 6000 years old) they are accompanied by pictographs and ideograms. A linear organization expresses a phonetic type of writing, since the graphic fixing of sound sequences in the oral language takes place on a temporal line (i.e. before or after). The linear organization of writing is however one of the most controversial issues.

3.b. The majority of the inscriptions are made up of one or two signs. This essential quality has led various authors to deny the Balkan-Danube signs the status of writing (Winn, 1981). However, even the Hindu scripts (4600-3800 years old) often show one-sign  inscriptions. In this case, we are in the presence of a complete written word. (Parpola, 1994).

A single, isolated sign is frequently found on pottery, less frequently on anthropomorphic figures and rarely on spindle whorls. Grouped signs mostly appear on whorls and pottery. In the first case, inscriptions with a great number of geometric signs are compressed into the space available; in the second case, there is a striking contrast between the amount of space available and the prevalence of ideograms obtained by combining only two signs (although the inscriptions on the edge are denser).

3.c. By means of the multiplication and combination of a root-sign with other signs, priestesses and priests of Ancient Europe used to form glyphs capable of communicating abstract contents. In the first case, the power derived from multiplying a single sign, in the second, it was caused by the combination of complementary and similar signs.

The doubling-tripling of the same sign on a cult object or the coupling of different signs signified that the officiant was acting at two different ritual levels. The first procedure was perhaps intended for making an invocation. The second (joining several signs) "involved a more complex meaning which is the condition for the development of any formal writing as such. The juxtaposition of images goes beyond a simple magical repetition and becomes an abstraction capable of expressing subtle distinctions" (Gimbutas 1991).

3.d. Did the Balkan-Danube script possess a merely visual value or did it also have a phonetic one? Did it therefore express the sounds of an oral language in graphic signs? Today the script continues to maintain its secrets and it is still arguable whether it was made up of pictographic signs (representing objects or concepts by means of schematic, but quite realistic, drawings) and ideograms, or whether it associated  written signs to a phonetic structure (in words or syllables).  We do not even know what kind of language these populations actually spoke.

The proto-European script is probably logico-phonetic; it embodies both ideograms and signs corresponding to the spoken language. In particular, the ideographic symbols seem to indicate entire words and are prevalent both in number and role. The phonetic component just performed an additional function, indicated by the small graphic markers (strokes, dots and arches) varying the root-signs. These markers could have been used to single out either syllabic segments (as in Egyptian hieroglyphs) or whole syllables (as in Akkadian cuneiform writing).

Summing up, the additional small graphic markers are used, when writing a text, to point out the different grammatical aspects or the implications of a basic concept expressed by an elementary sign, or else to indicate the phonetic element (probably a syllabic one) in a language unknown to us. The logical-syllabic systems were more usual in archaic times. The proto-European one recalls the structure of the first Sumerian pictographic system, where there are only occasional phonetic (syllabic) values which were to become dominant in the later Akkadian cuneiform writing.

3.e. The script of the Balkan-Danube agriculturalists could have had a system in many ways similar to the Sumerian, Chinese, Hindu and pre-Columbian ones. In particular, Gimbutas (1999) even considers it similar in structure to the Sumerian writing system, where the phrases are not always syntactically complete. Some seem to follow a set of rules, others, having lost a few of their elements on the way, are similar to a form of shorthand.

3.f. Normally, a sign stood for one word and the grammatical indications were omitted or understood from the context or marked by small linear signs.

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