About Lepinski Vir

Becoming Fish

Lepinski Vir 5519 B.C.E.

Eastern Serbia

The Neolithic site of Lepinski Vir, 5899-4950 B.C.E., is located in Eastern Serbia on the banks of the Danube between the tall peaks of the Carpathian Mountains and the steep cliffs of the Korso hills. Here the river is fierce and contains several whirlpools, the largest of which the site is named after.

The isolation of the site seems to have allowed it to develop a most unique trapezoidal design. The dwellings were all triangles with slanted walls and flat, cut off tops. The floors of these houses were regular isosceles triangles each containing rectangular hearths and large, egg shaped boulders with circular recesses in the middle of them. These boulders were ‘natural’ sandstone sculptures found in the river. They have been determined to mark the center point of the original isosceles triangle.

The entire settlement was built according to the same floor plan. All the houses faced the river with the larger ones placed toward the center. Also, recovered were boulders that had been engraved with fishlike faces and breasts, others had etchings of vulvas—the sacred triangle of the Goddess.

Sources:

Srejovic, Dragoslav, Lepinski Vir: Europe’s first monumental sculpture, Stein and Day, N.Y., 1972

Gimbutas, Marija, The Civilization of the Goddess, HarperCollins, N.Y. 1991