Opportunities for tracing influences of the Balkans on Anatolia during the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth millennium BC
Opportunities for tracing influences of the Balkans on Anatolia during the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth millennium BC

Summary/Abstract: During the fifth millennium BC the population of the region of Thrace and the Lower Danube developed the earliest known metallurgy based on mining. This led to significant socio-economic changes: development of trade, specialization in some types of production, and the earliest signs of socio-economic differentiation. The level of development of that culture is the highest at the time. During the fourth millennium the continuous development of the local cultures gradually stopped and new cultures appeared in their place, which were considerably simpler from a technological point of view. The system of cultures related to mining and metal production and called by E. N. Chernykh the Balkan-Carpathian Metallurgical Province ceased to exist. A new system of mutually related cultures occupying a larger territory was formed: the Circum-Pontic Metallurgical Province (Черных 1978). This was a long process that took place during the fourth millennium. The centres of metallurgy of the fifth millennium were abandoned and a development of metallurgy based on mining began in Anatolia. The paper discusses the opportunities for tracing influences of the Balkans on Anatolia during the fifth and fourth millennia BC. It presents arguments in support of the hypothesis about a migration of population from the Balkans and in particular from the region of the Varna and Kodzhadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI cultures south and southeast towards Anatolia.

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