Belgrade - Serbian archaeologists say a 7,500-year-old
copper axe found at a Balkan site shows the metal was used in the
Balkans hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.
The find near the Serbian town of Prokuplje shifts the timeline of
the Copper Age and the Stone Age's neolithic period, archaeologist
Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic told the independent Beta news agency.
'Until now, experts said that only stone was used in the Stone Age
and that the Copper Age came a bit later. Our finds, however, confirm
that metal was used some 500 to 800 years earlier,' she said.
The Copper Age marks the first stage of humans' use of metal. It
is thought to have started in about the 4th millennium BC in
southeastern Europe and earlier in the Middle East.
Archaeologists at the Plocnik site also found furnace and melting
pots with traces of copper, suggesting the site may have been an
important metal age center of the Balkans.
'All this undeniably proves that human civilization in this area
produced metal in the 5th millennium BC,' archaeologist Dusan
Sljivar told Beta.
The Plocnik site was discovered in 1927 and first excavations
began a year later when first neolithic items were found. It is part
of the Vinca culture, Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization.
Vinca culture flourished from 6th to 3rd millennium BC in
present-day Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. Its
name came from the village Vinca on the Danube river, some 14
kilometers downstream from Belgrade.
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