Iron Gates Culture/Lepenski Vir

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The Iron Gates culture along the Danube in Serbia/Romania was an ancient culture with some of the first towns and cities in the world. It was the most advanced settlement in Europe at the time, about 6 or 8 thousand years ago from what I know. My memory is hazy though and I'm a lazy man.

My question is, what ended the proto-civilization at Lepenski Vir and how could it be avoided. Was it the Indo-European migrations? Was it disease or climate? Possibly bronze age collapse (way too late I think)? How do you see this Balkan civilization developing and spreading. Black Sea access and ownership of Pannonia are first in my opinion.
 
Which Lepenski Vir culture?

The uppermost layer (Lepenski Vir III) belonged to a larger cultural sphere which also included the Vinca, Starcevo-Cris, Cucuteni and Gumelnita cultures: a neolithic and soon also chalcolithic agricultural society whose ancestors had arrived from Anatolia; they worked various metals and formed far-reaching trade networks, but never exhibited any kind of monumental architecture, massive defensive works or left any other traces which would hint at their society being highly stratified and/or militant, which is why e.g. Marija Gimbutas has assumed that this Danubian civilization was both peaceful and matriarchal. The latter is conjecture, we must acknowledge today, while the former may contain a grain of truth, at least when compared to other phases and spaces, war does not seem to have been the biggest feature in Danubian society, although I also wouldn't bet on it being truly peaceful, either - no human society ever is.
Why the Danubian culture, which has even developed a script or proto-script, has decayed, has been the question of many discussions (for a very quick first orientation check wikipedia).
If you're interested in that time and space, you might want to read my timeline "The Book of the Holy Mountain".

The lower layers (Lepenski Vir I and II) belonged to a sedentary fisher-gatherer culture who had settled down at these rich fishing grounds. I wouldn't really call their settlements "towns and cities" yet, though. The main reason of their demise was the arrival of the above-mentioned Anatolian-descended agriculturalists, although, as recent studies have highlighted once again, the cultural shift was not necessarily akin to a violent conquest and there were likely long periods of parallel co-existence and adaptations to the agricultural lifestyle by indigenous groups.
 

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Yeah I meant Lepenski Vir III. In a very fertile area with a nice crop and domesticate package. Snowy winters but otherwise not too bad. Was LPIII maybe just the precursor of general civilization in non-Mediterranean Europe? Thus it did not collapse, but basically just grew and spread as people sought good farmland farther and farther afield.
 
Yeah I meant Lepenski Vir III. In a very fertile area with a nice crop and domesticate package. Snowy winters but otherwise not too bad. Was LPIII maybe just the precursor of general civilization in non-Mediterranean Europe? Thus it did not collapse, but basically just grew and spread as people sought good farmland farther and farther afield.
Not precursor, but Part of. Danubians later seem to have settled elsewhere. They were certainly the ones who brought agriculture to Western Europe (Linear Pottery) and thus the precursors of much of neolithic Europe.
And their entire culture disappeared when the massive Transformations linked to horse-breeding IEs arrived.
 
Compared to the early civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egyt, the climate might have been a bit too nice -- no need for people to cluster together in river valleys means less need for centralised administration, cities, and all those other things we associate with civilisation.
 
Compared to the early civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egyt, the climate might have been a bit too nice -- no need for people to cluster together in river valleys means less need for centralised administration, cities, and all those other things we associate with civilisation.
Yes, throughout OTL's History of that region that's true and often given as an explanation for the absence of signs of hierarchy and militarisation.
Now, if they had persisted longer, population growth, climate Change, soil Degradation, Steppe Raiders etc. - all the factors which are being discussed as reasons for their downfall - could have become factors causing the emergence of a defiant civilization, given the right PoD.
 
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