Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Danube civilization


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   redirect to Old Europe (archaeology). It is admitted both in the article and in this debate that Danube civilization is a synonym for Old Europe. There is thus no doubt that this article has to go, Wikipedia never has two articles on the same subject. If there is more than one accepted point of view they are both covered in the same article. I have a slight reservation about this in that Old Europe (archaeology) explicitly states that its scope is the theory of Marija Gimbutas. If there is a broader, or competing, understanding of Old Europe then there is scope for expanding that article and changing its scope, or even possibly having a separate article leaving Gimbutas' theory as the original article.

The only issue outstanding is whether this page should be deleted before redirecting. Since several contributors to the debate thought there was something salvagable from it, I have chosen not to delete. Dougweller felt that this would leave the door open for Lactasamir to copy the contents wholesale into the Old Europe article. I strongly advise Lactasamir not to do this. Any material added should be supported by reliable sources that discuss a complex of sites as a unified culture or civilisation. It is not acceptable to refer to several disparate archeological sites and point out similarities ourselves. That has to be done by reliable sources first before we draw that inference.

Much was made in this debate of the sources not being archeologists. There is nothing in Wikipedia policy prohibiting covering the views of none experts on an expert subject. However, that view has to be notable and covered in reliable sources. Further, if it is in conflict with the accepted scholarly position then it must not be presented as fact. Rather, it must be presented as the views of that (non-expert) minority. Further, such views must not be given undue weight. SpinningSpark 18:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Danube civilization

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This is original research. Most of the sources do not mention a "Danube Civilization. I note the first line says "Danube Civilization or Old Europe", and Old Europe links to an already existing article Old Europe (archaeology). As an example, a search for "Danube civilization" and "Cucuteni-Trypillian culture" on GBooks and GScholar turns up nothing. Dougweller (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Europe-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:50, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:50, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

There should absolutely be no deletion! The Danube civilization are mostly located in former east block countries and therefore the term are not well known in the western world. The term Danube civilization are just a newer name for the older term "Old Europe". The reason why the term Danube civilization are not used in every book or article about e.g. Trypillian culture or Vinča culture are that the civilization are spread all over south eastern Europe and archaeologist in e.g. Serbia will focus on the Vinča culture, and Ukranian archaeologist will focus on Trypillian culture. Different countries with different languages. As i said before most of the civilization are even today unknown for most people in the west. Claming that there are no sources for Danube Civilization are not true! Harald Haarmann are one of the most predominant scholars in the field. He is a leading figure in linguistics. Have in mind that it is linguist who decipher old scrips e.g. (Michael Ventris who deciphered Linear B). Harald Haarmann - Educational Background - Habilitation, qualification at professorship level, Trier University with a two volume study on linguistics of Balkan languages. Ph.D., Linguistics, Bonn University with a study on Celtic Latin language contacts. University studies at Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra (Portugal), Bangor (Wales). Fields of study General linguistics, Romance philology, Slavic languages, Finno-Ugric languages, and archaeology. Institutional Affiliations - Vice President and Director of Institute of Archaeomythology. Member of the research team of the Research Centre on Multilingualism Brussels. Member of the EU scientific committee supervising Euromosaic III. So there are no reason to doubt his expertise, in short he is a linguist who also studied archaeology.

Marija Gimbutas called it Old Europe, so i will definitely support it if the whole article gets relocated to the Old Europe (archaeology) article. I still belive that the term Danube civilization are right, but the term Old Europe are much more used, even if it is the same thing as Danube civilization. But i would prefer to keep the article with the current name - Danube civilization. Lactasamir (talk) 23:06, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Claiming that the Danube civilization are original research are simply not true! and the sources where Dougweller claims there are no mention of Danube civilization or Old Europe instead shows that there are plenty of sources.
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 * - look in news, books and scholar.

We cannot ignore highly regarded scholars like Marija Gimbutas, Harald Haarmann, Shan M. M. Winn, Marco Merlini, Mihail Videyko - see And institutions like New York university (ISAW) Institute for the Study of the Ancient World or Ashmolean Museum and the Brukenthal National Museum - see

Whatever the term are, Danube civilization or Old Europe is a fact, and cannot be disputed. So the article should absolutly not be deleted. Lactasamir (talk) 04:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment Harald Haarmann seems to be on the fringe of these subjects, claiming that Noah's flood happened 9,000 years ago. He is certainly not an archaeologist and we should be looking to archaeological sources for archaeological articles, not a linguist/philologist. As for the searches, a lot of them quote Haarmann or Gimbutas, some are about something more modern, some have a full stop between Danube and civilization, etc. The issue is what mainstream archaeological publications recognise this as an entity. Dougweller (talk) 09:13, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

As i earlier explained you Dougweller, Haarmann does bot advocate for the biblical flood, but for the Black Sea deluge hypothesis which it is agreed that the sequence of events actually did occur almost 8,000 years ago. Haarmann believes this event perhaps is the root to the biblical Noah's Flood referred to in the Book of Noah and in Gilgamesh.

Claiming Harald Haarmann seems to be on the fringe of these subjects are absolutely not true! he is also a student of archaeology and as the Vice President and Director of Institute of Archaeomythology he works in cooperation with many other shcolars. In 2008 he was part of a large exhibition and symposium in Romania. The institutions involved were - Brukenthal National Museum, National History Museum of Transylvania, National Museum of History, Bucharest, Institute of Archaeology, Iasi, Braila Museum of Archaeology and History, Braia, Department of Archaeology, Cuza University, Iasi, Museum of History and Archaeology, Piatra-Neamt Museum of Banat, Timisoara, Museum of Banat Mountain Area, Resita. The Institute of Archaeomythology and Harald Haarmann and Mikhail Videiko (Trypillian culture expert) Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences, Kiev, Ukraine were also a part of it. This is just one example. Lactasamir (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Furthermore the Eftimie Murgu University in Reşiţa, Romania, collaborated with the Institute of Archaeomythology, Euro Innovanet SRL, Italy, and the Romanian Academy, Iaşi, with Harald Haarmann and Marco Merlini in an international symposium in 2011 in Romania. The symposium was organized around two main themes: The evolution of the Vinča culture, and the significance of the Tărtăria tablets for the Danube Script.

In 2004 Haarmann was among the scholars at the interdisciplinary symposium held in the Novi Sad Branch of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. So he is far from an isolated scholar, but highly integrated in the Balkan scholarly world. Lactasamir (talk) 14:23, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Harrmann is not an archaeologist. Nor is he qualified as an expert in writing and ancient scripts. He's not qualified to discuss archaeological subjects. The Institute was founded by Joan Marley who worked with Gimbutas and is also not an archaeologist - her academic credentials are a community college credential valid for life and an MA in Archaeomythology probably taught by yet another member of the Institute, an art historian who also has no qualifications in archaeology.
 * Mihail Videyko - why when I search for him and "Danube Civilization" do I come up empty? Same problem with Winn.
 * If you look at the articles for the cultures mentioned in your article, unless you've added it I haven't found mention that they are part of this "Danube Civilization". And a search on this DC shows that most of the references are discussing writing, scripts, etc. Dougweller (talk) 16:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

You will not recognize any of the sources? I think that if you read the sources there will be no doubt. You will not recognize serious people working on the subject. You will not recognize that the terms Danube civilization and Old Europe are the same thing, just different names (depending of the scholar). You make it sound like it is me trying to make up some kind of fantasy?

Mihail Videyko is a leading expert on Trypillian culture and are employed at Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences, Kiev, Ukraine. Do you not recognize him when he writes about Old Europe (the same thing as Danube civilization). In this source called "When we were in Old Europe"

Quoting him -

"Let’s start with the fact that “Old Europe” was initially constructed not by political scientists, politicians or even by journalists, but… by archeologists. This term has existed for a few decades and it is applied to quite different territories of our continent and in terms of time cultures which are considered to belong to Old Europe are separated from modern times by lots of time which amounts to six or eight millenniums. The civilized part of that “first” Old Europe included the eastern part of the Apennine peninsula, the Balkans, the territory of modern Hungary, the CzechRepublic, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and part of the territory of Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Dnieper. Its separate oases also existed beyond the mentioned above borders and were connected, first of all, with the expansion of the bearers of the Neolithic culture of Linear Band Pottery. The Cucuteni-Trypillian civilization which is more known in Ukraine as the Trypillian archeological culture was part of Old Europe" On page 17 you can see a map of Old Europe with the different cultures. Do you not recognize the Brukenthal National Museum Sibiu where they write about the Danube civilization several times? One needs to understand that this civilization are known under different names, Old Europe or Danube civilization, Danube valley cultures and it consisted of many sub cultures like the Trypillian, Vinca, Varna and so on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lactasamir (talk • contribs) 18:20, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge with Old Europe (archaeology). There is a fair amount of reasonable material in this article, but it is mixed up with some more dubious stuff and speculation presented as fact. Moreover, it is written in an overly promotional style - with great emphasis on how advanced South East Europe was compared to other places in the world. We don't need this peacockery. The article's author Lactasamir himself seems to acknowledge that it is the same thing as Old Europe. He repeatedly says so above. So clearly there should be one article. Clearly, again, as acknowledged by Lactasamir, the term Old Europe is by far the most common one. So really the main question is already answered and there is no real debate between Dougweller and Lactasamir about this. The only question is whether the content should be retained. I think there is a lot of scope for expanding the Old Europe article, and some, at least, of this material is adaptable to it. Paul B (talk) 18:35, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment There is scope for enlarging the Old Europe article, but we need to be careful about sources. Sources must discuss either Old Europe or the so-called Danube Civilization, and they need to meet WP:RS - so far as I'm concerned the Institute is not a reliable source for anything but its own ideas, and not for archaeology. Dougweller (talk) 21:52, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Paul B :) I also think a merge into Old Europe could be a solution, if there is consensus I will be happy to relocate much of the Danube civilization article into Old Europe and then tone down the overly promotional style. Lactasamir (talk) 18:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge with Old Europe (archaeology). My first reaction was slight surprise, as I was fairly sure that I had met "Danube civilization" fairly frequently as a synonym for Old Europe (a term which itself tends to be associated with Marija Gimbutas, even though it seems to have been widely accepted as a term for this particular complex of cultures). However, a Google search shows it turning up more rarely (and more recently) than I had thought, and I may have confused it with V. Gordon Childe's Danubian culture, which itself tends to overlap quite a lot with Old Europe. As things are, I doubt that we currently need separate articles for this and Old Europe (archaeology), but there is useful verifiable information here that could be usefully added there. However, some care does need to be taken - I am rather wary of the claims of being earliest or particular claims of influence on other or later civilizations, even though, for a long period, Old Europe does seem to have been on roughly the same level as the contemporary precursors of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations, and contact seems quite plausible. The claims are by no means impossible, and some may well be true - but equal claims from elsewhere or alternative possible influences seem to exist in most cases, so any such claims to need to reflect a well-verified general current consensus rather than the enthusiasm of archaeologists about their certainly significant finds. PWilkinson (talk) 18:43, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Redirect the newer term to the older, better sourced term. Bearian (talk) 19:47, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment A redirect would be ok. Paul B, PWilkinson, my concern about a merge is that Lactasamir is likely just to copy over the badly sourced material, so that all of the problems with this article would simply be moved to that one. Of course he could do it with a redirect but 'merge' seems to suggest doing that. Enhance Old Europe article by all means, but with archaeological sources that discuss it. Dougweller (talk) 19:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I don't see what's so terribly wrong with much of the content. Yes, there were statements that the Danubians worshipped the Great Goddess, as if it were an undisputed fact, but most of the content does not seem to me to be obviously fringe. In any case there is case to be made for discussing in more detail the Gimbutas model of Old Europe, describing it and placing it in the context of competing arguments. Paul B (talk) 19:58, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Paul Barlow - basically two things - lack of archaeological sources discussing either "Old Europe" or "Danube Civilization", and use of sources from the Institute of Archaeomythology who are not archaeologists. And of coures PWilkinson's concerns. I'd also be happier if there were well sourced statements in the articles of the named cultures that show a consensus among archaeologists that these were part of a "relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic culture", a peaceful, matriarchal culture. Note that in this article Gimbutas is only mentioned once - it's written as though there is a mainstream consensus about this. Sure the Gimbutas model can be discussed in terms of competing arguments and should be.I want to get hold of this. Dougweller (talk) 22:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.