Description
By Radivoje Pešić
Translated by Jafe Arnold
386 pages / Released October 2025 / Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.
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Thousands of years before cities and writing surfaced in Mesopotamia, the Danube River Basin in the Balkans was home to a flourishing civilization. Since their rediscovery in the 20th century, the prehistoric cultures of Lepenski Vir and Vinča have redrawn the map of ancient history, challenging established archaeology and chronology and fascinating the imagination. At the center of attention and controversy are the so-called “Vinča symbols,” whose interpretations have drawn enthusiasm, denial, and — worst of all — silence. Faced with these mysterious signs from the depths of the Stone Age and the lost civilization that inscribed them in the heart of Europe, modern man finds himself wondering about his past, his present, and his future.
In Vinča: The Signs and Fate of European Civilization, the visionary Serbian author Radivoje Pešić unveils a wide-ranging and provocative perspective on this forgotten world and script fated for impactful recollection. For the first time in a definitive English edition, Pešić takes the reader on a multi-dimensional journey through the open questions and hidden secrets of the ancient world. The spiritual landscapes encoded in the Vinča script, the enigmatic identities of the Pelasgians and the Etruscans, the twists and turns of Slavic history, and many other puzzles are charted anew in search of a rectified map of language, historical consciousness, and the rich heritage of the human spirit. Dusting off the books of life, nature, and scholarship, Pešić boldly endeavors to throw light on the links and disconnects between ancient cultures and modern crises.
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Table of Contents
From the Translator and Publisher
Foreword – The Legacy of Professor Radivoje Pešić – by Vesna Pešić
Book I:
I Condemn the Silence
Foreword – A Breakthrough into the Darkness of Prehistory: Radivoje Pešić’s Systematization of the Vinča Script, or The New Organon – by Johanna Weiders (Mirolyubova)
Part I: A Conspiracy of Denial
I. Geometry, or the Empirical
II. Prehistoric Man Knew the Letter
III. The Authentic Literacy of the Danube Basin
IV. The Energy of Delusion
V. A Conspiracy of Denial
VI. Catena Mundi
VII. On the Tracks of the Slavs’ Autochthony in the Balkans
VIII. Missing Time
IX. Migrations, or the Geometry of Identity
X. On the Tracks of the Slavs and Serbs
Part II: How to Help Europe
XI. At the Threshold of the Third Millennium: Merciless Civilization
XII. Slavdom and We in It
XIII. The New World Order and Slavic Institutions
XIV. The Future of History, or How to Help Europe
Part III: Records
A Note on Record (I)
A Note on Record (II)
A Note on Record (III)
On Language and Writing
The Secret of the Povlen Inscription
The Cerje Script: Identification and Interpretation
The Institute for Research into Slavic Civilization
History has More than One Face
Last Research — Jovanica
Book II:
The Vinča Script and Other Essays in Grammatology
Foreword by Giacomo Giraldi
I. The Lepinski Vir Syllabary
II. The Vinča Script
III. Marginalia on the Etruscan Problem
IV. The Origin of the Etruscan Script
V. An Introduction to Reading Etruscan
VI. The Etruscan Elementa
VII. On a New Reading of the Etruscan Script
VIII. The New Chronology of Writing
IX. On the Tracks of the Vinča Script
X. Conceiving the Script of the Danube
XI. A Treatise on Writing
XII. Traces of Paleo-Writing in the Balkans and the System of the Vinča Script: A Grammatological Study
Epilogue by Dr. Vojislav Trbuhović
Bibliography
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Radivoje Pešić (1931-1993) was a Serbian translator, author, and scholar specializing in paleolinguistics. Pešić began his career in the former Yugoslavia as a translator of Macedonian literature. After emigrating to Italy, he dedicated his life to reconstructing the language of the prehistoric Vinča culture, the lost civilization of the Etruscans, and the history of the Slavic peoples.