The Mesolithic Fish People of Lepenski Vir (Prehistory Documentary)

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8,000 years ago, in the River Danube’s Iron Gates Gorge, was a remarkable society of fisher-foragers who sculpted statues of human-fish hybrids. This site reveals the monumental changes Europe went through in the Mesolithic – Neolithic transition. So when did this society first develop? What made this Gorge so special? And what can the astonishing human-fish hybrid sculptures tell us about their spiritual beliefs and religious practices? This is the amazing story of the enigmatic fish people of Lepenski Vir.

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Sources

The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective: amzn.to/3wNDcqA
The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe: amzn.to/43eSVRO
Mathieson, I., Alpaslan-Roodenberg, S., Posth, C. et al. The genomic history of southeastern Europe. Nature 555, 197–203 (2018). doi.org/10.1038/nature25778
Brami, M., Winkelbach, L., Schulz, I. et al. Was the Fishing Village of Lepenski Vir Built by Europe’s First Farmers?. J World Prehist 35, 109–133 (2022). doi.org/10.1007/s10963-022-09169-9
Piličiauskas, G., G. Klucynska, D. Kisilienė et al. 2020. Fishers of the Corded Ware Culture in the eastern Baltic. Acta Archaeologica 91, 95-120
Z. Hofmanová,S., Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (25) 6886-6891, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523951113 (2016).
The mixed genetic origin of the first farmers of Europe Nina Marchi, bioRxiv 2020.11.23.394502; doi: doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.23.394502
Aleksandra Žegarac, 2025, Unveiling the narrative behind the neonate burials at Lepenski Vir in present-day Serbia doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106214
Ivana Radovanović and Mirjana Roksandic, 2008, Dating burial practices and architecture at Lepenski Vir, doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.4483.5049
Also the many papers on this subject by Dušan Borić
And many more articles and papers, you can find lots of research about Lepenski Vir online, I read about 50 of them. There's lots of debate and technical issues that I couldn't even begin to get into in a video. But if you're interested in the subject there's lots to get into.

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Thank you to the artists
Iron Gates map www.donsmaps.com/
Ancient Europeans x.com/ancient_euro3
Ancestral Whispers x.com/Sulkalmakh

Video Chapters

00:00 Lepenski Vir
01:56 Sponsorship
03:38 Iron Gates Gorge
06:40 The Mesolithic - Neolithic transition
10:16 The Sturgeon
15:28 Death and Burials
17:30 Fish sculptures
20:52 Neolithic fisher-foragers