Margaret Walker - MY PREHISTORY

    From 6000 BC Vinča, on the Danube River in Serbia, was the centre of a vast Neolithic settlement dedicated to farming, metallurgy, pigment production and trade. The early date in this particular region resulted from the spread of agriculture from its origins in the Fertile Crescent, through Cyprus, Anatolia and Greece, then north into the Balkans. Amber from the Baltic and obsidian from the Carpathian Mountains, both found at Vinča, are evidence of its broad trading sphere. This part of the Balkans was rich in copper, and Vinča became the first site of metallurgy in Europe. Later, it also produced bronze, although it is not known from where the tin was sourced. Such was Vinča's significance that during World War 2 the Nazis visited the archaeological site looking for an Aryan connection. Happily, there isn't one.   HOW TO GET THERE      Both Belgrade and Vinča are on the River Danube.  Take the #7

Book review It took me twenty years of research to prove my birth mother’s ancestry from a village in north-west Croatia of less than a thousand people. Although I have the baptismal records of her mother, her grandfather, her great grandfather and multiple photos of her in that village, I am haunted by the absence of her own birth certificate. I’m worried that I’m not perfect. With this in mind, I chose not to read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe because my equanimity is not up to reading an alleged classic by an alleged Aboriginal who cannot prove his ancestry and doesn’t feel he needs to. My interest in reading Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? the book that debates its claims,   extends only so far as a morbid interest in human nature. Why should  Dark Emu, the  work that contradicts  200 years of scholarly observation,  attract national consensus?  Because the reading public rarely challenges the myths it is fed if those myths are agreeable and if a book is well written. To quote from Tr