The Lepenski Vir culture is recorded clearly and in detail. Its stratigraphy has been plotted, the basic elements of its structure are known and the course of its development is clear. None the less, it is today a phenomenon isolated in time and space. The forms of a highly developed culture, a permanent settlement with an architectural plan which presupposes complex socio-economic relationships, and examples of monumental art certainly imbued with a profound religious sense, have been found at Lepenski Vir, initially a featureless area affording no sort of expectation of discoveries, nor of any tradition of earlier settlement. On the other hand, all the essential forms of the Lepenski Vir culture differ completely from the general cultural-historical pattern of the early prehistory of Europe. It seems that nothing created in the Danube Basin before or at the time of the flowering of the Lepenski Vir culture (Early and Middle Stone Age) can explain its exceptional nature, nor are its highly expressive activities endorsed by the events that directly followed it (the beginnings of the oldest culture of the Late Stone Age, Starčevo-Körös-Cris types). The Lepenski Vir culture had its precursors but not its ancestors; its heirs are known but not its descendants.
Skeleton of a child found in shallow grave.
