© Prehistory Decoded
Common Lepinski Vir stone sculpture, often interpreted as representing a human-fish hybrid.
I think the boar has finally been decoded, at least in Neolithic and Iron Age Europe. First see the ancient site of Lepinski Vir, a Neolithic site on the Danube in Serbia - part of the Danube Gorges cultural complex.
Lepinski Vir is best known for being a gateway site between Neolithic Anatolia and Mesolithic Europe. Essentially, the 'Anatolian farmers' who migrated or invaded Europe after the 8.2 kiloyear event (around 6200 to 6300 BC) appear to have used this route. It is one of the very first European sites to have adopted agriculture, thereby entering the Neolithic age.
Before the main phase of occupation at Lepinski Vir, from 6200 to 5900 BC, a few small Mesolithic settlements on this site are known over the preceding few thousand years.
However, the main phase of occupation is quite different to these earlier settlements. Apart from adopting agriculture, they built trapezoidal plan, or 'fan' shaped, houses with stone floors in which various animal remains have been found. These are usually interpreted as grave goods, accompanying burials under the floors of houses, like at Catalhoyuk.
The most interesting thing for us are the species used in these graves. According to a paper by
Vesna Dimitrijevic in 2008, the most common animal species remains found inside these houses are: boar, deer and dog. Fish remains are also common, but these are harder to quantify. However the other thing Lepinski Vir is known for are its fish sculptures - see image left. So we can presume that the fish was an important symbol, and not just an important food source, for these people.
Comment: As R.G Collingwood said in his book The Idea of History, history and its evolution throughout the the ages is essentially an emergent process that changes based on new information and data the historian acquires. The lines between the end of one era and beginning of a new -- even though there are defining moments and for the sake of brevity is often useful -- isn't so black and white. For example, our understanding of what constituted 'Greek' was variable in the case of the Minoans, and Greek culture and civilization, even though conquered by Rome, continued to live on and influence them in a number of ways, up to and including Western civilization today.