The Thinker of Hamangia: the clay couple from Cernavodă

The Hamangia culture is the name archaeologists gave to Neolithic communities that lived between the Danube and the Black Sea, in Dobruja. Finds of the same kind also occur in north-eastern Bulgaria, for example in the cemetery at Durankulak. The name comes from Hamangia station on the Medgidia-Babadag railway, which served the commune of Baia (the village of Hamangia had been renamed Baia in 1929). The archaeologist Dumitru Berciu began excavating around Baia in 1952, gave the culture its name and published the monograph "Cultura Hamangia" in 1966.

Recent radiocarbon dates place these communities roughly between 5200 and 4500 BC: the settlement at Cheia gave dates between 5200 and 4800 BC, and the one at Ceamurlia de Jos was inhabited, in at least two phases, between about 5000 and 4500 BC. People lived in open settlements, buried their dead in cemeteries and placed in the graves vessels, flint blades, stone axes and ornaments made of Spondylus shell. The origin of the culture is still debated by specialists.

The cemetery lies at the point called Columbia D, on the northern edge of the town of Cernavodă, near the road to Capidava. The place is named after the Franco-Romanian oil company "Colombia", with which the local refinery worked from 1913. Under communism the area became a camp for political prisoners forced to work on the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Earthworks that altered the terrace caused landslides, so the archaeologists dug largely to rescue what could still be saved. The team of the Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest, led by Dumitru Berciu and Sebastian Morintz, identified more than 400 graves in the 1950s, many of them destroyed or displaced by the landslides.

In 1956, next to a skeleton disturbed by the landslide, the fragments of two fired-clay statuettes came to light. Most fragments were found in 1956, others in 1957, when the excavation was extended. The pieces were then reassembled. The Thinker is 11.5 cm tall and the female figure 11.4 cm.

The Thinker is a figure, probably male, seated on a stool with four short legs. It rests its elbows on its knees and holds its palms to its cheeks, supporting its head. The second figurine is a woman sitting directly on the ground, with both arms resting on her left knee; the left leg is bent, while the right one, only partly preserved, seems to have been stretched forward.

The name "The Thinker" was given by analogy with Auguste Rodin's statue. For the female figure the name "Seated Woman" prevailed, although in 1965 Berciu described her as a woman "who rests and ponders". The pair is unusual: Hamangia clay figurines are almost all female, and male ones are very few.

The find spot, the years of excavation, the material and the attribution to the Hamangia culture are certain; the National History Museum of Romania dates the pieces to the 5th millennium BC. The rest is interpretation. Berciu saw them as a single group, probably a married couple, and the museum considers that they very probably express a belief in two principles, male and female. A study published in 2025 by the archaeologists of the Franco-Romanian mission now re-examining the Hamangia sites points out, however, that there is no firm archaeological proof that the statuettes come from a single grave or that they were made as a pair. Berciu considered the link with the skeleton certain; the context nevertheless remains unclear because of the landslides.

The originals belong to the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest, whose symbol they have become (the Thinker also appears on the 200 lei banknote). They are not part of the permanent Historical Treasury exhibition: the museum shows them in temporary exhibitions and has often lent them abroad (Liège in 2019, Aarhus in 2024-2025). Before visiting, it is worth checking on the museum's website whether the originals are on display.

In Cernavodă, the "Axiopolis" Museum houses the Hamangia Centre, set up between 2018 and 2024 with EU and Cernavodă town hall funds, with more than 500 objects from the collection of the Constanța museum: clay figurines from the Cernavodă cemetery, a reconstructed grave, a rebuilt Hamangia house and replicas of figurines from Cernavodă and Cheia. The find spot, Columbia D, is not on the List of Historic Monuments and is not presented as a place to visit; what was found there is shown in museums.