Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture | Ancient European Civilization

The Cucutoni-Trypillia culture spanned the Neolithic, the Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age. It dates from between 5000 BC to 3000 BC, although in fact it starts a bit earlier and survives later. This was a truly remarkable civilisation, because of the beauty of their ceramics and also because of their settlements. When I found out about the size of the Cucutoni-Trypillia settlements a few years ago in David Antony's best-selling book I couldn't believe I'd never heard about them before. They're surely one of the most impressive civilisations of Neolithic Europe, and by some measures totally outdid the famous first cities of Mesopotamia. We'll talk all about these amazing settlements later. First, let me tell you the story of these people. The archaeological name given to this culture reflects the story of its discovery and description. The culture was initially named after the village of Cucutoni in Romania in the late 19th century, where their material remains were first described. And about the same time, it was separately discovered in the village of Trypillia in Ukraine. And Western and Soviet archaeology developed quite separately in the 20th century, a separation it still hasn't fully recovered from, sadly. And so the Ukrainians and Soviets knew it as the Trypillia or Trypillia culture, while in Romania they called it the Cucutoni culture. They still do. But it's now recognised that it was a single culture that spanned part of what's now Romania, Ukraine and Moldova. So we're calling it the Cucutoni-Trypillia culture. The culture extended northeast from the Danube river basin, around the Iron Gates, to the Black Sea and the Dnieper. It encompassed the central Carpathian mountains, as well as the plains, steppe and forest steppe on either side of the range. Its historical core lay around the middle to upper Dniester. More than 3,000 cultural sites have been identified, ranging from small villages to vast settlements. Of course, this civilisation did not grow in a vacuum. It emerged out of the earlier Starcevo and Vinca cultures, and was influenced by the Bugnister culture and the linear pottery culture of central Europe, and the Boeian culture of the Danube. Neolithic Europe was alive with thriving cultures for a very long time. Through colonisation and acculturation from these other cultures, the formative pre-Cucutoni-Trypillia culture was established. And over the course of the 5th millennium BC, the people expanded from their homeland in the eastern foothills of the Carpathian mountains, into the basins and plains of the Dnieper and southern Bug rivers of central Ukraine, and in the southeastern stretches of the Carpathian mountains. Most of the settlements were located close to rivers, with fewer settlements located on the plateaus. Most early dwellings took the form of pit houses, though they gradually built more and more above-ground houses. The floors and hearths of these structures were made of clay, and the walls of clay-plastered wood, with roofs thatched with straw or reeds. The emergence of this culture takes place in the almost 1,000 years leading up to 5,000 BC. This is a truly ancient time, but their way of life is immediately recognisable. They grew wheat, rye and peas. They raised cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. There is evidence of horse bones too in their settlements from this time, but whether they were domesticated or hunted is unknown. I would guess hunted. And yes, the men also hunted wild animals and fished the rivers, and the women made pottery and textiles. It sounds like a good life to me. It seems like where their hearts truly lay was in peace and quiet and good tilled earth. Pottery is rarely found from this early period, and it's grey with simple decoration, but they did start painting them white before firing, a precursor to the magnificent decorations of their descendants. Clay statues of females, which we'll talk about in a minute, and amulets have been found dating to this period. Copper items, primarily bracelets, rings and hooks, are occasionally found as well. A horde of a large number of copper items was discovered in a village in Moldova, consisting primarily of items of jewellery, which were dated back to the beginning of the 5th millennium BC, which is pretty early. And after 5,000 BC is when this civilisation really took off. The success of these people enabled them to expand until they covered an area from eastern Transylvania in the west to the Dnieper River in the east. The population grew considerably during this time, resulting in settlements being established on plateaus near major rivers and springs. Their homes were built by placing vertical poles in the form of circles or ovals. The construction techniques incorporated log floors covered in clay and wattlemdaub walls woven from pliable branches and covered in a clay mixture, and a clay oven which was situated in the centre of the house. As the population in this area grew, more land was put under cultivation. Hunting continued to supplement the practice of animal husbandry. They seem to have been a largely egalitarian society, although there is also evidence of social stratification. Every house in a settlement looks roughly the same. There doesn't seem to have been many weapons in existence, and every household probably had members of the extended family who would work in the fields to raise crops, go to the woods to hunt game and bring back firewood, work by the river to bring back clay or fish, and all of the other tasks needed to live in comfort and peace. This really does seem like a nice quiet life, doesn't it? This period is when copper axes and other tools were first used here, made from ore mined in Ukraine and from deposits along the Dnieper. The first copper extraction around this time was often done by rivers that had exposed the ore through erosion. Their ceramics also became sophisticated and quite beautiful, although also quite strange and unharmonious, at least to my uneducated taste, although it's by no means as disturbing as some other Neolithic art. Characteristics of their pottery included a monochromatic spiral design in black paint on a yellow and red base. Large pear-shaped pottery for the storage of grain, dining plates and other goods were also prevalent. Their magnificent pottery was hand-coiled, the most ancient form of pottery formation, but some people think they also used a primitive type of slow-turning potter's wheel. If true, it contends with Sumeria, China and the Indus Valley as the earliest potter's wheels in history. Along with the quality of their composition and elegant form, it's their decoration that really stands out. Some decorative incisions were added prior to firing, and sometimes these were filled with coloured dye to produce a dimensional effect. The varied mineral sources for these red, black and white pigments were mined from all different places, resulting in regional styles. They also used pigments derived from organic materials like bone and wood. They used sophisticated kilns with two separate chambers, the combustion chamber and the filling chamber, separated by a grate to achieve a uniform and complete firing of vessels. You know, these stable and comfortable so-called egalitarian societies get a bad rap, but something, some powerful urge animated these people for generations to pour their creativity in craft and design into this form of artistic expression. They weren't making these just to trade them en masse in exchange for things they couldn't make. That kind of sophisticated ongoing trade didn't exist until later on, so it wasn't about purely economic material benefit. This was a spiritual artistic drive, finding form in material expression through the creation of these ceramics. Their textiles might have been beautiful too, but they don't survive, so we don't know. It would make sense if they were, in my opinion. Anyway, toward the end of the Cicatoni-Tropilio culture, as copper became more readily available, advances in ceramic technology levelled off as more emphasis was placed on developing metallurgical techniques. Their ceramics weren't limited to containers. Ceramic statues of female figures, as well as figurines of animals and models of houses dating to this period, have also been discovered. Enormous numbers of them, actually. The female figurines especially. So what were these female figurines all about? Well, archaeologists don't really know, and it's been much discussed. Maria Gimbutas imagined these people of Old Europe, as she called it, were peaceful and egalitarian worshippers of the Earth Mother Goddess, evidenced by these figurines. These peaceful people were then wiped out, as she saw it, by the warlike, sky-father-worshipping, patriarchal steppe herders. Her theories were much derided in the second half of the 20th century, although recent archaeogenetics and other evidence has shown in the 21st century that many of her conclusions, especially her Kurgan hypothesis, were largely accurate. But it's not thought that all these figurines really represent an Earth Mother. So what were they about? Some settlements have a special building in the centre of the settlement, which archaeologists have identified as sacred sanctuaries. Artifacts have been found in these sanctuaries, some having been intentionally buried within the structure. These seem to be of a religious nature, and have provided some insights into the beliefs and perhaps some of the rituals and social structure of these people. Also, artefacts of an apparent religious nature have been found within some homes. Many of the artefacts are these clay figurines or statues. Archaeologists call them fetishes or totems, which were believed to be imbued with powers that could help and protect the people who look after them. So they're not thought to all represent one Earth Mother goddess, and different ones would have had different purposes. Maybe this one for protection from disease, and this one to bring a good harvest, and so on. Another strange thing about these people is that the evidence for mortuary activity is almost invisible. There aren't many bodies really, and the few found tend to be from the later period, which we'll talk about in a minute. So what were they doing with their dead? It's a mystery. During the late and final period, 3500 BC to 3000 BC, the Cucutoni-Trypillia territory expanded to include the Volhyn region in northwest Ukraine, the Sluch and Khuryn rivers in northern Ukraine, and along both banks of the Dnieper River near Kiev. And members of the Cucutoni-Trypillia culture who lived along the coastal regions near the Black Sea now came into contact with other cultures. More copper, traded from other societies, notably from the Balkans, began to appear throughout the region, and members of the Cucutoni-Trypillia culture began to acquire skills necessary to use it to create various items. Along with the raw copper ore, finished copper tools, hunting weapons and other artefacts were also brought in from other cultures. This marked the transition from the Neolithic to the Eneolithic, also known as the Chalcolithic or Copper Age. Bronze artefacts begin to show up in archaeological sites toward the very end of the culture. Animal husbandry increased in importance as hunting diminished, and horses also became more important, and a new rope-like design replaced the older spiral pattern designs on their pottery. And different forms of ritual burial were developed, where the deceased were interred in the ground with elaborate burial rituals. This shows clear influence from the steppe people. The end of their civilisation, after the steppe people had moved in and partially merged with them, is when Minerval Godborn takes place. So what actually happened to finish them off is much debated. Maria Gimbutas saw evidence that the Indo-European invasions overwhelmed and destroyed them. Part of the evidence is the new construction of fortified settlements and hill forts. J.P. Mallory points out that the Yamnaya cultural settlements in the eastern part of the Cucutoni-Trypillia area co-existed for some time with evidence of open trade in goods, and he shows that the settled peoples begin seeking refuge in every direction except east. He cites evidence of the refugees having used caves, islands and hilltops, in the process abandoning six to seven hundred settlements. And as we said before, their burial practices changed to be more like that of steppe peoples, and their pottery style changed. So he suggests then that the pressures from the east over time massively transformed the way of life of these farming communities, rather than an armed onslaught bringing about cultural extinction. David Antony partially agrees, saying quote, Around 3700 to 3500 BC, the Dnieper frontier was becoming a zone of gradual, probably peaceful, assimilation between Tripoli villages and indigenous Shredni Stog societies east of the Dnieper. End quote. And there is genetic evidence to support this gradual influx of DNA admixture too. There aren't enough DNA samples overall because of the lack of bodies, but they're basically what you would expect from a Neolithic population in this area. Some influx from the linear pottery type people of central Europe, and also people from the south. Interestingly, for me at least, one chap's mitochondrial haplogroup H5A1 is the same as mine. It is thought to have first mutated into existence in this area about this time. Anyway, about their end. There is also an argument that this civilization collapsed due in part to climate change. And perhaps that did play a part in reducing crop yields or driving migrations, but it's not yet well demonstrated. But whatever way you frame it, it seems to have happened quite quickly in archaeological terms. They didn't coexist for that long, really, before the steppe herders dominated them. There is a chapter in David Antony's book about this called Crisis and Change on the Tripoli frontier. Towns bigger than cities. So let's talk about these giant settlements now. Quote, the Tripoli settlements in the forest steppe zone on the middle Dnieper began to make pottery that looked like Pontic-Caspian ceramics and adopted Pontic-Caspian style inhumation funerals. The Dnieper frontier became more porous, probably through gradual assimilation. But Tripoli settlements on the South Bug river, near the steppe border, changed in very different ways. They mushroomed to enormous sizes, more than 400 hectares, twice the size of the biggest cities in Mesopotamia. Simply put, they were the biggest human settlements in the world. And yet, instead of evolving into cities, they were abruptly abandoned. End quote. Antony calls these settlements super towns. He says this, quote, all the Tripoli settlements located between the Dnieper and South Bug rivers were oval, with houses arranged around an open central plaza. Some villages occupied less than one hectare, many were towns of 8 to 15 hectares, some were more than 100 hectares, and a group of three sites, located within 20 kilometers of one another, reached sizes of 250 to 450 hectares, between about 3700 and 3400 BC. These super sites were located in the hills east of the South Bug river, near the edge of the steppe, in the southern forest steppe zone. They were the largest communities, not just in Europe, but in the world. End quote. So if you don't know how to picture a hectare, it's almost two and a half acres, a hundred meters square. So 450 hectares is over a thousand acres. That's the area the houses covered. And they're not called cities, because they lack some of the elements that define them, like a central authority, and a focus on non-agricultural activity, and other infrastructure. But as a non-expert, they seem basically like cities to me. Maybe proto-cities, and I'll talk about why. David Antony describes the sites in this chapter, and this is what the main settlement is like in Godborne. My story is set after 3000 BC, so it's anachronistic, but these super towns are so cool, I just wanted to, I just wanted to do it, so I did. Quote, the three known super sites, Dobrovodi, 250 hectares, Majdanetske, 250 hectares, and Taljoniki, 450 hectares, perhaps were occupied sequentially in that order. None of these sites contained an obvious administrative center, palace, storehouse, or temple. They had no surrounding fortification wall or moat, although the houses in the outer ring were joined in a way that presented an unbroken two-story high wall pierced only by easily defended radial streets. In one 250 hectare site, there were 1,575 structures. Most were inhabited simultaneously by a population estimated at 5,500 to 7,700 people. This would have necessitated cultivating fields more than three kilometers from the town. The houses were built close to one another in concentric oval rings on a common plan oriented toward a central plaza. The excavated houses were large, five to eight meters wide and 20 to 30 meters long, and many were two-storied. There may have been a political organization based on clan segments. There was one larger house for each five to ten smaller houses. The larger houses usually contained more female figurines, which were rare in most other houses, more fine painted pots, and sometimes facilities such as warp-weighted looms. Each large house could have been a community center for a segment of five to ten houses, perhaps an extended family or a super family collective." End quote. I edited it a bit there by the way. So it seems to me, Dan Davis, non-expert, based on this evidence that claims of supposed Cucatoni-Trupilla egalitarianism could have been a bit overstated. Surely one big house in a cluster of smaller ones could have been the home of a kind of pater familias or the big man of the clan, but what do I know? To continue quoting more or less from David Antony, quote, "'If the super towns were organized in this way, a council of 150 to 300 segment leaders could have made decisions for the entire town. It's speculation by the archaeologists that an unwieldy system of political management could have contributed to its own collapse. Specialized craft centers appeared at this time in communities for making flint tools, weaving, and manufacturing ceramics. These crafts became spatially segregated both within and between towns. A hierarchy appeared in settlement sizes comprised of two and perhaps three tiers. These kinds of changes usually are interpreted as signs of an emerging political hierarchy and increasing centralization of political power. But instead of developing into cities, the towns were abandoned. Population concentration is a standard response to increased warfare among tribal agriculturalists, and the subsequent abandonment of these places suggests that warfare and raiding was at the root of the crisis. The aggressors could have been steppe people of Mikhailovka 1 or late Shredny Stog type. Mounted raiding might have made it impossible to cultivate fields more than three kilometers from the town. Raiding for cattle or captives could have caused the fragmentation and dispersal of the Tripolio population and the abandonment of town-based craft traditions just as it had in the Danube valley some 500 years earlier. Farther north in the forest steppe zone on the middle Dnieper, assimilation and exchange led ultimately in the same direction but more gradually. End quote. For a couple of thousand years the Cucatoni-Tripolio people had a great life, but ultimately they were just completely and fundamentally unable to resist the waves of steppe herders that overwhelmed them. Links to David Anthony's books and other sources are in description as are links to my books. Please check them out. Thank you for watching.