Cucuteni-Trypillia Populations

Mavi Boncuk | 

The Cucuteni-Trypillian deliberately burned their settlements regularly

In the middle era the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture spread over a wide area from Eastern Transylvania in the west to the Dnieper River in the east. During this period, the population immigrated into and settled along the banks of the upper and middle regions of the Right Bank (or western side) of the Dnieper River, in present-day Ukraine. The population grew considerably during this time, resulting in settlements being established on plateaus, near major rivers and springs.

While investigating the ruins left behind by the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, archaeologists noticed something strange. These ancient people deliberately burned their settlements after some years.

The purpose of the periodic destruction of settlements, with each single-habitation site having a roughly 60 to 80 year lifetime remains a subject of debate among scholars. Some of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier habitational levels, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. One particular location, the Poduri site (Romania), revealed thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over many years.

The conversion of Ukraine, much like Central Europe, to production-based Neolithic culture took place under influences that originated in the Balkan Peninsula and filtered through the Danube region. From the 7th to 5th centuries BC, four powerful waves of migrants came from the Danube region: the Grebenyky culture (Odesa region) and the Neolithic Criş, Linear Pottery and Cucuteni-Trypillian cultures. The arrival of Cucuteni-Trypillian farmers who settled in the forest-steppe zone between the middle Dniester and the southern part of the Kyiv region in the late 6th century BC resulted in the final triumph of the production economy in Right-Bank Ukraine.

The economy of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in the territories of modern-day Romania, Moldova and Right-Bank Ukraine revolved around growing wheat, barley and peas and breeding cattle, goats, sheep and pigs. When land was depleted, the Trypillians moved eastward, gradually colonizing all chernozem (black soil) lands from the Carpathians to the Dnieper that were suitable to their farming system.


Trypillian rectangular wattle and daub homes are a typical example of the Balkan tradition of house construction. Numerous clay vessels and figurines of women that have been found in Trypillian settlements are also convincing proof of the Balkan origins of this culture. The Mediterranean anthropological type of the Trypillians provides further evidence. It has been reconstructed based on rare skeletal remains of Trypillians themselves and through anthropological studies of Neolithic burial places in the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube region.

The “nationality” of the Trypillians

Some scientific data, primarily from archaeological sources, permits genetic attribution of the Balkan Neolithic era (including its Ukrainian form, the Trypillian culture) to specific ethnic communities in the Near East. The primary suspects are the Hatti from Southern Anatolia and the Hurrians, a related people that lived in the upper Tigris and Euphrates. Because the Neolithic colonization of the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube region began precisely from Anatolia, which was home to the Hatti and partly to the Hurrians, it is no surprise that the Balkan Neolithic culture exhibits a powerful Hattic-Hurrian influence. The Neolithic cultures of the Danube region and Right-Bank Ukraine have distinct parallels to Asia Minor, according to archaeological, anthropological and paleolinguistic data.

The genetic connection between the Balkan Neolithic culture—and through it the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture—with the South Anatolian (pre-Hattic) centre of Neolithization suggests that, ethnolinguistically, the earliest farmers in the Balkan Peninsula, the lower Danube and Right-Bank Ukraine were most likely related to the pre-Hatti people. This is also true of the Trypillian culture in Right-Bank Ukraine as the northeasternmost manifestation of the Balkan Neolithic proto-civilization.


Therefore, the Neolithization of Ukraine took place under influences coming from the Balkan-Danube region in the 6th to 5th centuries BC and followed a typical Central European scenario. Early farmers (including Trypillians) came to Right-Bank Ukraine from the Danube Region. Through the Balkans and the Danube, they had a genetic connection to the earliest centres of the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East, particularly southern Anatolia. Their entire cultural and economic complex was essentially Near Eastern in nature. The northern neighbours of the Trypillians were the indigenous hunters and fishers of Polissia and the Dnieper region who borrowed Neolithic innovations from their southern neighbours 1,000-2,000 years later.
The advance of the steppes and their drier climate led to the collapse of the Trypillian culture and the spread of free-range animal husbandry in the late 4th century BC. In the 3rd century BC, former Trypillian lands in Right-Bank Ukraine came to be populated by the earliest cattle-breeders of the ‘Yamna’ and ‘Corded Ware’ cultures which are believed to be ancestors of the Baltic and Slavic people. In this way, the connection of the Trypillians with the subsequent generations that inhabited the territory of present-day Ukraine was severed, which rules out their direct involvement in the genesis of the Ukrainian people. SOURCE


Article |Open Access| Published: 06 March 2020

Gene-flow from steppe individuals into Cucuteni-Trypillia associated populations indicates long-standing contacts and gradual admixture

Alexander Immel, Stanislav Țerna, Angela Simalcsik, Julian Susat, Oleg Šarov, Ghenadie Sîrbu, Robert Hofmann, Johannes Müller, Almut Nebel & Ben Krause-Kyora 

Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 4253 (2020) 

Abstract

The Cucuteni-Trypillia complex (CTC) flourished in eastern Europe for over two millennia (5100–2800 BCE) from the end of the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Its vast distribution area encompassed modern-day eastern Romania, Moldova and western/central Ukraine. Due to a lack of existing burials throughout most of this time, only little is known about the people associated with this complex and their genetic composition. Here, we present genome-wide data generated from the skeletal remains of four females that were excavated from two Late CTC sites in Moldova (3500–3100 BCE). All individuals carried a large Neolithic-derived ancestry component and were genetically more closely related to Linear Pottery than to Anatolian farmers. Three of the specimens also showed considerable amounts of steppe-related ancestry, suggesting influx into the CTC gene-pool from people affiliated with, for instance, the Ukraine Mesolithic. The latter scenario is supported by archaeological evidence. Taken together, our results confirm that the steppe component arrived in eastern Europe farming communities maybe as early as 3500 BCE. In addition, they are in agreement with the hypothesis of ongoing contacts and gradual admixture between incoming steppe and local western populations.

See also: PRODUCTIVITY OF PRE-MODERN AGRICULTURE INTHE CUCUTENI–TRYPILLIA AREA

" ...Considering adjacent temporal and geographical domains, the cereal crop assemblages in early Neolithic cultures in Bulgaria (the second half of the sixth millennium BC) include naked and hulled barley (Hordeum sp.) and naked wheat (T. aestivum s.l./durum/turgidum), together with pulses, in addition to those cultivated by the LBK farmers: emmer (T. diococcum), einkorn (T. monococcum), as well as peas, lentils and flax (Kreuz et al. 2005). These authors note that barley and naked wheat were used in the broader area, including that of the Starčevo–Körös–Čris culture (eastern Hungary, Greece, former Yugoslavia, Romania and the Turkish Thrace). ... The animal remains identified at the Trypillia sites belong to both wild species (red deer, wild boar, roe deer, elk, etc.) and domesticated species (cattle, pig, sheep/goat and horse); the relative occurrence of species varies significantly from site to site, implying considerable variations in subsistence. Cattle (and possibly horses) were used for transportation and traction as evidenced by bone structures and pottery models of sledges with ox heads found at several sites. ..."




Mitochondrial DNA analysis of eneolithic trypillians from Ukraine reveals neolithic farming genetic roots