(ORDO NEWS) — The discovery of ancient cultures and artifacts associated with those cultures often brings new and surprising information about how our ancient ancestors lived. Some cultures, as it turned out, were engaged in very unique practices.
One of them is the 7,000-year-old Eastern European Cukuteni-Trypillia culture, which built complex, organized, densely populated settlements, burning them to the ground every 60-80 years, and then moving and rebuilding the same settlement again.
Discovery of advanced Cucuteno-Trypillian culture
The Neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillia culture lived in Eastern Europe from about 5400 to 2700 BC. Living in a vast area of 350,000 square kilometers, covering parts of modern Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, they created small and densely populated settlements located at a distance of three to four kilometers from each other. This civilization was defined by high quality clay pottery.
The first relevant discoveries were made as early as the 1880s. Known as “Cucuteni” in Romania and “Trypillia” in Ukraine, they take their name from the places where artifacts were first discovered: the village of Cucuteni in Romania, where the folklorist Teodor Burada first stumbled upon pottery fragments in 1884, and Trypillia in the Kievskaya area. area in Ukraine, where Vikentiy Khvoyka discovered an extensive Neolithic site, which was announced in 1897. Years later, these finds were recognized as belonging to the same culture.
“Undoubtedly, this is one of the most impressive civilizations of Neolithic Europe, and in some respects completely surpasses the famous first cities of Mesopotamia,” explains Dan Davis.
However, few have heard of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. According to BBC Travel, excavations at the Cucuteni-Tripilliana settlements have revealed “one of the earliest known examples of urbanization and suggest a population in excess of one million”.
Their culture was advanced in agriculture as they planted and harvested wheat, barley, peas and legumes. Archaeological evidence shows that they were also skilled in pottery, working clay to create pottery, statues, and other figures using huge and modern kilns, and then decorating them with colorful designs.
It is difficult to overestimate the quality of ceramics made by representatives of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture.
“With all our modern methods, traditional artisans are trying to reproduce Cucuteni ceramics, but with worse results,” said Constantin Preotas on the radio România Internaţional. They also made jewelry and hooks out of copper.
Lifestyle of Cucuteni-Trypillia
Despite the late discovery of this forgotten culture, historians have been able to piece together the clues left behind to try to understand how this Neolithic culture functioned.
It is believed that in the culture of Cukuteni-Trypillia, women were the head of the family. They created textiles and ceramics, and also performed the bulk of agricultural work.
It is believed that men hunted, made tools, and cared for domestic animals, hunting both with traps and implements such as bows and arrows, clubs, and spears, as well as with other methods, such as camouflage and tracking animals.
Judging by the female idols discovered during the excavations, it appears that their religious practices were centered on a female deity, the Great Goddess.
The diet of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture probably consisted mainly of cereals, although they were quite developed both in agriculture and in animal husbandry.
They grew tuberous wheat, oats, millet, rye, barley and hemp, from which they could bake bread. In addition to grains, they grew fruits and legumes such as apricots, cherry plums, grapes, peas, and beans.
In terms of livestock, they reportedly raised cattle, pigs, goats and sheep. There is some unconfirmed evidence that horses were also domesticated in the Cukuteni-Trypillia culture.
In addition to raising domestic animals, people hunted roe deer, red deer, wild boars, wild boars, foxes and brown bears. They supplemented their diet by using harpoons and hooks to catch fish.
Evidence of the ritual burning of the settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillians
According to Messi Nessy, the evidence indicates that they “deliberately and repeatedly” burned down their settlements.
This puzzling practice has raised many questions about why a culture would go to such lengths to create their settlements only to burn them down. Was this practice based on religious principles, or is it just an exaggerated version of death followed by rebirth?
Further research is needed to know exactly why the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture engaged in this practice, but several hypotheses have been put forward, ranging from dealing with numerous termites to ritual cremation.
What is clear is that such a regular relocation of the entire community required a highly organized society.
When creating their settlements, they used stone and copper axes for cutting trees to build dwellings and structures, which consisted of a wooden frame coated with clay.
The buildings were both one-story and multi-story, with clay benches and altars. The interior floors and walls were decorated with ornamental designs in red and white, designed to provide protection from evil spirits.
Evidence of individual dwellings, temples and public buildings have been found. Their advanced construction methods allowed for the construction of unusually large buildings, the remains of buildings reaching 700 meters squared.
Archaeologists also claim that these settlements were among the largest built on Earth at that time. These settlements were well planned and well built, so it is somewhat surprising to learn that the people of Cucuteni-Trypillia ritually burned their settlements every 60-80 years and then moved on to new territory.
Archaeologists and researchers have discovered thousands of burnt buildings, statues, tools, vessels, and even cremated human and animal remains.
Researcher V. Khvoyka put forward the theory that these were “houses of the dead”, perhaps some kind of tombs. However, more recent theories suggest that ordinary dwellings and structures were simply burned to make way for new structures.
The most widely accepted theory today is a combination of these theories, indicating that over time structures were burned and tools, vessels, and animals were sacrificed to ancestral spirits.
Old buildings and fields were left to the dead ancestors, and the people who remained alive moved to the new territory. Some scholars suggest that each structure was seen as almost a “living” being, with its own life cycle of death and rebirth.
Why did they regularly burn down their settlements?
It’s hard to imagine a culture burning their settlements to the ground and then rebuilding them. While there are compelling theories as to why this happened, it seems that such a practice would have been somewhat burdensome for the people of this civilization.
Since the restoration took place every 60-80 years, it is likely that every second generation took part in the restoration process.
Without the tools and materials that we have today, such restoration would have been a much more cumbersome process, as trees would have to be cut down by hand and new buildings erected.
While this is a typical problem faced by many cultures, the people of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture are unique in that they deliberately destroyed functional settlements and then rebuilt them.
During the research, it was noted that very few funerary objects and very few cemeteries related to this culture were found. Perhaps the burning of settlements was indeed a way of “burial” and honoring their dead among the Cucuteni-Trypillians.
Instead of creating a tomb in which the deceased could be buried along with important items, the house in which the deceased lived could become his tomb. Thus, they could get into the afterlife with those items that they possessed during their life on Earth.
The culture of Cukuteni-Trypillia is a complex form of ancient life – one where the construction of dwellings and settlements was not just a necessity for survival, but was carried out repeatedly as a cultural practice.
Their sophistication as a society is underlined by their ability to migrate and rebuild their societies over and over again.
The true purpose of such behavior may never be known, but it will remain a symbol of that culture’s organized society and the lengths they are willing to go to preserve the symbolism of their culture.
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