3 replies to this topic

[Diego]

An egalitarian Neolithic Eden filled with unique, geometric art flourished some 7,000 years ago in Eastern Europe, according to hundreds of artifacts on display at the Vatican. Running until the end of October at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, the exhibition, 'Cucuteni-Trypillia: A Great Civilization of Old Europe,' introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization.
      Little is known about these people - even their name is wrapped in mystery. Archaeologists have named them 'Cucuteni-Trypillians' after the villages of Cucuteni, near Lasi, Romania and Trypillia, near Kiev, Ukraine, where the first discoveries of this ancient civilization were made more than 100 years ago.
      The excavated treasures - fired clay statuettes and op art-like pottery dating from 5000 to 3000 BCE - immediately posed a riddle to archaeologists. "We do not know the meaning of those painted symbols, and what is the significance of those zoomorphic and anthropomorphic statuettes. Everything seems to be wrapped in mystery. Most of all, we do not know how these people treated their dead. Despite recent extensive excavations, no cemetery has ever been found," said Lacramioara Stratulat, director of the Moldova National Museum Complex of Iasi.
      Before their culture mysteriously faded, the Cucuteni-Trypillians had organized into large settlements. Predating the Sumerians and Egyptian settlements, these were basically proto-cities with buildings often arranged in concentric circles. They extended over 350,000 square kilometers (135,000 square miles) in what is now Romania, Ukraine and Moldova. The Neolithic buildings often featured walls and ceilings decorated with drawings painted in black and red. Inside, the houses were filled with pottery and statuettes whose quasi-modern design has become the Cucuteni-Trypillians's most identifiable trademark.
      This unique artistic production, dominated by repeating lines, circles and spirals, amazingly echoes modern op art, also known as optical art, which is a genre of visual that makes use of geometric shapes and optical illusions. None of the enigmatic statuettes seem fearsome or fearful. The rare male statuettes have faces often covered by masks, while the abundant female statuettes are gracious and mask-free, with tattooed bodies and long feet. There are no chained slaves or sacrificial figures - a sign of a rather egalitarian culture, according to historians.
      The pottery's obsessive spiral and circle patterns could also help explain another strange feature of this culture. "We do not know why, but all of the 4,000 Cucuteni-Trypillians settlements were intentionally burned," said Sergiy Krolevets, director of the National History and Culture Museum of the Republic of Moldova. One explanation is that the Cucuteni might have seen the world as cyclical - a concept they might have expressed in the circles they painted on their pottery. According to this hypothesis, every some 60-80 years they would sacrifice whole cities by intentionally burning thousands of their houses. Then they would move to create another settlement. Whatever the reason behind it, the practice required an extremely well coordinated, centrally organized society.

Source: Discovery News (22 September 2008)



Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage...ves/002929.html

[kevin.b]

Diego,
        Thanks for this report, I had never heard of the trypillians.
I am obviously very drawn to the spirals and lines, as a dowser, I recognise those like the back of my hands.
I would urge all to consider that the burning of these towns was not as is ASSUMED by these reports ritual anything at all, but a result of electrical conditions in universe.
If they were as good a dowsers as I consider them to have been, it may be that the electrical condition here and now is returning to when they were on the planet, hence odd balls like me popping up?
If we do not want to suffer the same fate as them, I would urge all to better consider the electric universe, and it's dire consequences.
kevin

[Robert Henvell]

This article has been poorly researched.The people of the C-T culture were the earliest genuine farmers in the Ukraine,There is a reasonable volume of data about them.Their burial places have been found.Post-3500 BCE,when the annual mean rainfall began to decline,the C-T culture fragmented into a number of distinct entities and their peaceful lifestyle was disrupted by the arrival of pastoralists from the east.Gradually the herders gained ascendancy and the farmer became a fringe minority.The C-T culture had its roots in the Linear Ware tradition during the first half of the 5th millennium BCE.
The eastern European Plains had abundant farmland and until post 3500 BCE natural rainfall was adequate to raise crops over an extensive area.These people did burn many of their villages.When the farm land became less fertile they probably packed up their belongings and moved to a pristine location [speculation].Several  of their communities may have had populations of up to 10000
people.The concentric circle residence plan suggests gradually growth and expansion.Most settlements were surrounded by a ditch.
Fortifications were built at some locales post 3500 BCE,when there was more competition for land proximal to fresh water.These people obtained copper etc from the Balkans.They occupied lands in the Ukraine,Romania and Mordovia and were well known for their artistic endeavours.

[Maju]

I also think that the article looks strange and probably poor but Cucuteni-Trypillia culture (formerly known as Cucuteni-Tripolye, russian spelling must have been changed by Ukranian) were not in any case "the first farmers of Ukraine", Dniepr-Donets were instead, though they appear more "primitive" maybe.

C-T culture belongs to the Danubian (Western Lineal Pottery) macro-culture and included both Moldavias and the westernmost part of Ukraine. They did build some impressive houses or temples, following the scale replicas found (two storeys, odd designs) but there is nothing solid that I know that describes them as the first civilization of Europe (those were arguably their neighbours of Karanovo-Gumelnita in Bulgaria and Wallachia, more directly influenced by Troy, who do show clear signs of royal burial and even maybe some sort of script).

The burning of towns I had read it interpretated as systematic Indo-European plundering that lasted several centuries before total conquest. In general burned towns are percieved by serious archaeologists as result of invasions, not ritual "sacrifices" that make little sense. But if such burnings can be dated to before c. 3500 BCE (Indo-Europeization of former Dniepr-Donets people) it may mean some other agressor, even maybe internal strife.

Whatever the case, AFAIK, while IEs did attack richer Karanovo-Gumelnita kingdom further south until their demise, they seem to have not been so interested in the C-T area, that was apparently plundered once and again, but only conquered in a late date. A Bronze Age offshot of C-T survived in Rumanian Moldavia for some time.