The First Neolithic Tribes in Eastern Europe
The population of Eastern Europe are
still led their traditional way of life of wandering hunter-gatherers, when a
number of separate cultures was formed on the Balkan Peninsula and in the lower
Danube in the 6th millennium BC. Common roots of these cultures were nourished
by cultural flow penetrating to the South-East Europe across the Aegean area
from Anatolia.
Demographic expansion of farming
communities from the Caucasus and Anatolia in Eastern Europe could be due to a
relative overpopulation in their primary habitat, or rather the achievement
level of the so-called "maximum economic function", which places the
border population growth in a certain area, occurring not only a natural way
but also due to the retracting of small farming communities of neighboring
groups.
The emergence of Neolithic cultures
on the territory of the Ukraine was obviously connected with this cultural
flux.
The first farmers and pastoralists
penetrated in Eastern Europe from the Dniester River to the Lower Don from the
south-west, and partly, perhaps, from the Caucasus (BROMLEY Yu.V., 1986, 292).
Actually, these newcomers were the creators of the first Neolithic cultures in
Eastern Europe. During their spread in the direction to the Carpathian Basin in
the 5th mill BC, when engaged in farming and cattle breeding tribes were first
settled here, a gradual transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic
occurred (HERRMANN JOACHIM , 1982, 43). The newcomers created the culture
Linear Pottery in the area of the Carpathian arc, which applies to large parts
of Europe and even to France. Several interrelated Neolithic cultures belonging
to the circle of this culture are known in the Middle Danube. The earliest of
these, the culture Körös, created by people of the South-Balkan origin
(SHUSHARIN V.P., 1971, 12).
Obviously, another group of
newcomers has created the Bug-Dniester culture, which coulg have links with the
more advanced synchronous cultures of South-Eastern Europe. Mykola Tovkaylo
said that after establishing contact with the culture of Körös in the "the
outsets of productive economy i.e agriculture and livestock spread in the area
of the Bug-Dniester culture " (TOVKAYLO M.T., 1998, 1). However we can
also suppose that the elements of the new management had been made not only by
simple contacts by together with the resettlement of the population from the
Balkan to the basin of the Southern Bug. Some large group of immigrants from
the Balkans created here the Earlly-Trypillian culture. The race of the
creators the Tripollian culture in the Ukraine can be identified by the data of
anthropology, which also confirm the wave of newcomers from the Balkans:
"The physical types of people
of the Tripollian culture is characterized by gracility and dolichocephalia .
Morphological features of this type are wide spread in Western Europe,
Mediterranean, Asia Minor, besides that special affinity with the Tripollians
is shown by cranial series of Central Europe and the Mediterranean Basin".
(KONDUKTOROVA T.S. 1973, 49)
The Reconstrucion of the appearance
of the Trypillians confirms this fact (see Fig. 19)
Fig. 19. Graphical Reconstrucion of
the Appearance of the Trypillians by M.M. Gerasimov on the basis of found
sculls. (MASSON V.M., MERPERT N.Ya. 1982. Fig.)
The Bu-Dniestr and Early-Typollian
cultures coexisted in the same area and maintained close relationships a long
time from the middle of the 1st to start of the 2nd quarter of the 4th BC
(TOVKAYLO M.T. 1998, 14-15). At the same time (in the 5th mill BC) Neolithic
cultures spread through the South and North Caucasus to the eastern part of the
Ukraine (the Dnieper-Surska and the Dnieper-Donets cultures). The spreading was
occurred by as resettlement and partly by borrowing the productive economy.
One
can assume that third stream of migration of carriers from the Neolithic
cultures existed also from Asia along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to
the right bank of the Ural River and thence to the Lower Volga. The archaic
Yelshansk Neolithic culture in the area between these rivers may be evidence of
such a possibility:
It is not excluded that, the
territory of Central Asia was transformed into a semi-desert in connection with
desertification. Living conditions deteriorated sharply, which resulted in an
outflow of population northward in a more favourable habitat. This area could
be the Forest-steppe and the Volga region. Alien populations mingled with the
natives and could borrow the local tradition of making stone tools"
(TURETSKIY M.A. 2007, 53).
Thus
the community of farmers from the South Caucasus and other parts of Asia have
begun to move north in search of the land. Among these communities were the
Indo-European, Altaic, Uralian people, who left their Urheimat iin the 6th
mill. BC and gradually reached Eastern Europe.
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