Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture
Years: 6050BCE - 2750BCE
The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, also known as Cucuteni culture (from Romanian), Trypillian culture (from Ukrainian) or Tripolye culture (from Russian), is a late Neolithic archaeological culture which flourishes between ca.
5500 BCE and 2750 BCE, from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions in modern-day Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, encompassing an area of more than 35,000 km2 (13,500 square miles).
At its peak the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture builds the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe, some of which have populations of up to 15,000 inhabitants.One of the most notable aspects of this culture is that every 60 to 80 years the inhabitants of a settlement would burn their entire village.
The reason for the burning of the settlements is a subject of debate among scholars; many of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier ones, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings.
One example of this, at the Poduri, Romania site, revealed a total of thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over a period of many years.
