The 'superstructure' of the mysterious Tripolye culture was unearthed in Ukraine

The Tripolye culture was a post-Neolithic culture that flourished during the period of time from about 5400 BC to 2750 BC in the area of ​​Dnister (Nistru) - Dnieper of present day Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. This culture has always attracted the special attention of archaeologists around the world.

Therefore, the excavation of an area considered to be the center of the Stone Age community in Ukraine is helping to explain why large groups of tens of thousands of people flourished and later collapsed more than 5,000. last year.

The excavation area in Ukraine is considered to be much larger than the houses around it, though not particularly large by modern standards.

The mysterious 'superstructure' area in Ukraine has just been found.

At about 190m ² , the structure is about the size of a modest American home. However, some Eastern European megacities have an area of ​​up to 1,680m2.

Many underground structures have been discovered through methods of using magnetic anomalies to detect. Now, the actual excavation of a super infrastructure at a site called Maidanetske shows buildings that can be used for everyday activities, like food preparation, storage and dining. .

"It's similar to activities done in normal houses , " said Robert Hofmann, an archaeologist at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, who led the new study.

The megacities were built by the Tripolye culture, a civilization stretching from the Carpathian mountains to the Dnieper River during the Stone Age. From about 4100 BC. to 3600 BC. The Tripolye people have built large communities consisting of thousands of houses.

Maidanetske, in modern Ukraine, has about 3,000 individual houses, although it is unclear whether all of them will exist at the same time or if there are periods of demolition and reconstruction. Therefore, the populations of these communities tend to be difficult to determine, Hofmann said. Maidanetske can be home to about 5,000 people or 15,000 people.

Archaeologists also debate whether the area is year-round settlement or seasonal gathering points. The Tripolye are cereal farmers, as well as herdsmen.

Tripolye houses are often arranged in concentric circles, sometimes dotted with squares anchored by large rectangular buildings that archaeologists call "megacities".

Hofmann and colleagues compared their Maidanetske excavations with magnetic and archaeological data from 12 other megacities in Maidanetske and 104 others from 19 different locations across Eastern Europe.

Scattered in the structure, archaeologists found pottery, including sealed jars and kitchen utensils. There are also bones scattered near the fireplace, probably from the last meal before the building was abandoned.