History is part of uncertainty, with certainties evolving through discoveries. Recent archaeological research carried out on a Ukrainian site suggests that the first cities imagined using a precise urban plan appeared in eastern Europe. In an article published on June 15, the newspaper New Zurich newspaper recounted the discoveries of academics in recent months. Cities built by people affiliatesaffiliates to the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture would predate Mesopotamian constructions. This assertion questions the existing historiography concerning the occurrence of an urban “revolution” exclusive to the Levant during the Bronze Age.
The emergence of urban planning during prehistory
For many historianshistoriansMesopotamia is a civilizational cradle. The first villages appear after the appearance of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. This region is located between the deltadelta of Shatt-el-Arab, at the confluence of the TigreTigre and the Euphrates and southern Anatolia. If the settlement of populations began from 11,000 BC, the study of stratigraphic layers reveals that the first villages actually appeared from 7,000 BC. Certain inhabited sites will grow over the centuries, but you have to wait for IVe millennium for structured city-states to arise, like Uruk around 3500 BC. This major Neolithic site is considered by researchers to be theepicenterepicenter of an urban revolution which will continue many centuries after its fall.
Located south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Uruk extended over 550 hectares in 2900. If the ancient city of Mesopotamia is taken as a reference, this is notably due to its layout. A 9.5 kilometer long wall encircles the city, the core of which is mainly made up of temples. A pattern that we find even in medieval European cities, with commercial or residential districts distributed around a place of worship or power, such as a church or abbey. With this reference, the site in Ukraine is intriguing. More than 2,000 years beforeemergenceemergence of Uruk, the “mega-site” of Trypillia would have accommodated nearly ten thousand inhabitants over several hundred hectares.
A Neolithic “mega-site” in Ukraine: the first of its kind?
In 1884, the first traces of Cucuteni culture were discovered in Romania, near the town of Iasi. But it was from 1960 that the Trypillia site began to be detected. The review All That’s Interesting reports that a topographertopographer Soviet, Konstantin Shishkin, observes anomaliesanomalies in an aerial photograph taken over the kyiv Oblast. Concentric shadows attracted the attention of researchers and field studies were initiated in 1971. It is a site of approximately 320 hectares which extends a few kilometers from the Ukrainian capital.
From 2010, German archaeologists began tracking this culture, of which few vestiges have reached us through the ages. Artifacts have been found and exhumed, including decorated pottery, 6,000 years old. This mega-site is effectively broken down into concentric structures, described as proto-urban. The dwellings examined by the researchers are mainly composed ofclayclay and of boisboisdesigned to be modular. Datings refer to a flowering of the prehistoric city between the Ve and the IVe century BC Archaeological work is promising. But many uncertainties remain: we will have to wait for further research to dethrone Uruk and the Mesopotamian cities. The archaeologists also specify that excavations will continue in Trypillia, the war in Ukraine not seeming to alter the researchers’ desire to learn more about a little-known Neolithic culture.
