The modern nations of Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine were inhabited between 5500 and 2750 BC by a loosely related ethnic group known as the Cucuteni-Trypillia civilisation. The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture is equally important, although not being as well-known as the Sumerians of nearby Mesopotamia. They are the oldest society in Europe that is now known, and they may have played a significant role in the development of human civilization as a whole.
Recreation of a Cucuteni-Trypillian house burning via Wikimedia Commons
The Cucuteni-Trypillia civilization, named after two excavation sites located in Romania and Ukraine, respectively, and circumscribed by the Carpathian Mountains, Dnieper, and Dniester rivers, was extremely sophisticated for its time. They raised wheat, barley, and legumes; constructed substantial kilns for baking beautiful clay ceramics and figures; and wore copper jewelry. Their axes, which they used to harvest trees for their magnificent construction, were also fashioned of copper. In fact, it's possible that "impressive" is an understatement. The Cucuteni-Trypillia society was able to build what would have been some of the largest buildings in the world, with numerous floors and surfaces up to 7,534 square feet, roughly the size of two whole basketball courts, by securing wooden frameworks with dried clay.
The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture not only built some of the largest buildings of their time, they also had the biggest settlements via Wikimedia Commons
Archaeologists have been baffled by the Cucuteni-Trypillia structures for ages. The odd condition of preservation of the buildings, which, upon closer investigation, suggests that the culture's perfectly constructed settlements were regularly, mysteriously burned to the ground every 60 to 80 years, is the cause, not the scale of the structures.
Horizon of the Burned House
There are other ancient cultures whose records have been preserved in fire in addition to the Cucuteni-Trypillia. There is a term in academia for the phenomena of houses burning down so frequently in neolithic Central and Eastern Europe: the "burned house horizon." It was first used by the British-American archeologist Ruth Tringham to refer to a region that included sections of what is now Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Hungary in addition to Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. This region was once home to many different ethnic groups, including the Criş, Starčevo, Dudești, and Vinča, to mention a few.
The fundamental causes of the burning house are more fascinating than its horizonal reach. The flames were initially attributed to more common sources, such as lightning strikes or enemy attacks, for a very long time. It's a plausible theory, especially in light of the fact that the majority of prehistoric dwellings would have been packed with highly combustible items like grains and textiles. Furthermore, who would purposefully damage their own property?
The burned house horizon covers much of Eastern Europe via Wikimedia Commons
In their role as devil's advocates, scholars have produced some unexpectedly solid arguments. The structures inside the burned-out house horizon, according to Serbian archeologist Mirjana Stevanovic, "were destroyed by deliberate burning and most likely for reasons of a symbolic nature." Her research is related to that of Vikentiy Khvoyka, a pioneering researcher of the Cucuteni-Trypillia tribe who thought that when a person died, their home was burned down, transforming it into what he dubbed "homes of the dead." Tringham, who was also curious about the practice's potential cultural significance, devoted a portion of her 1994 article to the fictional but believable story of a Vina woman who, after marrying into an abusive family, can't help but take a perverse joy in seeing her in-laws' possessions burn to the ground.
Russian archaeologist Evgeniy Yuryevich Krichevski adopted a more practical strategy. He asserted that the ancient inhabitants of Eastern Europe were strengthening rather than demolishing their constructions. He claimed that the smoke would have fumigated the dwelling while the heat of the fire would have turned the clay walls into a ceramic surface. Recent studies have become even more realist, arguing that the main reason for burning down old buildings was to make room for new ones.
Rebuilding the Past
There are several ways to put these beliefs to the test, and the majority of them involve the excavation sites themselves. In 2022, a group of archaeologists and environmentalists from Hungary worked to better understand the characteristics of the burned home horizon by examining soil and plant material that had been excavated from a site close to Budapest. Two of the three documented fire incidents at the location, known as Százhalombatta-Földvár, appear to have been started on purpose.
A large home in the Cucuteni-Trypillia style via Wikimedia Commons
Arthur Bankoff and Frederik Winter, two archaeologists, took a different path. The two bought a run-down house from a peasant family in the Lower Morava River Valley of Serbia, which was then a part of Yugoslavia, in 1977. The location was made of the same material as the buildings of the destroyed home horizon, so instead of restoring it, the archeologists decided to set it on fire to observe what would happen. The house's walls were plastered with clay, and while the timber roof was obviously ruined, it had been astonishing how well they had held up. This shows that the prehistoric burnings were intentional rather than accidental, together with the fact that the experiment required a huge volume of fuel.
Researchers other than Bankoff and Winter have also set fires in the name of science. In 2018, a group of archaeologists from the UK and Ukraine destroyed not one, but two historically accurate buildings. The test participants in this experiment were constructed from scratch in the manner of the Cucuteni-Trypillia civilization, as opposed to purchasing an existing home. Nevertheless, the outcomes were quite similar. Both buildings' walls, as well as the several clay pots and figurines the researchers had placed inside of them, were undamaged. Furthermore, neither fire spread, showing that the procedure was secure and under control.
The amount of fuel that ancient people must have used to reach the highest temperatures noted in the sediment once more astounded the experts. For each one-story building, they would have needed more than 130 trees' worth of firewood, and for two-story constructions, 250 trees. Thus, 3.8 square miles of forest would have been needed to accommodate a population of 100 homes. This, according to the researchers, not only eliminates the chance that war, wildfires, or other unfortunate events might be used to explain the destroyed house horizon, but it also demonstrates the need of taking these ancient cultures' logistical prowess seriously.
