27 February 2021 | New Scientist | 47a critical function as a gathering place – was
filled in. However, another possibility is that
the megasites simply lost their prestige, they
say. Perhaps, given enough exposure to steppe
ideas through trade, the Trypillians began to
question their own.
In a rare instance of unity, most
Trypillian researchers agree that
environmental depletion cannot be the reason
they left. “It is quite clear that the carrying
capacity of this area was never reached,” says
Müller. They also reject an idea proposed in
2018 by microbiologist Nicolás Rascovan at the
Pasteur Institute in Paris and his colleagues.
Rascovan argued that plague got a foothold in
the megasites, from where it spread north and
west, eventually turning up in a Swedish
cemetery around 2900 BC. Plague victims’
bones would have turned up, says Gaydarska.
Moreover, the megasites had been gone for
500 years by then, which is too big a gap even
for a relatively slow-moving disease like plague.
However it happened, by the time the
Yamnaya appeared in Europe, what may have
been the world’s first urban experiment was
over. Far to the south and east, the cities of
Egypt and Mesopotamia – built on a radically
different model – were thriving, still several
centuries off their peak. From then on,
civilisation took a new path and the
world never looked back. ❚Others think there is no need to invoke
outside forces to explain the abandonment
of the megasites. Müller, who has excavated
principally at a megasite called Maidanetske,
says that by 3700 BC, the assembly houses in its
quarters and neighbourhoods had gone. Only
the largest assembly house remained. “This
shows, at least for me, that there was a kind of
centralisation of decision-making processes
going on,” he says. That might have been
incompatible with social cohesion. Gaydarska
and Chapman also think the problem was
internal, noting that as Maidanetske grew,
the central space – which could have servedsteppe people, as evidenced by a type of
steppe pottery known as Cucuteni C that crops
up in every layer at the megasites until their
abandonment. “The Trypillians managed to
work it out with the steppe,” says Nikitin. And
yet they didn’t breed with their neighbours
either. Nikitin’s team found no steppe genes
in human remains at a Trypillian site whose
occupation overlaps with the megasite period.
One reason, he suggests, was their radically
different world views. Steppe people valued
individual prowess – as demonstrated by their
use of coveted Balkan copper to decorate the
bodies of their dead chieftains – whereas
the essence of Trypillian culture, with its
concentric megasites and assembly houses,
appears to have been egalitarianism.
Unsurprisingly, the refugee camp idea
doesn’t appeal to everyone. “You can’t have a
crisis for 800 years that people have not dealt
with,” says Gaydarska. Others have wondered
how relatively small bands of nomads,
however warlike, could have destroyed the
wealthy, densely populated Balkan farming
settlements. Nikitin admits the idea has weak
points, not least that building the megasites
rapidly, to accommodate migrants, would have
required an extraordinarily large investment
of labour. Nevertheless, he suggests that it
could explain the absence of human remains.
“If these were temporary camps, the incomers
probably didn’t stick around for long and did
their dying someplace else,” he says.
Around 3400 BC, the megasites were
abandoned in their turn – though the
Trypillians went on, inhabiting smaller, more
scattered sites. Anthony thinks that whatever
peace the farmers had negotiated with steppe
people broke down. Genetic analysis reveals
that after the demise of the megasites, the
two populations started interbreeding. A
tantalising theory that Nikitin is exploring – in
collaboration with David Reich’s ancient DNA
lab at Harvard University – is that the offspring
of that genetic mixing were the Yamnaya
people. If so, we may need to rewrite the story
of these herders, thought to have come from
the steppe, who, starting around 5000 years
ago, transformed Europe’s population
genetically, linguistically and culturally. They
have been portrayed as a murderous people,
but, perhaps, being already part European
farmer, they were able to complete this
transformation peacefully. Though the
question remains wide open, Nikitin says it is
possible that the Yamnaya came after a violent
period and ushered in a new ideology shaped
by the steppe. “At the peak of this despair an
idea formed, of a new world order,” he says.
Trypillian houses,
built from wattle
and daub, were
regularly burned
to the groundPottery known as
Cucuteni C has its
roots in the steppeLaura Spinney is a science journalist
based in Paris and author of Pale
Rider: The Spanish flu of 1918 and
BR how it changed the world
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ISTIANCHIRITA/CRE
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