Reconstruction of Talianki, Ukraine. Largest city on Earth from 3600-3500 BC.

16 comments
  1. Ukraine lands were always fertile and favourable for human habitation. Temperate climate, big rivers and access to the sea, many importand trade routes.

  2. Ukraine is on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, from where the proto-Indo-European speakers are believed to have originated, before they wiped out nearly all other language groups in what’s now Europe, Turkey, Iran and north India, starting around 3000 BC, give or take a few centuries. It makes sense that they were relatively numerous just before they started on this.

    In fact numbers are a huge part of the story. Some interesting research suggests they built up these numbers because they were among the earliest groups to be able to digest milk after childhood: as we know the early Iranians were, they were herders. This meant they could have more and better fed fighting men, to invade their neighbors, take over their land, repeat.

    If you speak a European language other than the few non IE ones, there’s your origin story. Pretty similar to everyone else’s, probably.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2015-11-24/europeans-drink-milk-tolerate-lactose-dates/6955414

    https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01667476/document

  3. How did they find that out?

    I mean, is there a list of persons living there?

    It was 5500 to 5400 years ago. It’s probably hard to ask witnesses.

    And which one was larger the years before and the years after?

  4. Reminds me of ancient Kyiv, a sprawling settlement but hardly “urban”, made up of many single storey houses, wide dirt roads and a huge main square used for keeping the animals. A giant village more than a city.

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