Settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture

The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture (c. 5500-2750 BC) left behind thousands of settlement ruins across modern Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, spanning 350,000 sq km from the Carpathians to the Dnieper. During its middle phase (c. 4100-3500 BC), the culture built some of Eurasia's largest settlements -- proto-cities of 100-400 hectares with thousands of buildings, predating Sumerian cities by over 500 years. Settlements such as Talianki may have housed up to 15,000 people across 340 hectares. The inhabitants deliberately burned their dwellings every 60-80 years before resettling, a practice requiring over 130 trees' worth of firewood per single-story structure. They produced distinctive painted pottery, anthropomorphic figurines, and copper jewelry.