The Cernavodă culture, ca. 4000– 3200 BC, was a late Copper Age archaeological culture. It was along the lower Eastern

Bug River uk, Західний Буг be, Захо́дні Буг , name_etymology = , image = Wyszkow_Bug.jpg , image_size = 250 , image_caption = Bug River in the vicinity of Wyszków, Poland , map = Vi ...

and

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , p ...

and along the coast of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

and somewhat inland, generally in present-day

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

and

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

. It is named after the Romanian town of Cernavodă. It is a successor to and occupies much the same area as the earlier

Karanovo culture The Karanovo culture is a Neolithic culture (Karanovo I-III ca. 62nd to 55th centuries BC) named after the Bulgarian village of (Караново, Sliven Province ). The culture, which is part of the Danube civilization, is considered the lar ...

, for which a destruction horizon seems to be evident. It is part of the "''Balkan-Danubian complex''" that stretches up the entire length of the river and into northern Germany via the

Elbe The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...

and the

Baden culture The Baden culture was a Chalcolithic culture from 3520–2690 BC. It was found in Central and Southeast Europe, and is in particular known from Moravia (Czech Republic), Hungary, southern Poland, Slovakia, northern Croatia and eastern Austria. I ...

; its northeastern portion is thought to be ancestral to the

Usatove culture The Usatove culture or Usatovo culture is a late variant of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, which flourished northwest of the Black Sea from 3500 BC to 3000 BC. The culture got its name from the name of the village of Usatove in the Odesa Obl ...

. It is characterized by defensive hilltop settlements. The pottery shares traits with that found further east, in the

Sredny Stog culture The Sredny Stog culture (, romanized: ''Serednʹostohivsʹka kulʹtura'') is a pre-Kurgan archaeological culture from the 5th millennium BC. It is named after the Russian term for the Dnieper river islet of today's Seredny Stih, Ukraine, where ...

on the south-west Eurasian steppe; burials similarly bear a resemblance to those further east. It has been theorized that Cernadova culture, together with Sredny Stog culture, was the source of Anatolian languages and introduced them to Anatolia through the Balkans after Anatolian split from the Proto-Indo-Anatolian language, which some linguists and archaeologists place in the area of the Sredny Stog culture.

Notes

References

* * J. P. Mallory, "Cernavoda Culture", ''

Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

'', Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. Indo-European archaeological cultures Chalcolithic cultures of Europe Archaeological cultures of Southeastern Europe Archaeological cultures of Eastern Europe Archaeological cultures in Bulgaria Archaeological cultures in Moldova Archaeological cultures in Romania Archaeological cultures in Ukraine 4th millennium BC {{Europe-archaeology-stub

See also

Notes

References