Maykop Culture
The Maykop culture or Maikop culture (, , scientific transliteration: ''Majkop,''), c. 3700 BC–3000 BC, is a major Bronze Age archaeological culture in the western Caucasus region. It extends along the area from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait to near the modern border of Republic of Dagestan, Dagestan and southwards to the Kura (Caspian Sea), Kura River. The culture takes its name from a royal burial, the Maykop kurgan in the Kuban River valley. According to genetic studies on ancient DNA published in 2018, the Maykop population came from the south, from Imereti, and was descended from the Chalcolithic farmers known as Darkveti-Meshoko who first colonized the north side of the Caucasus. Maykop is therefore the "ideal archaeological candidate for the founders of the Northwest Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian language family". Territory In the south, the Maykop culture bordered the approximately contemporaneous Kura–Araxes culture (3500–2200 BC), which ext ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eurasian Steppe
The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, European Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia. Since the Paleolithic, Paleolithic age, the Steppe Route has been the main overland route between Eastern Europe, North Asia, Central Asia and East Asia economically, politically, and culturally. The Steppe route is a predecessor not only of the Silk Road, which developed during Classical antiquity, antiquity and the Middle Ages, but also of the Eurasian Land Bridge in the modern era. It has been home to nomadic empires and many large tribal confederations and ancient states throughout history, such as the Xiongnu, Scythia, Cimmerians, Cimmeria, Sarmatians, Sarmatia, Hunnic Empire, Sogdia, Xianbei, Mongol Empire, Magyar tribes, and Göktürk Khaganate. Geography Divisi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Northwest Caucasian Languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian languages as the ''Caspian languages''), is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region,Hoiberg, Dale H. (2010) chiefly in three Russian republics ( Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East. The group's relationship to any other language family is uncertain and unproven. One language, Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCO classifying all as either "vulnerable", "endangered", or "severely endangered". The Northwest Caucasian languages possess highly complex sets of consonant distinctions paired with a lack of vo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nalchik
Nalchik (, ; ; ) is the capital city of Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia, situated at an altitude of in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains; about northwest of Beslan (Beslan is in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania). It covers an area of . Population: History The territory of modern-day Nalchik was formerly known as Sloboda. The modern city dates from the early 19th century when the expanding Russian Empire built a fort there in 1818. In 1838, a Russian military settlement was founded in the city, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, in the year 1921, Nalchik was given the status of administrative center of Kabardin Autonomous Oblast. During the Russian Empire, the settlement was the administrative capital of the Nalchiksky Okrug of the Terek Oblast. The word "Nalchik" literally means "small horseshoe" in Kabardian language, Kabardian (or Circassian, a Northwest Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian language) and Karachay-Balkar language, Karachay-Balkar (a T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jar-Burial Culture
Jar burial is a human burial custom where the corpse is placed into a large earthenware container and then interred. Jar burials are a repeated pattern at a site or within an archaeological culture. When an anomalous burial is found in which a corpse or cremated remains have been interred, it is not considered a "jar burial". Jar burial can be traced to various regions across the globe. It was practiced as early as 4500 BCE, and as recently as the 15th–17th centuries CE. Areas of jar burial excavations include India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Palestine, Taiwan, Japan, Cambodia, Iran, Syria, Sumatra, Egypt, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. These different locations had different methods, accoutrements, and rationales behind their jar burial practices. Cultural practices included primary versus secondary burial, burial offerings (bronze or iron tools and weapons; bronze, silver, or gold ornaments; wood, stone, clay, glass, paste) in or around burials, and so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leyla-Tepe Culture
The Leyla-Tepe culture () of the South Caucasus belongs to the Chalcolithic era. It got its name from the site in the Agdam District of modern-day Azerbaijan. Its settlements were distributed on the southern slopes of Central Caucasus, from 3800 until 3200 B.C. Monuments of the Leyla-Tepe were first located in the 1980s by I. G. Narimanov, a Soviet archaeologist. In the 2000s, attention to the monuments was inspired by the risk of their damage due to the construction of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and the South Caucasus pipeline. Leyla-Tepe site The settlement of Leyla-Tepe is located on the Karabakh plain at the northwestern outskirts of the small village of Eyvazlı, Agdam, close to the town of Quzanlı in the Aghdam District of Azerbaijan. It was discovered in 1984 by I. Narimanov. It is at an altitude of 100 m above sea level. The semi-dry bed of the Khachinchay River is located 8-10 km to the north. The settlement was originally found as a round hill, 50-60 m in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carbon-14
Carbon-14, C-14, C or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic matter is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and colleagues (1949) to date archaeological, geological and hydrogeological samples. Carbon-14 was discovered on February 27, 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Its existence had been suggested by Franz Kurie in 1934. There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon on Earth: carbon-12 (C), which makes up 99% of all carbon on Earth; carbon-13 (C), which makes up 1%; and carbon-14 (C), which occurs in trace amounts, making up about 1-1.5 atoms per 10 atoms of carbon in the atmosphere. C and C are both stable; C is unstable, with half-life years. Carbon-14 has a specific activity of 62.4 mCi/mmol (2.31 GBq/mmol), or 164.9 GBq/g. Carbon-14 decay ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Donets
The Seversky Donets () or Siverskyi Donets (), usually simply called the Donets (), is a river on the south of the East European Plain. It originates in the Central Russian Upland, north of Belgorod, flows south-east through Ukraine (Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts) and then again through Russia (Rostov Oblast) to join the river Don, about from the Sea of Azov. The Donets is the fourth-longest river in Ukraine, and the largest in eastern Ukraine, where it is an important source of fresh water. It gives its name to the Donets Basin, known commonly as the Donbas, an important coal-mining and industrial region in Ukraine. Etymology The names ''Don'' and its diminutive ''Donets'' are derived from Iranic, Sarmatian "the river".Mallory, J.P. and Victor H. Mair. ''The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West''. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. p. 106 Scytho-Sarmatians inhabited the areas to the north of the Black Sea from 11 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Don River, Russia
The Don () is the fifth-longest river in Europe. Flowing from Central Russia to the Sea of Azov in Southern Russia, it is one of Russia's largest rivers and played an important role for traders from the Byzantine Empire. Its basin is between the Dnieper basin to the west, the lower Volga basin immediately to the east, and the Oka basin (tributary of the Volga) to the north. Native to much of the basin were Slavic nomads. The Don rises in the town of Novomoskovsk southeast of Tula (in turn south of Moscow), and flows 1,870 kilometres to the Sea of Azov. The river's upper half meanders subtly south; however, its lower half consists of a great eastern curve, including Voronezh, making its final stretch, an estuary, run west south-west. The main city on the river is Rostov-on-Don. Its main tributary is the Seversky Donets, centred on the mid-eastern end of Ukraine, thus the other country in the overall basin. To the east of a series of three great ship locks and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sea Of Azov
The Sea of Azov is an inland Continental shelf#Shelf seas, shelf sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, and sometimes regarded as a northern extension of the Black Sea. The sea is bounded by Russia on the east, and by Ukraine on the northwest and southwest (the parts of Ukraine bordering the sea are currently Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, under Russian occupation). It is an important access route for Central Asia, from the Caspian Sea via the Volga–Don Canal. The sea is largely affected by the inflow of the Don (river), Don, Kuban (river), Kuban, and other rivers, which bring sand, silt, and shells, which in turn form numerous bays, liman (landform), limans, and narrow spit (landform), spits. Because of these deposits, the sea bottom is relatively smooth and flat, with the depth gradually increasing toward the middle. Because of the river inflow, water in the sea has low salinity and a high amount of biomass (such a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of the modern Middle East. Just beyond it lies southwestern Iran, where the region transitions into the Iranian plateau, Persian plateau, marking the shift from the Arab world to Iran. In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran (southwest), Turkey (southeast), Syria (northeast), and Kuwait. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture". It is recognised as the cradle of some of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Uruk Period
The Uruk period (; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistory, protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumer, Sumerian civilization. The late Uruk period (34th to 32nd centuries) saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age; it has also been described as the "Protoliterate period". It was during this period that pottery painting declined as copper started to become popular, along with cylinder seals. Dating and periodization The term "Uruk period" was coined at a conference in Baghdad in 1930, along with the preceding Ubaid period and following Jemdet Nasr period. The chronology of the Uruk period is highly debated and still very uncertain. It is known that it covered most of the 4th millennium BC. But t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novotitarovskaya Culture
Novotitarovskaya culture (miswritten Novotitorovka culture), was a Bronze Age archaeological culture which flourished in the North Caucasus ca. 3300–2700 BC. The Novotitarovskaya culture was located immediately to the north of and largely overlapped portions of the Maykop culture. It faced the Sea of Azov, running from the Kerch Strait eastwards, almost to the Caspian, roughly congruent with the modern Krasnodar Krai region of Russia. It is distinguished by its burials, particularly by the presence of wagons in them and its own distinct pottery, as well as a richer collection of metal objects than those found in adjacent cultures, as is to be expected considering its relationship to the Maykop culture. It is grouped with the larger Yamnaya culture complex, often supposed as bearer of the Indo-European languages. In common with it, the economy was semi-nomadic pastoralism mixed with some agriculture. Notes Sources * Further reading * {{cite book , last1=Mallory , first1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |