The Samara Bend (''Samarskaya Luka''; ) is a large hairpin bend of the middle

Volga River The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

to the east where it meets the Samara River. It is situated in the Samara region of

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. As the Volga enters its middle course it reaches the Zhiguli Mountains. The Samara Bend is formed as the river circles these hills. The Samara Bend National Park, one of the first in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, was established in 1984. Some pockets of the park's territory are among the northernmost points of the Great European Steppe. The Samara Bend is noted for a remarkable succession of archaeological cultures from 7000 BC to 4000 BC. These sites have revealed Europe's earliest pottery ( Elshanka culture), the world's oldest horse burial and signs of

horse worship Horse worship is a spiritual practice with archaeological evidence of its existence during the Iron Age and, in some places, as far back as the Bronze Age. The horse was seen as divine, as a sacred animal associated with a particular deity, or as ...

(the Syezzheye cemetery of Samara culture), and the earliest kurgans associated with

Proto-Indo-Europeans The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from t ...

(e.g., Krivoluchye assigned to Khvalynsk culture

Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas (, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeology, archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old European Culture, Old Europe" and for her Kurgan ...

. ''The Prehistory of Eastern Europe''. Part 1 (1956). P. 55.).

References

{{Authority control Geography of Russia Geography of Samara Oblast Volga River

See also

References