Russia

One site, at Talyanky, east of the river Dnieper, is reckoned to have housed as many as 10,000 inhabitants. Yet, despite its size, it could hardly be called a town. Rather, it was an agglomeration of largely self-sufficient farmsteads. The buildings were oblong, timber-framed, clay-and-wattle structures with wooden floors reinforced with baked clay, and with low-pitched roofs. Most structures were divided into three or four rooms, each with a stove or hearth, which suggests what might be termed industrial use. Many of them were certainly used for baking clay objects. Settlements in Ukraine of the so-called Tripolye type, dating from approximately 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, belonged to people who grew wheat, barley, millet and fruit, and raised pigs, sheep, goats and cattle. ⁵

The size of such settlements suggests that there had been something of a revolution in food production. This had led to a marked improvement in diet, and hence in female fecundity. If the consequent population increase made for larger settlements, it probably also created pressure on resources which, as we have noticed, encouraged migration northward. The hunting bands that had led the way, also pioneered settlement, at first by erecting seasonal encampments, for summer or winter depending on the prey sought: deer, fish or wildfowl or furry animals. Such temporary settlements had similar characteristics to those of Sredny Stog in northern Ukraine, a place associated with the domestication of wild horses, and permanent settlements of later date. They were usually sited on a raised shelf of land above a river, this being convenient for transportation and communication as well as for fresh water and for fishing, yet safe from flooding. ⁶

One great advantage of the cold times had been the ease with which the meat of hunted creatures could be frozen. The popular Russian dish pelmeni is a reminder of this fact: at the onset of winter (a popular time for slaughtering animals), pasta shells filled with meat are thrown out of the kitchen window to freeze. Then, during the winter months, they are taken inside as needed, a shovelful at a time, to be boiled up for dinner. In warmer conditions, however, people learned to preserve meat, and fish, by air-drying or, more commonly, by salting.

The need for large quantities of salt to preserve both meat and fish was to promote both trade and industry. It encouraged searches for saline lakes and marshes, and the development of evaporation techniques. Excavations of sites in Ukraine have demonstrated that the trade in salt became extensive and far-ranging, and this helped to develop culture contacts with other budding societies.

While late Stone Age society had been developing in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, hunter-gatherers with stone technology had been developing to the north, towards Finland and the Baltic. A cemetery excavated by Soviet archaeologists in Karelia and dating from about 7,500 years ago tells us quite a lot about these people. Most were Europeoid, though a few had Mongoloid features derived from the climate their ancestors had endured. That most of the buried bodies faced east and were sprinkled with red ochre has persuaded archaeologists that they may have venerated the sun. The knives, fish-hooks and harpoons found along with animal remains show that they lived by hunting elk, beaver and seals as well as red and roe deer and wild pigs. ⁷ Climate as well as the availability of materials dictated the form of clothing they wore.

Human life, even in these early times, was more than a struggle for subsistence and self-preservation, however. The settlers had a taste for pretty things like ivories or amber brought from the Baltic. Archaeologists have found a range of decorative jewellery, some of which rings or rattles beguilingly when the wearer moves, and a variety of primitive musical instruments — pipes, drums and bells — that suggest that these people did not lack amusement, nor noisy means of conjuring up spirits. Other finds suggest a yearning for immortality: the remains of animal sacrifice, for example, and the care taken of the dead. In many cases the bodies of the deceased were ritually positioned and buried together with votive statuettes as well as objects that might be useful in an afterlife, or of which the dead had been fond.