Trypillia is a village in the Obukhiv Raion

Raion

A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...

(district) of the Kiev

Kiev Oblast

Kyiv Oblast, sometimes written as Kiev Oblast is an oblast in central Ukraine.The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kyiv , also being the capital of Ukraine...

 Oblast

Oblast

Oblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...

, in central Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, with 2,800 inhabitants (as of 1 January 2005). It lies about 40 km (25 mi) south from Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 on the Dnieper River

Dnieper River

The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...

.

History

The extensive Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 ancient ruin located near Trypillia was the location of the initial Ukrainian discovery by the Czech archeologist Vicentiy Khvoika of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture that existed between 5400-2700 BCE, which covered an area of 35000 km² (13,513.6 sq mi), and encompassed present-day southern Ukraine, Moldova

Moldova

Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, and Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. Khvoika reported his findings in 1897 to the 11th Congress of Archaeologists, marking the official date of the discovery of this culture. Initially named the Trypillian culture (or Tripolie in Russian), it eventually was determined that it and the Cucuteni culture of Romania were the same. Today the commonly accepted term for this culture combines both names, hence Cucuteni-Trypillian.

The name of Trypillia means "three fields" in Slavic languages and is unrelated to Tripoli

Tripoli

Tripoli is the capital and largest city in Libya. It is also known as Western Tripoli , to distinguish it from Tripoli, Lebanon. It is affectionately called The Mermaid of the Mediterranean , describing its turquoise waters and its whitewashed buildings. Tripoli is a Greek name that means "Three...

. It was first mentioned by Kievan chroniclers in connection with the Battle of the Stugna River

Battle of the Stugna River

The Battle of the Stugna River was a battle between the princes of Kievan Rus and the nomadic Cumans tribe . The Kievan forces were defeated....

 in 1093. During the 12th century, Trypillia was a fortress which defended approaches towards Kiev from the steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

. One of its rulers was Mstislav the Bold

Mstislav the Bold

Mstislav Mstislavich the Bold was one of the most popular and active princes of Kievan Rus' in the decades preceding Mongol invasion of Rus. He was the maternal grandfather of Alexander Nevsky and the prince Leo of Galicia....

. During the subsequent centuries, the town dwindled into insignificance. In 1919 it was the venue of the Trypillia incident, in which Ukrainian forces under Danylo Terpylo massacred a unit of Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

s.

External links

• Trypillian Museum
• Ukrainian Neolith
• The Trypillia-USA-Project The Trypillian Civilization Society homepage (in English).
• Trypillian Culture from Ukraine A page from the UK-based group "Arattagar" about Trypillian Culture, which has many great photographs of the group's trip to the Trypillian Museum in Trypillia, Ukraine (in English).