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MAYKOP PEOPLE LEFT FOR A BETTER LUCK
Natalya Ivanona
Moscow, state Historical Museum

CC-Literature and History Department

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Russian archaeologists excavated burial-mounds at the South of Kalmykia and found a burial, which is thought to have been made by Maykop people - the mysterious people that lived more than five thousand years ago near the Kuban River.

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The scientists believe it to be the traces of colonization: these formerly very rich people tried to assimilate other regions at the end of their history. The disappearance of Maykop people still remains a mystery.

Natalya Shishlina, the custodian of the Bronze Age collection of the Eurasian steppes and the Caucasus, State Historical Museum, have for almost twenty years been working in Kalmykia, excavating burial-mounds spread all over the steppes in great quantities. It was ten years ago that the scientist first came across Maykop people - the mysterious tribe that lived more than five years ago near the Kuban River. They left this fertile land quite suddenly and without any clear reason. Maykop people were rich crop-growers and cattle-breeders with a developed culture. They are believed to have moved from the Near East, most likely from Anatolia (modern Iran). They brought the newest technologies with them. They mastered the potter's wheel, weaving, metallurgy, elaborate jewelry production. They introduced these technologies into the life of people living across the Caucasus aside from the great ancient civilizations. After having spent some five hundred years in the fertile valley of the Kuban River, Maykop people disappeared suddenly from there and now the scientists find their traces between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azov.

According to modern data, Maykop people moved from the Kuban River valley to the North, to the banks of the Don River, and then turned to the Southeast, to the open steppes. There were some artifacts left by Maykop people excavated in the Stavropol Territory, but only solitary burials were found so deep into the steppes. The scientists did not believe them to be the traces of Maykop people, but of some accidental strangers. With time a hypothesis developed, saying that they did proceed so far searching for a better luck and here came the finale of the drama - the last Maykop people melted away among the steppes cultures of the Bronze Age, nevertheless, introducing their knowledge and culture into the live of the latter. N. Shishlina was eager to get more facts to prove this hypothesis. This summer her expedition found a burial place of the Maykop period.

Under the high burial-mound there was a right-angular hole covered with wooden boards. At the bottom of the burial there was a skeleton of an adult lying writhing on its right side with its head to the South and its hands at the face. A long bronze knife of a fine form broadened to the upper part was by the head. Only Maykop people had such knives. Nearby there was a kind of a stone tool. Round the pelvis there were stone beads strewn: the dead is likely to have had an embroidered belt on. All the features make for a Maykop man. Still the scientists can be sure of it only after the radiocarbon analysis dating of the skeleton bones and anthropological examining.

"Our excavations bring about more questions, rather than answers", says N. Shishlina. "Why did an agricultural people decide to leave for the open steppes, where the only possible mean of existence is cattle breeding? Did they grow crops there? Did they have settlements?" At least now the scientists have a chance to find out, how Maykop people looked like, for until now all the skeletons ever found were in a very poor condition.

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