One of the Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea, Olvia lies close to the Borysthenes, the main river that gave it commercial meaning by connecting the fertile Ukraine to the sea. The Scythians later called this waterway the Dānu apr, or the name it bears today, the Dnepr. Herodotus wrote of Olvia,and Strabo also mentioned it.
Historical Era: Bronze Age
Discovered in 1873 when the industrialist S. I. Mamontov brought to Uvarov skulls found by an engineer at the Utkino station building the Iaroslavl-Vologda railroad line in the upper Don basin, this culture was named for the village close to the site. Uvarov considered it to be on the cusp between Stone and Bronze Ages, unclear whether or not the bronze items had simply been imported from another Asian group. Spitsyn and Gorodtsov, though, located it in the Bronze Age, late 3rd to mid- 2nd millennium. The people were Indo-European, a mixture of Baltic, Slavic, and German tribes. Noted for both battle axes and ceramics, it was one of the most influential cultures in the forest belt of Eastern Europe. Archeological evidence also shows them in battle with the Volosovo culture, which Uvarov had discovered near his family estate of Karacharovo and identified as a transitional point between Paleo- and Neolithic cultures. The Bronze Age Fatianovo tribe ultimately displaced the Volosovo when brought their cattle to graze on the latter’s lands, in the Volga-Kama region.
Found on the right bank of the Kama River, this is a unique culture, and one of the richest kurgans in Russian archeology, from the 9th-3rd centuries, BCE. Artefacts show evidence of at least some trade with Scythians. Because there are several burial styles, it is impossible to isolate a single culture here; some evidence suggests that this was an Ugro- tribe. At 1st Congress K. I. Nevostruev mentions that they burned their corpses.
Armavir was chosen as the capital of Armenia in 331 BC, when the Orontid Dynasty declared its independence from the Achaemenid Empire. Archeological inscriptions have been found in the Elamite language about Gilgamesh, in addition to Hesoid’s poetry and quotes from Euripides. Cleopatra also figures into this history; King Tigranes II sent an expedition to Palestine to attack, and brought many Jews back in captivity to settle in Armavir. Conquerors include the Seleucids, Parthians, Roman Empire, Sassanids and then Byzantine Empire before the Arabs claimed it in 645.
The Maikop culture, ca. 3700 BC—3000 BC, was a major Bronze Age archaeological culture in the Kuban region of Southern Russia, extending from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait to near the modern border of Dagestan.