A Short Look at Transnistria

Transnistria is the last of the disputed territories we're going to cover this week. We've touched on Kosovo, Northern Cyprus and the Caucusus' states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia already. Transnistria is not a member of the Caucusus region, but Transnistria's independence claims stem from the collapse of the USSR like these Caucusus would-be nations. Transnistria is sandwiched between the Ukraine and Moldova. Moldova, from whom they claimed independence, doesn't not recognize them and still holds Transnistria as part of its sovereign territory. Transnistria has a much older history though than the current independent or not state.

In prehistoric times and antiquity it was occupied Dacian and Scythian tribes, settled by Greek colonists at Tyras and eventually became a Thracian homeland to a branch of the Getae. The area would fall under the sway of the Roman Empire in 56 AD when Rome rebuilt the city of Tyras along the Black Sea. Tyras would become an important minting city for Rome and over a couple of centuries this city in what Rome called Lower Moesia. Numerous copper coins would go out from Tyras throughout the whole empire.

As the Western Roman Empire was collapsing the area would see a whole host of people groups swing through, including the Goths and the Huns. The Huns would destroy the city of Tyras but the Goths would stick around for centuries and live throughout Transnistria. Then the Slavic peoples migrated through the area, both Southern and Eastern tribes. Also various Turkic peoples would settle and then move sometimes living alongside Slavic tribes and other times displacing them. The area would eventually become dominated by a Turkic confederation by a tribe called the Cumans. Cumania, a land more or less controlled by this semi-nomadic confederation stretched from the Balkans in the west to the Caucusus and further east into modern Iran. This large swathe of land brought them into conflict with the new threat from the east, the Mongols. But the Mongols didn't establish any tangible permanent legacy and the region entered part of the Kievan Rus' sphere of influence.

At about the turn of the 15th century the area became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then part of the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. This would last for nearly 300 years until the area was taken over by the Russian Empire in 1792 and 1793. By this time the area was occupied primarily ethnic Moldavian, ethnic Ukrainian and a number of various Tatar peoples (one of the few holdovers from Mongol invasions). Under Russian influence which lasted from 1793 until the Russian Revolution in 1917 the area was heavily colonized. Russian peasants were moved there to be given land (as all of the Russian land was in the hands of noble Russians). Also, Jews and Germans were moved to the region to help build up the economy.

After the fall of the Russian Empire and the dawn of the USSR, Transnistria became a part of the Socialist Republic of Moldova under the power of the Kremlin. The area was not given any rest though as it was invaded during World War II when it came under the control of Romania. Romania instituted a strict Romanianization program over the area and a multitude of Ukrainian and Moldovan Jews were either killed or sent to concentration camps by combined Romanian and German forces. Other ethnic groups were relocated and forced to move. After the war the Soviets reacquired the region but took a page out of German/Romanian playbook and relocated numerous Moldovan and Romanian families, often eastward to places like Kazakhstan and Siberia.

In the late 1980's as the USSR was coming apart at the seams the Moldovan authorities pushed for more autonomy and power. They readopted the Latin alphabet, declared Moldovan to be the only official language of the region and declared the closeness of Moldovan and Romanian linguistic heritage. This nationalism and ethnic posturing caused many Russian speaking and Slavic ethnic groups to become very uncomfortable. They were worried about two major things. First, the rhetoric of some of the Moldovan groups was very damning to non-Moldovan/Romanian people living within Moldova. Second, they were terrified by a reunification of Romania and Moldova.

In response to all of this war broke out as the people who did not want to return to a Romanian-Moldovan alliance attempted to break away from Moldova. From 1990 - 1992 war between Moldovan and Romanian forces against the breakaway region raged. Transnistria would have been easily crushed had it not been for support they received from official elements of the Russian army, Russian volunteers and Ukrainian volunteers. As a result of the war Transnistria has been a de facto state since 1992, only it has been almost entirely recognized as a part of Moldova by the international community.

Since 1992, the government of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) has been ruled from its capital of Tiraspol, a city built on or near the ruins of the Greek settlement of Tyras by the Russians in 1792. The population of Transnistria is over 30% Moldovan, making it the largest percentage of the population. However, ethnic Russians and Ukrainians combine for a near 60% of the population. Thus, they speak Slavic based Russian language and use the Cyrillic alphabet in Transnistria as opposed to the Romance based Moldovan language and Latin alphabet used in Moldova. Tensions still simmer in this disputed region, especially given the fact that FC Sheriff Tiraspol dominates the Moldovan Football League. In a recent BBC World Football report it was noted that crossing the border from Moldova to Transnistria for a football match was a lot like crossing the border back into the days of the USSR, murals, police checkpoints, complete with hammer & sickle and all. It is a starkly different place than both Moldova and Ukraine which border it.

Burning down the house, A Talking Heads approach to society

Burning down the House is one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, behind Psycho Killer, Give me back my name and Stay up Late. Stay up Late has sentimental value to me as my uncle used to sing it to me as a child. It might be this incident that has caused me to be a bit off kilter. Exposure to David Byrne at age 3 or 4 is bound to have repercussions. But, this is neither here nor there. We're talking about the most fascinating Neolithic European culture in the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Romania, Moldova and the Ukraine.

The Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture was glossed over on episode 4 of the podcast, Neolithic Part I. Basically, I could have created an entire podcast dedicated to this fascinating culture, but lumped it in with a bunch of other Neolithic cultures. There are 3000+ sites dedicated to this culture that spanned the three modern countries of Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. The culture was one that flourished on trade, but had a whole lot of other things going for it. First, it was immensely huge. Some of their settlements had more than 10,000 people living in them, making them much larger than their way more famous contemporaries in Mesopotamia. Second, they had an incredibly rich religious life. One aspect of this religious life can be seen in their desire to burn down the house.

Every 70-80 years or so, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture would leave their village, burn it to the ground and then reconstruct it in the exact same fashion as it stood before the burning. Most modern people would say that this is crazy and counterproductive. But a study of their religious convictions would indicate that they did this because of their belief in the cyclical nature of life. Many of the tombs of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture were egg shaped. Marija Gimbutas, an expert on this, states that these tombs and the burning indicate a belief in some sort of religion that advocated for rebirth. The burning of the settlements was a celebration of death. This wasn't, according to her theory, a morbid religion, but that death was necessary element for a rebirth, and thus something to be celebrated. If this theory is to be believed, then the burning of the villages was a religious celebration intended to bring lost loved ones back to life. Most of the sites show this ritual burning, but none more so than Poduri site in Romania which is believed to have been burned thirteen times. This shows a remarkable dedication to this ritual that most modern cultures could never accomplish.

Barter tokens of the Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture

The Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture is probably the most fascinating Neolithic culture of Europe. It existed from around 5500 BC - 2750 BC. They built massive settlements that served as prototypes for cities, some of which grew to an immense size of 15,000 people. They are fascinating because of a number of reasons, including their religious curiosities, their giant cities, their pottery and sculptures, their use of the earlier Vinča symbols and their barter tokens. We'll cover a couple of these items on the blog shortly, but for now we'll focus on the barter tokens.

There are about 3000 sites of Cucuteni-Trypillian inhabitation across Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. This has provided an immense amount of artifacts. Some of the most prevalent artifacts are these barter tokens. The exact usage of the barter tokens is unknown, but it is presumed that they started out as tools to keep count of things in storage. Basically, if the typical Cucuteni-Trypillian farmer had 200 lbs of wheat to trade he could carry around these barter tokens to represent he had 200 lbs of wheat to trade with people. Carrying a number of tokens would have been easier than carrying the wheat and so he would trade 10 lbs of wheat for say a vase or decorative textile for his wife and instead of giving the aforementioned 10 lbs of wheat up front he'd give his trading partner a token. That token would later be exchanged for the actual wheat. This made trading a whole lot easier for the Cucutenit-Trypillian.

All of those 3000 sites indicate a shared cultural heritage, but not a a formalized country or empire. Each site was probably something like a city-state, in that they were independent from all of the others. But, each "city" was about 3-4 km apart from one another and this allowed for extensive trade routs. By making trading easier for people, the various "cities" were able to prosper. This innovation and lack of government insight explains the longevity of the society. Current politicians would do well to see the effectiveness in letting businesses do what they're best at. Current politics aside though, these barter tokens show an evolution in business. Eventually things like barter tokens would transform into currency and we'd end up with the system we have today, which is working super. Just ask the Greeks...

The Mighty Tasty Aurochs

Throughout the podcast series I plan on supplementing the episodes with some blog posts about some of the more interesting features of European history that I leave out of the episodes. I'm going to have to leave some things out for time concerns, so I'll try to make it up with these supplemental blogs.

An aurochs skeleton that dates to around 7500 BC. It
was found in Denmark along with another near full
skeleton. Notice the horns and how they point out. Those
were the horns that early modern humans had to deal with
in order to get a descent burger. Thank heavens for Five Guys.

On Episode 2 Paleolithic Europe, we mentioned the mighty tasty Aurochs. These guys are so fascinating that they deserve a blog post.  Aurochs were the ancestors to most of today's many species of domesticated cattle. They were truly massive animals, growing as tall as 5'11. Though, the northern Aurochs grew to be a bit larger than their southern cousins. They also weighed over 1500 lbs on average. But a number of specimens found put the weight of the beast at well over a ton and a British ton at that (2204 lbs, not the measly American ton of 2000 lbs).

If we were transported back in time to see an Aurochs we'd easily recognize it as a species of cow, but it had some major differences to today's varieties. First, the horns were enormous and why not? It had the muscle mass to support them. Might as well go big. The legs of the aurochs were skinnier than modern cows and longer too. This gave them a very broad look up front, sort of like a cartoon version of a bull.

How aurochs behaved is a bit of a mystery and causes some disagreement between scientists. Some think that aurochs basically behaved like modern cows and other creatures like Buffalo and Bison. Others think they might have been different and more solitary creatures. This line of thinking comes from observing the tail end of aurochs existence on earth. But, this could have been because of limited numbers and the loss of the wild open plains and forests they once roamed so freely in. Before domestication, the aurochs roamed all over Europe (excluding Ireland and Iceland) throughout Asia and into North Africa.

The taming of Aurochs would happen independently in various regions around the world. This can explain some of the wide varieties of cattle we have throughout Europe and Asia. The domestication began somewhere around 10,000 years ago in the Indian Subcontinent and around the same time in parts of the Near East. The taming of the Aurochs happened a little later around 6000 BC in the Caucasian Mountains and Mesopotamia.  Then the domestication would travel into other parts of Europe and slowly most of the wild aurochs were no longer wild.

The few surviving Aurochs found their movement restricted by civilization and climate change so they holed up in Lithuania, Moldavia, Transylvania, East Prussia, and Poland. Hunting of the last wild aurochs became an activity that would become limited. First, only nobles could hunt them and finally only the royal houses. The 1% only could enjoy the tasty hamburgers. But as the population still dwindled we see an early attempt at ecological activism. Kings hired people as gamekeepers to help the remaining aurochs survive. But it was too late. The population dwindled further and further until the last aurochs died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest in Poland. I joked on the podcast about the Swedes taking offense to this and invading Poland in response. The Swedes did invade Poland shortly the death of the last aurochs, but this was because of a combination of some uppity Polish Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants distrust of the Lithuanian-Polish rule and Swedish opportunism. However, in the looting that came out of the war the skull of the last aurochs found its way into the hands of the Swedes and remains in a Swedish museum to this day.

I keep referring to the aurochs as tasty and there is a reason for this. Obviously the kings and nobles wanted to keep all the meat to themselves and then tried to preserve it when it was running out. But the aurochs has been depicted throughout history.

 Here is a picture of some petroglyphs of the aurochs in a cave in Bourdeilles, France that date back some 18,000 years ago.

Here is a picture of the famous cave painting in Lascaux, France that date around 17,000 years ago. The aurochs were still prevalent enough when Julius Caesar was tromping around Gaul that he mentions them in his book The Gallic War.







Another reason I think that they must have been so tasty is that people have been trying to bring them back into existence since the 1920's. A couple of German brothers starting breeding aurochs descendants in the hope of being able to make an aurochswurst sandwich to enjoy with a bit of sauerkraut. It didn't quite work, but the resulting Heck Cattle does have some of aurochs' features.

Polish scientists are hoping to reconstruct aurochs from extracting DNA from the ancient remains of some of the aurochs they have in their possession. I don't believe there are any plans in Sweden to give them back the Jaktorów head. Another group of scientists have started the TaurOs project, a Danish effort to bring back the aurochs into existence. With any luck, we'll be able to sit down to an aurochs cheeseburger with our grandkids.