Gimbutas defined the Kurgan culture as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including the Samara and Seroglazovo cultures of the Dnieper–Volga region in the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BC).

Scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a "Kurgan culture" as reflecting an early Proto-Indo-European ethnicity that existed in the steppes and in southeastern Europe from the fifth millennium to the third millennium BC. In Kurgan cultures, most burials were in kurgans, either clan or individual.

Jan 29, 2024 · Marija Gimbutas, a Lithuanian-American archaeologist, first proposed the Steppe Hypothesis—also referred to as the Kurgan Hypothesis—in the 1950s. Her theory was grounded in archaeological evidence, particularly the Kurgan culture, which was prevalent in the Pontic-Caspian steppe region during the 4th to 1st millennia BCE.

Kurgan culture, . By about 2300 bc the Kurgans arrived in the Aegean and Adriatic regions. The Kurgans buried their dead in deep shafts within artificial burial mounds, or barrows. The word kurgan means “barrow,” or “artificial mound,” in Turkic and

Jun 7, 2020 · These elite burial monuments are not only important for rich funerary goods but also for the complex structure of the kurgans themselves. This article is dedicated to the phenomena called ‘kurgans’, the monumental burial mounds of riding nomads of the Scythian period.

The Kurgan people culture existed during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC, they lived in northern Europe, from N.Pontic across Central Europe. The word "kurgan" means a mound or a barrow in Türkic. Kurgan culture is characterized by pit …

The Kurgan model of Indo-European origins is about both the people and their Proto-Indo-European language. It uses both archaeology and linguistics to show the history of their culture at different stages of the Indo-European expansion.

A fresh look at the Kurgan hypothesis explores the possible link between North American First Nations and Indo-European cultures. There are parallels that challenge traditional stories. In 1956, a hypothesis was proposed by UCLA archaeology and anthropology professor Marija Gimbutas.

In her interpretation, these migratory waves engulfed and transformed neighboring cultures. The first wave alone was responsible for the destruction and transformation of numerous regional Late Neolithic/Copper Age cultures from the Rhine Valley to Anatolia, including all the cultures along.

The "Kurgan culture" concept has for two decades been the central element in attempts to explain the cultural shifts that occurred during the Late Copper Age/Early Broze Age transition in Eastern Europe, ca. 2500 b.c.