BABYNE’S CULTURAL GENESIS
Authors: Lytvynenko R. A. 
Published: November 2021

The problem of the Babyne Culture’s origin has been repeatedly raised by Ukrainian scientists. Thus, in the literature you can find about a dozen versions of Babyne’s cultural genesis (Братченко 1971; 1976; 1977; 1985; 1995a; 1995b; 2006; Березанская 1979; 1986; Писларий 1983; 1991; Pвslaru 2006; Дергачев 1986; Ковалева 1981; 1987a; 1987b; Черняков 1996; Отрощенко 1996; 1998; 2002; 2003; Grigoriev 2002; Санжаров 2010; Іванова, Тощев 2018). About half of these versions were born more as a result of the authors’ intuition than as a result of systematic, comprehensive and painstaking research. The author of these lines also devoted a series of publications to the problem of Babyne’s cultural genesis. This article summarizes the results of the author’s research of Babyne’s cultural genesis, which is not presented in full, but only in its key part — the origin of the primary of the structural units of the Babyne Cultural Circle — Dnieper-Don Babyne Culture (DDBC).
The basic source of research is burial mounds, which, compared to settlements, are better and more fully studied, are more mass, diagnostic in chronological and cultural-taxonomic sense. The archeological ensemble of Babyne cemeteries was initially divided into structural elements at the level of mound construction, burial structures, remains of the deceased, funeral equipment, traces of additional ritual actions, etc. The assessment of the structural components of the DDBC cemeteries shows that this set of elements is not homogeneous and can be divided into three groups, different in origin: I) traditions; II) external influences; III) innovation (figure).

Traditions are associated with the preceding local cultural component, mostly the Donets-Don Catacomb Culture and to a lesser extent the Ingul Catacomb Culture: burial «packages», «sets of tools», quivers with arrows, dice, animal «skins» («Head and Hooves»), certain types of metal axes and knives, stone maces and axes, wooden ware and boxes, wooden crooks, ceramic ware from a triangle-parquet-fir decor, ceramic amphorae and hemispherical bowls, faience beads with warts, bone ring buckles, etc. (figure: I).

ІІ. External influences have no local roots in Eastern Europe but find clear complex analogies in the cultures / groups of the Early Bronze Age in Central and South-Eastern Europe. All these effects relate to certain features of the burial ceremony, the headset jewelry and clothing decoration: gender opposition of the dead, copper-bronze neck ring, arm-spirals, double spiral pendants, spiral and tin tubes, disc plate with punch ornament, hemispherical platelets with two holes, pendant of Canis holes, buckles with a hook, wrist-guards (figure: II). This subcomplex allows to synchronize DDBC with the cultures of Central Europe of the Reineke’s Br A1b—A2a.
III. Innovations include such components of the cultural complex of DDBC, which can’t be associated with local cultural substrate and external influences: specific mound construction (long mounds, stone architecture), the location of secondary graves in the northern semicircle of the mound, wooden tombs and stone cysts, specific ceramic vessels, original system of ornament-signs, etc. (figure: III).
The three selected blocks are different in nature and origins and are understood by us as constituent elements of DDBC genesis. The basic substrate for the formation of the DDBC was the aboriginal component of the late Catacomb Culture, which began to transform into the DDBC thanks to an external catalyst from Central Europe (Unetice culture and related groups). This impulse from Central Europe to Eastern Europe can be linked to either migration or missionary cultural leaders. It should be borne in mind that these processes took place against the background of a global climate catastrophe with its maximum around 2200 BC.