| | | ...The history of the city also seems to begin in Ukraine. Thanks to LiDAR and advanced carbon dating, we are now aware of a complex of ancient cities in what is now central Ukraine, Nebelivka and others, which are some six thousand years old. These seem to be the oldest large human settlements, older than ancient Mesopotamian cities which we have been taught to see as the cradle of civilization. Their arrangement suggests an interesting form of urban life -- no walls or temple or obvious centers of power, only avenues and gathering places and houses and lodges.
Even the communication between us now, the language on the screen that I write and you read, has to do with the lands of Ukraine. The words I am writing now, and the languages that half the world speaks, also, it appears, descend from the Ukrainian steppe. English is an Indo-European language. One of most important debates in the history of the sciences and the humanities is the origins of the Indo-European languages. The discussion of why we speak the languages we do and where they come from has been going on for well over two hundred years in a modern scholarly form, and of course for much longer. And now the Indo-European part, the biggest part, seems to have been settled. And as a result of evidence from ancient DNA, it is reasonable to conclude that the peoples who spread Indo-European languages, now spoken by about half the world, originated some five thousand years ago in the south Ukrainian steppe.
Although all of this is still in discussion, and I certainly won’t claim that all....
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