Culture
The culture takes its name from a royal burial found there. The Maikop Barrow, was extremely rich in gold and silver artifacts; Exceptional for the time.
The Maykop culture is believed to be one of the first to take of the wheel.
Its inhumation practices were typically Indo-European, typically in a pit, sometimes stone-lined, topped with a kurgan or (tumulus). Stone cairns replace kurgans in later interments. Because of its burial practices, and in terms of the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, it is listed as an intrusion from the Pontic steppe into the Caucasus. According to Mallory this is hard to evaluate and he emphasizes that: where the evidence for barrows is found, it is precisely in regions which later demonstrate the presence of non-Indo-European populations. In other occasions the culture has been cited, at the very least, as a kurganized culture with a strong ethnic and linguistic links to the descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It has been linked to the Lower Mikhaylovka group and Kemi Oba culture, and more distantly, to the Globular Amphora and Corded Ware cultures, if only in an economic sense. Mallory states:
Such a theory, it must be emphasized, is highly speculative and controversial although there is a recognition that this culture may be a product of at least two traditions: the local steppe tradition embraced in the Novosvobodna culture and foreign elements from south of the Caucasus which can be charted through imports in both regions.—EIEC,"Maykop Culture".
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