Kurgan

Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asia and Eastern, Southeast, Western, and Northern Europe during the third millennium BC.

[1] The earliest kurgans date to the fourth millennium BC in the Caucasus,[2] and some researchers associate these with the Indo-Europeans.

[3] Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity, and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia.

[4] The word has two possible etymologies, either from the Old Turkic root qori- "to close, to block, to guard, to protect", or qur- "to build, to erect, furnish, or stur".

[citation needed] Some sceptre graves could have been covered with a tumulus, placing the first kurgans as early as the fifth millennium BC in eastern Europe.

[7] Kurgans were used in Ukrainian and Russian steppes, their use spreading with migration into southern, central, and northern Europe in the third millennium BC.

[8][9] Later, Kurgan barrows became characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, and have been found from Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria (Thracians, Getae, etc.

Introduced by Marija Gimbutas in 1956, it combines kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the peoples who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language.

[10] Also associated with these spectacular burial mounds are the Pazyryk, an ancient people who lived in the Altai Mountains that lay in Siberian Russia on the Ukok Plateau, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.

Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots.

In all periods, the development of the kurgan structure tradition in the various ethnocultural zones is revealed by common components or typical features in the construction of the monuments.