Ukrainian History Global Initiative
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
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Linked in the article (18 min read)
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Cucuteni–Trypillia culture
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The article discusses Nebelivka and other ancient settlements in central Ukraine that are 'some six thousand years old' and may be 'the oldest large human settlements.' These are sites of the Trypillia (Cucuteni-Trypillia) culture, a Neolithic civilization that built remarkably large proto-cities with unique social organization - no walls, temples, or obvious power centers. This provides essential archaeological context for understanding Ukraine's deep prehistory.
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Scythians
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The article directly references 'Scythian warriors of the Ukrainian steppe' and the discovery of female warriors (the historical basis for Amazon legends). The Scythians were a nomadic people who dominated the Pontic steppe for centuries and had extensive contact with Greek civilization. Understanding their culture illuminates the article's themes about Ukraine's role in connecting civilizations and the origins of enduring cultural myths.
Amidst a war of aggression, scholars in Ukraine have undertaken one of the most ambitious knowledge projects of our time. Over the course of three years, more than a hundred Ukrainian and international scholars are together creating a long-durée history of the lands and peoples of the territories of today’s Ukraine from the formation of the earth to the present. The goal is to bring together knowledge about a crucial part of the world, and make it accessible to everyone in the world.
This endeavor, Ukrainian History Global Initiative, recalls some of the great encyclopedic ambitions of past centuries -- while bringing to bear the technological advances of our own. It’s an attempt to write interpretive history that people will want to read, made possible by the findings, sometimes quite spectacular, of recent decades. The goal is to bring knowledge about some of the great themes of the past to a very large global audience. At a time when specialization can separate scholars from audiences (and from one another!), we are working together to bring knowledge to everyone.
I’ve been privileged to be involved with Ukrainian History Global Initiative from its beginnings. The thought process began back in 2019, well before the full-scale invasion of 2022. So it would be a mistake to think of this project as a reaction to the current war. But the fact that the project has proceeded, with two major conferences in wartime Kyiv in 2023 and 2024 as well as other meetings around the world, is a sign to me of how important the humanities are in a time of crisis.
We are told that, under stress, the humanities must be sacrificed -- of what use are literature, philosophy, and history when we have problems to solve right now? And yet colleagues meeting in wartime Kyiv have a clearer sense of purpose, more esprit de corps, , and a better instinct for the essential. And soldiers on the front (as they tell me) want to talk about history and culture. In traumatic conditions, people think about where they stand amidst larger forces -- and they think about the why as well as the how of life.
The humanities offer that. The more extreme the circumstances, the more important they are. Which is why, of course, the enemies of freedom are the enemies of history, and the enemies of the humanities generally -- an ...
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