Abstract
Six thousand years ago, one of the oldest civilisations of prehistoric Europe was born between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers in the territory of today's Ukraine. Today, we are uncovering the remains of huge agglomerations of thousands of Neolithic farmers of the Tripolitan culture.
But the life of these vast communities caused the depletion of natural resources, and the great accumulation of people even caused one of the earliest plague epidemics in human history. The mega-settlements were never rebuilt after this catastrophe.