Vikentiy Khvoyka – the man who discovered Cucuteni-Trypillian culture to the world

Thanks to a series of random coincidence of circumstances, a small village in the Kiev region today is well known to historians and archaeologists all over the world. The village Trypillia gave the name to the one of the most interesting European findings. This discovery became known thanks to teacher in Kiev Vikentiy Khvoyka.

Vikentiy Khvoyka (1850 – 1914) – a self-taught Ukrainian archaeologist with Czech origin, who discovered to the world Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, as well as some more recent archaeological cultures on the territory of our country.

He was born and educated in the Czech Republic. Later he moved to Kiev, where he initially worked as a teacher – he taught German language, and in 1890 he started work in archeology, without any special education.

Khvoyka discovered ancient cultures by chance. He studied agronomy. In the Petrushka village near Kiev, he rented a piece of land where he grew hops. One day after the accident, when his laboratory burnt down among the coals and ashes, he began to dig a hole for the foundation for new laboratory and found the metal rings. As it turned out, it was the women’s bracelets of princely era. That was a sign for starting studying archeology.

From that time he devoted himself to the new case. Vikentiy Khvoyka traveled from village to village on the outskirts of Kiev and asked natives about interesting findings.

One day, during the construction works on the Kirill Mountain he found mammoth tusk decorated with carvings – this place turned out to be of prehistoric hunters, went down in world history as the “Kirillovskaya Paleolithic Station”. This discovery was loud sensation as indicating the existence of a man of the Stone Age on the territory of Naddneprovya.

Over the next year of studies Khvoyka found 70 primitive huts, dwellings, part of painted ceramics.

After such success archaeologist has expanded the geography of the work down the Dnipro River. In 1896 he reached the town Trypillia which is located in Kiev region now. Here Vikentiy excavated several kilns and the remains of dwellings, which remained pottery, clay figurines, stone tools and weapons. It was found that the artifacts are 4 millennium BC. By the name of the village it was named Trypillia culture. It is believed that this culture is much older than the Egyptian and European cultures.

Chvojka also discovered a large mounds near the village Zarubyntsi and Chernyakhiv, which were two new cultures, named in due course by the names of villages.

After those discovers Khvoyka didn’t leave his work, 10 years later, in 1907, during excavations in the old regions of Kiev, he found the foundation stone of the ancient princely palace, the bricks with the image of the trident and the remains of the jewelry shops of that time. These findings were another sensational discovery of the archaeologist. Nowadays on the excavation place the Historical Museum of Ukraine is located, the base of which Vikentiy Khvoyka involved.

It is worth noting that Vikentiy Khvoyka was very hard-working person. As long as he could, he annually in the summer discovered more than ten new archaeological items.