A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity (opens in new tab)

Interesting. AFAIK my own education in the field of history was by most standards quite comprehensive and yet I'd never heard of it either( * ). So I'm kind of grateful the NYT has decided to fill up some space with an overview of a culture they apparently suspect not everyone knows about :-)

* but then "comprehensive" means little more than "a thorough overview of basic Western European history starting with the ancient Greeks". It's not hard to imagine a history curriculum that spends more time on cultures before that.

As far as this specific culture is concerned, however, note the article says very little about it was known until 1972 and even after that, the knowledge was confined to Bulgaria and Romania, so it's at least somewhat understandable that it didn't make it into 5th grade curricula until after the Iron Curtain came down (by which time I was in 9th grade, btw).

This reminds me of some of the truly hilarious anthropological expeditions from Time magazine to chronicle an obscure religious sect call "Christians." (Among many other excellent pieces of religious reporting over the years, they had an article about the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Which included Catholics -- including at least one Catholic priest wearing a Roman collar in the photograph they used.)

Edit: For benefit of our international readers: this is sort of like including a Golden Retriever (dog breed) in the lineup of 25 beautiful cats.

They seem to be talking about different things. The NYT article talks almost exclusively of the Danube valley between the Carpathian and Balkan mountains, whereas the wiki page lists the cucuteni culture as being centered around the Dniester river, north of the Carpathians.