Kurgans in the Sacred Natural Sites Newsletter

What is the common point in sacred groves in the tropics, churchyards in the temperate zone and ancient burial mounds of the steppe region? Sacred natural sites are places that are valued for both their biodiversity and cultural, historical or spiritual importance. In fact, their sacred or spiritual values maintained their respected and relatively undisturbed status which made possible that these sites harbour important habitats, plant and animal species. There are several representatives of these sites, such as sacred groves, old cemeteries, churchyards and ancient burial mounds.

Spirituality and nature: Dambulla, Sri Lanka.

Kurgans are important sacred natural sites in Eurasia. They are ancient earthen burial mounds built by nomadic steppic tribes several millennia or centuries ago. There are approximately half million kurgans, from Central Europe to Mongolia in the steppe and forest steppe zones. Many of them often hold a high biodiversity and preserve the last remnants of the steppe vegetation. In this semester, the lead article of the Sacred Sites Research Newsletter was written about kurgans by Balázs Deák.

The Sacred Sites Research Newsletter (SSiReN) is issued twice a year, past issues can be browsed in the library of the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative's website. SSiReN focuses on research, on-the-ground conservation, and experiences from custodians and policy advocacy in relation to sacred natural sites. It is aimed at those who support of the conservation and revitalization of sacred natural sites and territories such as custodians, scholars, practitioners, traditional knowledge holders, and policy makers. You can find many interesting facts about sacred sites in the SSiReN webpage, and there it is also possible to subscribe to the newsletter.

You can read about our kurgan researches also in our former posts about the Eurasian Kurgan Database (here and here), flora and fauna of kurgans within and outside protected areas (here), kurgans in Bulgaria (here),  factors threatening the biodiversity of kurgans (here), and the conservation and cultural importance of kurgans (here).

Here there are a few pictures illustrating how interesting and diverse are the kurgans.

The largest kurgans can be higher than 10 meters. It took around 500 days of hard work of a lot of people to build these monumental earthen mounds. These large mounds are situated in the Maritsa river valley, South Bulgaria.

Large and smaller hills: kurgans in the Maritsa river valley, with the Rodope mountains in the background.

Kurgans are the most widespread on the lowlands, but they are also present in hilly and mountain regions. These nice kurgans are situated in the famous vine region near Brestovica, South-Bulgaria.

Diverse steppe vegetation on the steep slope of a Bulgarian kurgan. In the surroundings, there are no grasslands remained, only croplands.

This small habitat island in the ocean of the croplands provide the last refugia for the steppe vegetation.

Species-rich loess grassland on the slope of Csípő-halom kurgan in East-Hungary.