Ezero.

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

There are people who certainly don't ignore the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture when discussing IE origins, though I must agree that it has been regrettably neglected by proponents of a steppe homeland. Gimbuts herself regarded Cucuteni as a prematurely truncated pre-IE quasi-urban culture.

Yes. C-T and Ezero have been neglected. The idea that the earliest stages of Troy got it's culture from Bulgaria still does not sit too well with many commentators.

My own feeling is that this is where Anatolian first broke off from the main body of IE. Ezero is ca 3200 BCE down, and this agrees very well with the usual dates for the breakup of PIE. I'm not saying the proto-Anatolians were the Ezero culture, just that they were down there, and perhaps, were the impetus for Ezero to build its walls.

Ezero is early Bronze Age. One question I've not had answered by an expert is *where* the Indo-European steppe-nomads got their tools for making their sturdy steppe-worthy carts and wagons; for these, you need a judicious use of hardwood, and for hardwood, bronze tools would have been of immense utility.