The Bug–Dniester culture was the archaeological culture that developed in the chernozem region of Moldavia and Ukraine around the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers in the Neolithic. Over approximately 1,300 years, 6300–5000 BC, the Bug–Dniester culture metamorphosed through different cultural phases, but the population remained about the same. What is most noteworthy about the Neolithic in this region is that it developed autochthonously from the Mesolithic there, through contact with the Chalcolithic cultures in the west and Neolithic hunter gatherer cultures in the East (Here Neolithic is defined as pottery-bearing, not agricultural). The people in this region relied predominantly on hunting aurochs, red deer, roe deer and boar, and fishing for roach, eels and pike. They made pottery from