This is an article about the Danubian Neolithic culture For the River Danube go to Danube River

The term Danubian culture was coined by the Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe for the first agrarian society in central and eastern Europe. It covers the Linearbandkeramic, stroked pottery and Rössen cultures. The beginning of the Linearbandkeramic dates to around 5500 BC cal. They appear to have spread westwards up the Danube valley and interacted with the cultures of Atlantic Europe when they reached the Paris Basin.

Danubian I peoples cleared forests and cultivated fertile loess soils from the Balkans to the Low Countries and the Paris Basin . They made Linearbandkeramic pottery and kept domesticated cows, pigs, dogs, sheep and goats. The diagnostic tool of the culture is the Shoe-last celt, a kind of long thin stone adze which was used to fell trees and sometimes as weapon, as the skulls of Talheim in Germany and Schletz in Austria show. Settlements consisted of Long houses. According to a theory by Eduard Sangmeister, these settelements were abandoned, possibly as fertile land was exhausted, and then reoccupied perhaps when the land had lain fallow for long enough. In contrast, Peter Modderman and Jens Lüning believe the settlements were constantly inhabited, with individual families using specific plots (Hofplätze). They also imported spondylus shells from the Mediterranean.

A second wave of the culture which used painted pottery with asiatic influences superseded the first phase starting around 4500 BC. This was followed by a third wave which used stroke-ornamented ware.

Danubian sites include those at Bylany in Bohemia and Köln-Lindenthal in Germany