One of the Eurasian steppes
Streltsovskaya Steppe, a preserved area in
Milove Raion in
Luhansk Oblast , Ukraine. The steppe is often dominated by plumes of
Stipa in early summer.
Tulipa suaveolens , one of the most typical spring flowers of the Pontic-Caspian steppe
The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is a
steppe extending across
Eastern Europe to
Central Asia , formed by the Caspian and Pontic steppes. It stretches from the northern shores of the
Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) to the northern area around the
Caspian Sea , where it ends at the Ural-Caspian narrowing, which joins it with the
Kazakh Steppe in Central Asia, making it a part of the larger
Eurasian Steppe . Geopolitically, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe extends from northeastern
Bulgaria and southeastern
Romania through
Moldova and eastern
Ukraine , through the
North Caucasus of
southern Russia , and into the
Lower Volga region where it straddles the border of southern Russia and western
Kazakhstan . Biogeographically, it is a part of the
Palearctic realm , and of the
temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands
biome .
The area corresponds to
Cimmeria ,
Scythia , and
Sarmatia of
classical antiquity . Across several millennia, numerous tribes of
nomadic horsemen used the steppe; many of them went on to conquer lands in the settled regions of
Central and Eastern Europe ,
West Asia , and
South Asia .
The term Ponto-Caspian region is used in
biogeography with reference to the flora and fauna of these steppes, including animals from the Black, Caspian, and
Azov Seas . Genetic research has identified this region as the most probable place where
horses were first domesticated .
[1]
The
Kurgan hypothesis , the most prevalent theory in
Indo-European studies , speculates that the Pontic–Caspian steppe was the homeland of the speakers of the
Proto-Indo-European language .
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5] With the scientific advances in DNA genome mapping and the introduction of
bioarchaeology , the Kurgan hypothesis is today widely considered to have been validated.
[6]
[7]
[8]
Geography and ecology
The Pontic–Caspian steppe covers an area of 994,000 km2 (384,000 sq mi) of
Central and Eastern Europe , that extends from northeastern
Bulgaria and southeastern
Romania , through
Moldova , and southern and eastern
Ukraine , through the
Northern Caucasus of
southern Russia , and into the
Lower Volga region of western
Kazakhstan , to the east of the
Ural Mountains . The steppe is bounded by the
East European forest steppe to the north, a transitional zone of mixed grasslands and
temperate broadleaf and mixed forests .
To the south, the steppe extends to the Black Sea, except the
Crimean and western Caucasus mountains' border with the sea, where the
Crimean Submediterranean forest complex defines the southern edge of the steppes. The steppe extends to the western shore of the Caspian Sea in the
Dagestan region of Russia, but the drier
Caspian lowland desert lies between the steppe and the northwestern and northern shores of the Caspian. The Kazakh Steppe bounds the steppe to the east.
The Ponto-Caspian seas are the remains of the
Turgai Sea , an extension of the
Paratethys which extended south and east of the Urals and covering much of today's
West Siberian Plain in the
Mesozoic and
Cenozoic .
Prehistoric cultures
Bronze Age spread of
Yamnaya
steppe pastoralist ancestry into two subcontinents—Europe and South Asia—from c. 3000 to 1500 BC.
[9]
Historical peoples and nations
The Pontic-Caspian steppe in
c. 650
Zaporozhian Cossacks fighting Tatars from the
Crimean Khanate – late 19th-century painting by
Józef Brandt .
See also
References
^
"Mystery Of Horse Domestication Solved?" . sciencedaily.com . Retrieved 3 April 2018 .
^ David W. Anthony (2010).
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World . Princeton University Press.
ISBN
978-1400831104 .
^ Haak, Wolfgang; Lazaridis, Iosif; Patterson, Nick; Rohland, Nadin; Mallick, Swapan; Llamas, Bastien; Brandt, Guido; Nordenfelt, Susanne; Harney, Eadaoin; Stewardson, Kristin; Fu, Qiaomei; Mittnik, Alissa; Bánffy, Eszter; Economou, Christos; Francken, Michael; Friederich, Susanne; Pena, Rafael Garrido; Hallgren, Fredrik; Khartanovich, Valery; Khokhlov, Aleksandr; Kunst, Michael; Kuznetsov, Pavel; Meller, Harald; Mochalov, Oleg; Moiseyev, Vayacheslav; Nicklisch, Nicole; Pichler, Sandra L.; Risch, Roberto; Guerra, Manuel A. Rojo; Roth, Christina; Szécsényi-Nagy, Anna; Wahl, Joachim; Meyer, Matthias; Krause, Johannes; Brown, Dorcas; Anthony, David; Cooper, Alan; Alt, Kurt Werner; Reich, David (10 February 2015).
"Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe" . bioRxiv . 522 (7555): 207–211.
arXiv :
1502.02783 .
Bibcode :
2015Natur.522..207H .
bioRxiv
10.1101/013433 .
doi :
10.1038/NATURE14317 .
PMC
5048219 .
PMID
25731166 . Retrieved 3 April 2018 .
^ Allentoft, Morten E.; Sikora, Martin; Sjögren, Karl-Göran; Rasmussen, Simon; Rasmussen, Morten; Stenderup, Jesper; Damgaard, Peter B.; Schroeder, Hannes; Ahlström, Torbjörn; Vinner, Lasse; Malaspinas, Anna-Sapfo; Margaryan, Ashot; Higham, Tom; Chivall, David; Lynnerup, Niels; Harvig, Lise; Baron, Justyna; Casa, Philippe Della; Dąbrowski, Paweł; Duffy, Paul R.; Ebel, Alexander V.; Epimakhov, Andrey; Frei, Karin; Furmanek, Mirosław; Gralak, Tomasz; Gromov, Andrey; Gronkiewicz, Stanisław; Grupe, Gisela; Hajdu, Tamás; Jarysz, Radosław (2015).
"Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia" . Nature . 522 (7555): 167–172.
Bibcode :
2015Natur.522..167A .
doi :
10.1038/nature14507 .
PMID
26062507 .
S2CID
4399103 .
^
Mathieson, Iain; Lazaridis, Iosif; Rohland, Nadin; Mallick, Swapan; Llamas, Bastien; Pickrell, Joseph; Meller, Harald; Guerra, Manuel A. Rojo; Krause, Johannes; Anthony, David; Brown, Dorcas; Fox, Carles Lalueza; Cooper, Alan; Alt, Kurt W.; Haak, Wolfgang; Patterson, Nick; Reich, David (14 March 2015).
"Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe" . bioRxiv : 016477.
doi :
10.1101/016477 . Retrieved 3 April 2018 – via biorxiv.org.
^ Shinde, Vasant; Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Rohland, Nadin; Mallick, Swapan; Mah, Matthew; Lipson, Mark; Nakatsuka, Nathan; Adamski, Nicole; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen; Ferry, Matthew; Lawson, Ann Marie; Michel, Megan; Oppenheimer, Jonas; Stewardson, Kristin; Jadhav, Nilesh (October 2019).
"An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers" . Cell . 179 (3): 729–735.e10.
doi :
10.1016/j.cell.2019.08.048 .
ISSN
0092-8674 .
PMC
6800651 .
^
"2 THE YAMNAYA CULTURE AND THE INVENTION OF NOMADIC PASTORALISM IN THE EURASIAN STEPPES" . scholar.google.com . Retrieved 24 January 2024 .
^
"Ancient DNA and migrations: New understandings and misunderstandings" . scholar.google.com . Retrieved 24 January 2024 .
^
"Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women" .
ScienceDaily . Faculty of Science – University of Copenhagen. 4 April 2017.
^
"The Proto-Turkic Urheimat and the Early Migrations of Turkic Peoples" . Archived from
the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 24 December 2013 .
External links