Pontic–Caspian steppe
Pontic–Caspian steppe | |
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![]() The steppe in Azov-Syvash National Nature Park, Ukraine, with reintroduced horses. | |
![]() The steppe extends roughly from the Danube to the Ural River. In this map is shown the region known as Pontic Steppe, which is the biggest portion of the whole Pontic-Caspian Steppe. | |
Ecology | |
Realm | Palearctic |
Biome | Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands |
Borders | |
Geography | |
Area | 994,000 km2 (384,000 sq mi) |
Countries |
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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
[edit]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
[edit]![](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Yamnaya_Steppe_Pastoralists.jpg/260px-Yamnaya_Steppe_Pastoralists.jpg)
- Linear Pottery culture 5500–4500 BC
- Cucuteni-Trypillian culture 5300–2600 BC
- Khvalynsk culture 5000–3500 BC
- Sredny Stog culture 4500–3500 BC
- Maykop culture 3700–3000 BC
- Yamnaya/Kurgan cultures 3500–2300 BC
- Kura-Araxes culture 3000–2000 BC
- Catacomb culture 3000–2200 BC
- Srubna culture 1600–1200 BC
- Koban culture 1100–400 BC
- Novocherkassk culture 900–650 BC
Historical peoples and nations
[edit]![](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Pontic_steppe_region_around_650_AD.png/260px-Pontic_steppe_region_around_650_AD.png)
![](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/J%C3%B3zef_Brandt_-_Potyczka_Kozak%C3%B3w_z_Tatarami.jpg/220px-J%C3%B3zef_Brandt_-_Potyczka_Kozak%C3%B3w_z_Tatarami.jpg)
- Indo-Europeans 4th millennium BC – now
- Cimmerians 12th–7th centuries BC
- Dacians and Thracians (Getae) 11th century BC – 3rd century AD
- Scythians 8th–4th centuries BC
- Sarmatians 5th century BC – 5th century AD
- Ostrogoths 3rd–6th centuries
- Huns and Avars 4th–8th centuries
- Bulgars, Onogurs, and Bulgarians 4th–21st centuries:[10]
- Great Bulgaria 7th century
- First Bulgarian Empire 7th–11th centuries
- Second Bulgarian Empire 12th–15th centuries
- Alans 5th–11th centuries
- Eurasian Avars 6th–8th centuries
- Göktürks 6th–8th centuries
- Sabirs 6th–8th centuries
- Khazars 6th–11th centuries
- Magyar tribes (Hungarians) 7th–9th centuries attested but probably from earlier
- Rus' people (Kievan Rus') 8th–13th centuries
- Pechenegs 8th–11th centuries
- Kipchaks and Cumans 11th–13th centuries
- Mongol Golden Horde 13th–15th centuries
- Cossacks, Kalmyks, Crimean Khanate, Volga Tatars, Nogais, and other Turkic states and tribes 15th–18th centuries
- Russian Empire 16th–20th centuries
- Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus 19th–20th centuries
- Soviet Union 20th century
- Ukraine, Moldova, Southern Russia 21st century
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "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
[edit]![](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- "Pontic steppe". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.
- Google maps: Pontic-Caspian steppe
- North Caucasus
- Central Asia
- Ecoregions of Asia
- Ecoregions of Bulgaria
- Ecoregions of Europe
- Ecoregions of Kazakhstan
- Ecoregions of Moldova
- Ecoregions of Romania
- Ecoregions of Russia
- Ecoregions of Ukraine
- Eurasian Steppe
- Flora of Central Asia
- Flora of Eastern Europe
- Geography of Southern Russia
- Grasslands of Asia
- Grasslands of Europe
- Grasslands of Moldova
- Grasslands of Romania
- Grasslands of Russia
- Grasslands of Ukraine
- Iranian nomads
- Natural history of Central Asia
- Nomadic groups in Eurasia
- Palearctic ecoregions
- Scythia
- Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands