PONTIC - CASPIAN STEPPE

The steppe in Azov-Syvash National Nature Park, Ukraine, with reintroduced horses

The steppe extends roughly from the Danube to the Ural River

Realm : Palearctic

Biome : Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands

Area : 994,000 km2 (384,000 sq mi)

Streltsovskaya Steppe, a preserved area in Milove Raion in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. The steppe is often dominated by plumes of Stipa in early summer

Tulip suaveolens is one of the most typical spring flowers of the Pontic-Caspian steppe

The Pontic steppe or Pontic–Caspian steppe is the steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea (called Euxeinos Pontos in antiquity) as far east as the Caspian Sea, from Dobruja in the northeastern corner of Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, through Moldova and eastern Ukraine across Russian Northern Caucasus, Southern and lower Volga regions to western Kazakhstan, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian steppe. It is a part of the Palearctic realm and the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome.

The area corresponds to Cimmeria, Scythia, and Sarmatia of classical antiquity. Across several millennia the steppe was used by numerous tribes of nomadic horsemen, many of which went on to conquer lands in the settled regions of Europe, Western Asia, and Southern Asia.

The term Ponto-Caspian region is used in biogeography of the flora and fauna of these steppes, including animals from the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Azov Sea. Genetic research has identified this region as the most probable place where horses were first domesticated.

According to the most prevalent theory in Indo-European studies called the Kurgan hypothesis, the Pontic–Caspian steppe was the homeland of the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Geography and ecology :

The Pontic steppe covers an area of 994,000 square kilometres (384,000 sq mi) of Europe, extending from Dobrudja in the northeastern corner of Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, across southern Moldova, Ukraine, through Russia and northwestern Kazakhstan to the Ural Mountains. The Pontic 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 Pontic 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 Pontic steppe and the northwestern and northern shores of the Caspian. The Kazakh Steppe bounds the Pontic 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 :

• 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

• Yamna/Kurgan culture : 3500–2300 BC

• Kura 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 :

• Cimmerians 12th–7th centuries BC

• Dacians 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) 4th–7th century

• Alans 5th–11th centuries

• Eurasian Avars 6th–8th centuries

• Göktürks 6th–8th centuries

• Sabirs 6th–8th centuries

• Khazars 6th–11th 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 18th–20th centuries

• Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus 19th-20th centuries

• Soviet Union 20th century

The Pontic steppe in c. 650

Zaporozhian Cossacks fighting Tatars from the Crimean Khanate—late 19th-century painting

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org