Pontic–Caspian steppe

The Pontic–Caspian steppe, formed by the Caspian steppe in addition to the Pontic steppe, is the steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity to the northern area around the Caspian Sea. It extends from Dobruja in the northeastern corner of Bulgaria & southeastern Romania, through Moldova and southern and eastern Ukraine, across the Russian Northern Caucasus, the Southern and lower Volga regions to western Kazakhstan, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east, both forming component of the larger Eurasian Steppe. It forms a element 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, many tribes of nomadic horsemen used the steppe; many of them 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 with character to the flora and fauna of these steppes, including animals from the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Azov Sea. Genetic research has forwarded this region as the nearly probable place where horses were first domesticated.

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

Geography and ecology

The Pontic-Caspian 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 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 maintain of the Turgai Sea, an quotation 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.