Pontic–Caspian steppe

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.

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.

[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] 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.

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
Bronze Age spread of Yamnaya steppe pastoralist ancestry into two subcontinents—Europe and South Asia—from c. 3000 to 1500 BC. [ 9 ]
The Pontic-Caspian steppe in c. 650
Zaporozhian Cossacks fighting Tatars from the Crimean Khanate – late 19th-century painting by Józef Brandt .