Pontic–Caspian steppe

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.

Bronze Age spread of Yamnaya steppe pastoralist ancestry into two subcontinents—Europe and South Asia—from c. 3000 to 1500 BC.[6]

• 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-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

The Pontic-Caspian steppe in c. 650

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

• 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:[7]
  • Great Bulgaria 7th century
  • First Bulgarian Empire 7th–11th centuries
  • Second Bulgarian Empire 12th–15th centuries
    • Principality of Karvuna
• 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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pontic steppe.

• "Pontic steppe". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.
• Google maps: Pontic-Caspian steppe