Iranian peoplesThe Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities. The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe, from the Danubian plains in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south.
Eurasian nomadsThe Eurasian nomads were a large group of nomadic peoples from the Eurasian Steppe, who often appear in history as invaders of Europe, West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and South Asia. A nomad is a member of people having no permanent abode, who travel from place to place to find fresh pasture for their livestock. The generic title encompasses the varied ethnic groups who have at times inhabited the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia and what is now Russia and Ukraine.
Eurasian SteppeThe Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, western Russia, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria, with one major exclave, the Pannonian steppe, located mostly in Hungary. Since the Paleolithic age, the Steppe Route has connected Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, East Asia and South Asia economically, politically and culturally through overland trade routes.
Kievan Rus'Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus' ( , or ро́усьскаѧ землѧ́ ; Garðaríki), was a state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. Encompassing a variety of polities and peoples, including East Slavic, Norse, and Finnic, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus' as their cultural ancestor, with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it.
Domestication of the horseHow and when horses became domesticated has been disputed. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. The clearest evidence of early use of the horse as a means of transport is from chariot burials dated c. 2000 BCE. However, an increasing amount of evidence began to support the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes in approximately 3500 BCE.
Palearctic realmThe Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Siberian region; the Mediterranean Basin; the Sahara and Arabian Deserts; and Western, Central and East Asia. The Palaearctic realm also has numerous rivers and lakes, forming several freshwater ecoregions. The term 'Palearctic' was first used in the 19th century, and is still in use as the basis for zoogeographic classification.
Kurgan hypothesisThe Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Turkic word kurgan (курга́н), meaning tumulus or burial mound.
HungariansHungarians, also known as Magyars (ˈmæɡjɑːrz ; magyarok ˈmɒɟɒrok), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary (Magyarország) and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Uralic language family. There are an estimated 14.5 million ethnic Hungarians and their descendants worldwide, of whom 9.6 million live in today's Hungary.
East SlavsThe East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they claim as their cultural ancestor. Today, the East Slavs consist of Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians. Rus' people and Ruthenians Researchers know relatively little about the Eastern Slavs prior to approximately 859 AD when the first events recorded in the Primary Chronicle occurred.
ScythiansThe Scythians (ˈsɪθiən or ˈsɪðiən) or Scyths (ˈsɪθ, but note Scytho- (ˈsaɪθʊ) in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, where they remained established from the 7th century BC until the 3rd century BC. Skilled in mounted warfare, the Scythians replaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BC.
Temperate broadleaf and mixed forestsTemperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions. These forests are richest and most distinctive in central China and eastern North America, with some other globally distinctive ecoregions in the Caucasus, the Himalayas, Southern Europe, Australasia, Southwestern South America and the Russian Far East.
