Eurasian Steppe


The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppe, is an area of grassland in Eurasia that is mostly located in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches some 8000 kilometres from Manchuria in the east through Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, to Hungary and Slovakia in the west.
Since the Paleolithic age, the Steppe Route has been the main overland route between Eastern Europe, North Asia, Central Asia and East Asia economically, politically, and culturally. The Steppe route is a predecessor not only of the Silk Road, which developed during antiquity and the Middle Ages, but also of the Eurasian Land Bridge in the modern era. It has been home to nomadic empires and many large tribal confederations and ancient states throughout history, such as the Xiongnu, Scythia, Cimmeria, Sarmatia, Hunnic Empire, Sogdia, Xianbei, Mongol Empire, Magyar tribes, and Göktürk Khaganate.

Geography

The Eurasian Steppe is separated into three sections: the Carpathian Basin, the contiguous stretch of some 2,500 miles of grassland that stretches from the mouth of the Danube in Romania to the Altai Mountains on the China-Russia Border, and the Mongolian Plateau. The steppe is criss-crossed by mountain ranges that historically did not hinder the movement of nomads. In Asia the exact southern limit of the steppe is unclear since the steppe gets drier towards the south and eventually gives way to deserts such as the Kyzylkum and the Gobi. To the north the climate increasingly humid, and the steppe grades into forests.

Pannonian Steppe

The Pannonian Steppe is the westernmost part of the Eurasian Steppe, separated from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe by the Carpathian Mountains. It is found in modern-day Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the eastern parts of Austria.

Pontic–Caspian Steppe

The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is the main European end of the Eurasian Steppe and begins near the mouth of the Danube, stretching northeast almost to Kazan and then southeast to the southern tip of the Ural Mountains. Its northern edge was a broad band of forest steppe which has now been obliterated by the conversion of the whole area to agricultural land. In the southeast the Black Sea–Caspian Steppe extends between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains. On the north shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula has some interior steppe and ports on the south coast which link the steppe to the civilizations of the Mediterranean basin.

Ural–Caspian Narrowing

The steppe narrows around the southern end of the Ural Mountains, about 650 km northeast of the Caspian Sea, forming the Ural-Caspian Narrowing, that joins the Pontic-Caspian Steppe in Europe with the Kazakh Steppe in Central Asia.

Kazakh Steppe

The Kazakh Steppe makes up most of the Eurasian Steppe in Central Asia. It extends from the Urals to Dzungaria. To the south, it grades off into semi-desert and desert which is interrupted by two great rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which flow northwest into the Aral Sea and provide irrigation for agriculture. In the southeast is the densely populated Fergana Valley and west of it the great oasis cities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara along the Zeravshan River. The southern area has a complex history, while in the north, the Kazakh Steppe proper was relatively isolated from the main currents of written history.

Dzungarian Narrowing

Along the former Sino-Soviet border, mountains extend north almost to the forest zone, separating the Central Steppe from the Eastern Steppe, leaving only limited grassland in Dzungaria. This discontinuous section of the Eurasian steppe connects the great steppes of Central Asia and East Asia.
The east-west Tian Shan Mountains divide the steppe into Dzungaria in the north and the Tarim Basin to the south. Dzungaria is bounded by the Tarbagatai Mountains on the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains on the east, neither of which is a significant barrier. Dzungaria has good grassland around the edges and a central desert. It often behaved as a westward extension of Mongolia and connected Mongolia to the Kazakh Steppe. To the north of Dzungaria are mountains and the Siberian forest. To the south and west of Dzungaria, and separated from it by the Tian Shan mountains, is an area about twice the size of Dzungaria, the oval Tarim Basin. The Tarim Basin's arid conditions make it unsuitable for sustaining a nomadic population. However, along its periphery, rivers descend from the mountains, creating a circle of cities that thrived on irrigation agriculture and engaged in east-west trade. The Tarim Basin formed an island of near civilization in the center of the steppe. The Northern Silk Road went along the north and south sides of the Tarim Basin and then crossed the mountains west to the Fergana Valley. At the west end of the basin the Pamir Mountains connect the Tian Shan Mountains to the Himalayas. To the south, the Kunlun Mountains separate the Tarim Basin from the thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau.

Mongolian-Manchurian Steppe

The Mongolian-Manchurian Steppe is the main part of the Eurasian Steppe in East Asia. It covers large parts of Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. The two are separated by a relatively dry area marked by the Gobi Desert. South of the Mongol Steppe is the high and thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau. The northern edge of the plateau is the Gansu or Hexi Corridor, a belt of moderately dense population that connects China proper with the Tarim Basin. The Hexi Corridor was the main route of the Silk Road. In the southeast the Silk Road led over some hills to the east-flowing Wei River valley which led to the North China Plain.
South of the Khingan Mountains and north of the Taihang Mountains, the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe extends east into Manchuria as the Liao Xi steppe. In Manchuria, the steppe grades off into forest and mountains without reaching the Pacific. The central area of forest-steppe was inhabited by pastoral and agricultural peoples, while to the north and east was a thin population of hunting tribes of the Siberian type.

Fauna

Big mammals of the Eurasian steppe were Przewalski's horse, the saiga antelope, the Mongolian gazelle, the goitered gazelle, the wild Bactrian camel and the onager. The gray wolf, corsac fox, Pallas's cat and occasionally the brown bear are predators roaming the steppe. Smaller mammal species are the Mongolian gerbil, the little souslik and the bobak marmot.
Furthermore, the Eurasian steppe is home to a great variety of bird species. Threatened bird species living there are for example the imperial eagle, the lesser kestrel, the great bustard, the pale-back pigeon and the white-throated bushchat.
The primary domesticated animals raised were sheep and goats with fewer cattle than one might expect. Camels were used in the drier areas for transport as far west as Astrakhan. There were some yaks along the edge of Tibet. The horse was used for transportation and warfare. The horse was first domesticated on the Pontic–Caspian or Kazakh steppe sometime before 3000 BC, but it took a long time for mounted archery to develop and the process is not fully understood. The stirrup does not seem to have been completely developed until 300 AD.

Flora

The steppe is dominated by shrubs and grasses, with only a small amount of trees. The grass communities are primarily C3 and C4 grasses. Common genera include Stipa and Festuca. Grasses from the Stipa genus include needlegrass, Stipa korshinskyi, and lessing feather grass. In addition to grasses, two species of sagebrush or wormwood, Artemisia austriaca and Artemisia nitrosa, are commonly found throughout the steppe.

Ecological processes

Parts of the Eurasian steppe experience an ecological regime shift in form of woody plant encroachment, such as the Black Sea-Kazakhstan steppe, the Tibetan Plateau steppe, and the Central Asian steppe. This process involves the gradual increase of shrubs at the expense of grasses.

Ecoregions

The World Wide Fund for Nature divides the Eurasian steppe's temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands into a number of ecoregions, distinguished by elevation, climate, rainfall, and other characteristics and home to distinct animal and plant communities and species and distinct habitat ecosystems.

Trade habits

The major centers of population and high culture in Eurasia are Europe, the Middle East, India and China. For some purposes it is useful to treat Greater Iran as a separate region. All these regions are connected directly or indirectly by the Eurasian Steppe route which was an active predecessor of the Silk Road. The latter started in the Guanzhong region of China and ran west along the Hexi Corridor to the Tarim Basin. From there it went southwest to Greater Iran and turned southeast to India or west to the Middle East and Europe. A minor branch went northwest along the great rivers and north of the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. When faced with a rich caravan the steppe nomads could either rob it, or tax it, or hire themselves out as guards. Economically, these three forms of taxation or parasitism amounted to the same thing. Trade was usually most vigorous when a strong empire controlled the steppe and reduced the number of petty chieftains preying on trade. The silk road first became significant and Chinese silk began reaching the Roman Empire about the time that the Emperor of Han pushed Chinese power west to the Tarim Basin.