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| The Taiga is a biome characterized by coniferous forests. Covering most of inland Alaska, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and northern Russia (especially Siberia), the taiga is the world's largest terrestrial biome and a major source of oxygen. In Canada, boreal forest is the term used to refer to the southern part of this biome, while "taiga" is used to describe the more barren northern areas south of the Arctic tree-line. The taiga is found throughout the high northern latitudes, just below the tundra, and just above the steppes. The Sintashta-Petrovka culture is succeeded by the Fedorovo (1400-1200 BCE) and Alekseyevka (1200-1000 BCE) cultures, still considered as part of the Andronovo horizon. | |
| Towards the middle of the 2nd millennium, the Andronovo cultures, has been strongly associated with early Indo-Iranian culture and began to move intensively eastwards. The Sintashta-Petrovka culture is succeeded by the Fedorovo (1400-1200 BCE) and Alekseyevka (1200-1000 BCE) cultures, still considered as part of the Andronovo horizon. They mined deposits of copper ore in the Altai Mountains and lived in villages in the Altai mountain range in in central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and where the great rivers Irtysh, Ob and Yenisei have their sources and extending southeast where it become lower, gradually merges into the high plateau of the Gobi desert. |  |
Thraco-Cimmerian is historiographically composed of the names of the Thracians and the Cimmerians; culture of Assyrian divergence, including Scythia and Thracians to the Balkan/Carpatho-Danubian Chalcolithic period. The Chalcolithic period or Copper Age period, is a phase in the development of human culture in which the use of early metal tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools. The period is a transitional one outside of the traditional three-age system, and occurs between the neolithic and bronze age. The European Beaker people are often considered Chalcolithic as were the cultures which first adopted urbanisation in south west Asia. The Thraco-Cimmerian refers to 8th to 7th century B.C. cultures that intruded into Eastern Central Europe from the area north of the Black Sea.
In southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Andronovo culture was succeeded by the Karasuk culture (1500-800 BCE). On its western border, it is succeeded by the Srubna culture, which partly derives from the Abashevo culture. The earliest historical peoples associated with the area are the Cimmerians and Saka/Scythians, appearing in Assyrian records after the decline of the Alekseyevka culture, migrating into the Ukraine from ca. the 9th century BCE (Ukrainian stone stela), and across the Caucasus into Anatolia and Assyria in the late 8th century BCE, and possibly also west into Europe as the Thracians (Thraco-Cimmerian), and the Sigynnae of the Seine, located by Herodotus beyond the Danube, north of the Thracians, and by Strabo near the Caspian Sea. Both Herodotus and Strabo identify them as Iranian.
The Sigynnae dwelt beyond the Danube, and their frontiers extended almost as far as the Eneti on the Adriatic. They could indeed have been a part of the Iranian expansion, together with the Scythians and Sarmatians migrating west into the Ukraine in the early Iron Age context of the Thraco-Cimmerian migrations. According to Herodotus, the Ligyes who lived above Massilia called traders Sigynnae, inhabited what now corresponds to Liguria, northern Tuscany, Piedmont, part of Lombardy, and parts of southeastern France. Avienus, in a translation of a voyage account probably from Marseille (4th century BC) speaks of the Ligurian hegemony extending up to the North Sea, before they were pushed back by the Celts.
Ligurian toponyms have been found in Sicily, the Rhône valley, Corsica and Sardinia. The Ligures were assimilated by the Romans, and before that by the Gauls in the Alps, producing a Celto-Ligurian culture. It is not known for certain kinship between the Ligures and Lepontii of Rhaetia in Switzerland and Italy, or whether they were a pre-Indo-European people akin to Iberians; a separate Indo-European branch with Italic and Celtic affinities; or even a branch of the Celts. In ancient geography, Sequani were a Celtic people of the Seine who occupied the upper basin of the Arar (Saone), their territory corresponding to Franche-Comte and part of Burgundy. Before the arrival of Julius Caesar in Gaul, the Sequani had taken the side of the Arverni against their rivals the Aedui and hired the Germans under Ariovistus to cross the Rhine and help them (71 BC). Under Augustus, the district known as Sequania formed part of Belgica.