Black Sea–Caspian Steppe language and the Northeast Caucasian languages are related to Hurrian and Urartian. This implies that the mountaineers of the Caucasus have been in their present location for a very long time. According to the most common theory the Indo-European languages originated on the steppes north of the Caucasus and Black Sea. Some time before 3000 BC the Maikop culture appeared in Circassia and Kabardia. It is noted for its excellent gold and silver work. North on the steppe was the Yamnaya culture which was probably Indo-European. Around 1000 BC there was a bronze-age Koban culture in the Kabardian area which
Black Sea 1570 map of Asia titled from Abraham Ortelius's labels the sea ("Great Sea", compare Latin ). English-language writers of the 18th century often used the name "Euxine Sea" ( or ) to refer to the Black Sea. Edward Gibbon, for instance, calls the sea by this name throughout "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". During the Ottoman Empire period, the Black Sea was called either or , both meaning "the Black Sea" in the Ottoman Turkish. In the tenth-century geography book , which was written in Persian by an unknown author, the Black Sea is