Modern linguists have placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a distinct geographic and archeological region extending from the Danube estuary to the Ural mountains to the east and North Caucasus to the south. The Neolithic, Eneolithic and early Bronze Age cultures in Pontic-Caspian steppe has been called the Kurgan culture (Marija Gimbutas), due to the lasting practice of burying the deads under mounds (kurgan) among the succession of cultures in that region.
While the Anatolian theory enjoyed brief support when first proposed, the Indo-Europeanist community in general now rejects it, its majority clearly favouring the Kurgan hypothesis postulating a 4th millennium expansion from the Pontic steppe. While the spread of farming undisputedly constituted an important event, most see no case to connect it with Indo-Europeans in particular, seeing that terms for animal husbandry tend to have much better reconstructions than terms related to agriculture. The linguistic community further notes that linguistic evidence suggests a later date for Proto-Indo-European than the Anatolian theory predicts.
The Caucasus and Anatolia, the eastern and southern parts of the common Circumpontic zone, i.e. territories around the Black Sea, were and are important as «bridges» connecting the Near East and Europe. This has determinated the common nature of the distinguishing features of the development of both above regions. Their historical, cultural, social and economical development is characterized by their intermediate position in Near Eastern and European evolutional models.