Sarmatians are a group of Iranian-speaking tribes who roamed in the steppes of modern Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan in the ancient era. This people appeared in the VI century BC. e., and in the IV century A.D. e. almost disappeared from the historical scene after the invasion of the Huns. He was divided into several groups: tongues, Alans and Roxolans.
Sarmatian certificates
Most of the written information about the Sarmatians was preserved in the fourth book of the History, written by the ancient Greek Herodotus. In it, he described the country of Scythia, located north of the Black Sea, where the Hellenes housed the most distant colonies, including Olbia. Herodotus, explaining who the Sarmatians are, used the term "sauromats". The “History” says that they lived beyond Tanais (that is, beyond the Don) on the shores of the Sea of Azov.
Later researchers also tried to answer the question of who the Sarmatians are and where these nomads came from. Today, experts believe that the southern Urals was the ancestral home of the steppes. Their expansion began in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Its cause was the emergence of a new type of warrior - horse archers. After mastering the shooting, the nomads became a terrible disaster for their neighbors.
Restless people
The steppe fighters regularly fought with each other. The cause of the clashes, as a rule, was the famine or the struggle for new pasture. The theory of ongoing war explains who the Sarmatians are. The people, originating in the Ural steppes, gradually moved west under the pressure of aggressive Asian neighbors. In the new place of nomads, a plentiful and relatively free from competitors edge was waiting.
The masses of immigrants followed a similar Eurasian path for several millennia. Who are the Sarmatians? In short, this is another wave of such migration. Their fate was the same as that of their predecessors and successors. Over time, the nomads dissolved among the neighboring settled peoples and lost their own identity. That is why today the Sarmatians are another long-standing historical phenomenon, from which only fragmentary information and artifacts that need to be searched have survived to our time.
Ethnic Features
The image of the ancient steppes in many ways is known to us thanks to ethnographic information. Who are the Sarmatians and who are their ancestors? They came from the once united Indo-European people. Gradually, an Iranian-speaking group emerged from this community, and a northern Scythian branch formed inside it. The Sarmatians belonged to it. Based on the above, it is possible to explain what place the Sarmatians occupied on the ethnic map of Eurasia. Their closest relatives were Scythians. Other Indo-European neighbors of the nomads were Cimmerians.
Sarmatians never constituted a single nation. They were divided into several tribes. Their names are known thanks to ancient sources, when the names of the steppes inspired awe and terror in the peaceful sedentary neighbors. The Sarmatians did not have a written language and therefore historians do not have accurate evidence, but they are sure that each tribe had its own dialect.
Linguistic research helped in its time to determine the fate of the steppe people. Thanks to the analysis of different languages, it was possible to find out who the Sarmatians are and who their descendants are. We are talking about modern Ossetians. These people descended from a group of Sarmatians who managed to maintain their identity by moving to the Caucasus. Their culture survived and evolved while other related tribes that remained in the familiar steppes were either conquered or dissolved among their neighbors. The last blow to this bulk of the Sarmatians was dealt in the IV century by the Huns. New eastern hordes arrived in Europe and not only wiped out the former steppes from the face of the earth, but also dealt a serious blow to the Roman Empire, which eventually fell apart.
Tongues
The westernmost Sarmatian tribes were tongues. They lived in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, where they had to move from the eastern Black Sea region after the appearance of the Roxolans there. Other neighbors of the Yazygs were various Geta tribes, including the Dniester tyrants. They also bordered on the Latin culture of the Bastarn. Some of the tongues during their resettlement reached the Danube Delta. There, the Sarmatians entered into an alliance with Pontus, who was then ruled by the legendary Mithridates Eupater, and began to fight against Rome. In response to this, the legions in 78-76. BC e. arranged a series of punitive campaigns in the lands north of the Danube, where the nomads lived.
In the first half of the 1st century BC. e. its peak reached the Dacian kingdom, located in modern Romania. It was it, together with the Romans, that restrained the further expansion of the Yazygs. Having so many opposed neighbors, the Sarmatians finally stopped their movement in a westerly direction.
Roxolans
As noted above, roxolans attacked the heels of tongues, thereby forcing them to move west. This was another Sarmatian tribe that lived north of Tanais (Don). Having entered into an alliance with the Crimean Scythians, it subjugated the entire Northern Black Sea coast. The ruler of the Roksolans was one of the few well-known kings of the Sarmatians Gatal. He became famous for the fact that he began to conquer the Crimean Scythians, with whom the Sarmatians previously maintained allied relations. Choosing new enemies, Gatal supported the Greek inhabitants of Kherson. This port suffered greatly from the Scythians and sought protection from the Sarmatians. The name Gatala is mentioned in the Greek document of 179 BC. e., in which he agreed to be the guarantor of the agreement between Pontus and Kherson.
Modern science knows the name of another king of the Roxolans. The leader Taziy (Tasiy) ruled around 110 BC. e., when the Sarmatians changed their policy, having entered into an alliance with the Scythians against the Bosporus kingdom. The army under the command of the commander Difant defeated the nomads. The famous historian Strabo reported on this war in his writings.
In the middle of the 1st century BC e. the migration of roxolans began, facilitated by the decline of the Bastarn. They migrated to the steppes west of the Dnieper, once again ousting related tongues from their lands. In turn, the roxolones had to retreat under the onslaught of the Aors and Alans. As a result, these Sarmatians settled in the steppes between the Danube Delta and the Dnieper. Some units even reached the Carpathian mountains. Part of the Roxolans turned south, stopping in Wallachia. Here, the borders of the Roman Empire became an insurmountable border for nomads. Under the pressure of this group of Sarmatians, Dacians removed from their usual places. In Roman chronicles, a case is mentioned when, in 62, a army of thousands of northern neighbors invaded the imperial province of Moesia. These Dacians, supplanted by the Roxolans, eventually received permission to settle within the Roman estates. The Sarmatians, unable to capture the Roman provinces, nevertheless constantly disturbed them with their destructive raids.
Economics and lifestyle
It is convenient to judge who the Sarmatians are by looking at their economy. This people lived in the steppes, and therefore led a nomadic lifestyle. The basis of the Sarmatian economy was livestock raising. Agriculture was also present, but on a much smaller scale and mainly in the vicinity of large rivers.
Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians - all these peoples resembled each other in their way of life. Instead of houses, they had tents and carts. The food consisted of meat and milk, which was given by large herds. Horse meat was a popular dish. Seasonal migration routes are another touch that clearly shows who the Sarmatians are. The history of the steppes of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan is connected with this people by many archaeological sites. In summer, the Sarmatians lived on the plains, and in winter they moved on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Their typical clothing was soft leather boots, long pants, and felt hats.
Military traditions
Like any other nomads, the Sarmatians could not imagine life without horses. These animals not only helped in the household, but were also needed in the war. Men taught boys to ride highs from a very young age. Skilled and hardy warriors were raised from all of them. This fact is confirmed by the fact that in many children's graves, archaeologists found weapons. The military customs of the steppes have not changed for centuries.
Who are the Sarmatians as soldiers? Their arsenal consisted of a curved short bow full of quiver arrows, an iron sword known as akinak. Less commonly used peaks, spears and battle axes. There is also evidence of ancient historians about the popularity of nomads sling and lasso. The armor included armor from bovine rawhide and wicker shields.
Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians and other ancient steppe peoples used approximately the same tactics in battle. The attack was an attack of a large group of horsemen, who fired at the enemy with a bow at all gallop. The roxolans were especially skilled warriors. Sarmatian swords were gigantic in size. They could only be held in two hands.
Society
Ancient historians and geographers who tried to explain who the Sarmatians were, noted that this people did not have the institution of slavery. All people with them had personal freedom. The leaders of the steppes elected the most famous soldiers. Because of the fragmentary sources of modern science, the names of only a few of these kings are known.
The social ladder of the Sarmatian people, at the top of which there were rulers, was not always the same. The mounds discovered by archaeologists testify to this. Graves are the best source of knowledge about who the Sarmatians are and where they lived. The early Sarmatian mounds were poor and homogeneous. However, at the end of the V century BC. e. rich graves appeared in which, together with a man, they buried gold and other luxuries. Such findings of experts indicate a gradual social stratification of the Sarmatians. The burial grounds of the tribal aristocracy are markedly different from the usual ones, which means that even the harsh nomads have their own elites.
Women and religion
Particularly curious is the information that Greek writers left about Sarmatian women. So, Herodotus compared them to the Amazons. Nomad women hunted on horseback and even took part in wars along with men. In addition, it is known that the layer of priestesses played an important role in Sarmatian society. The steppes were pagans, they worshiped fire and the sun. At the beginning of our era, a new Zoroastrian cult spread among them.
The Sarmatians believed in the afterlife, and therefore they had many scattered funeral rites. Some formed under the influence of animism and animal worship. All this knowledge of modern scientists about the steppes continues to be supplemented and improved as new archaeological finds appear. The question of who the Sarmatians are and what they did is far from open. Today, experts continue to find out interesting details about the ancient inhabitants of the steppes of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.
Alans
The peak of power of the Sarmatian Alans belongs to the so-called late Sarmatian period in the I-IV centuries. At the beginning of our era, they arrived from the eastern steppes in the Sea of Azov and Ciscaucasia. In 73-74 years. the Alans unsuccessfully tried to conquer Parthia and invaded it, having traveled a huge path along the eastern Caspian Sea. In 123, the nomads had already attacked Roman possessions. Their invasion affected the northeast Asian provinces of the empire. This time, the Sarmatians were defeated by the commander Flavius Arrian. In 133, the raid was repeated. Alans invaded the territory of modern Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The emergence of new Sarmatians in the Eastern European steppes was caused by another wave of resettlement of many ethnic groups. Iranian peoples retreated from the Asian steppes, finding themselves on the path of the formidable Huns. In the 4th century, the Great Migration of Nations took place because of them, which affected not only the Alans, but also numerous other tribes, including the German group.
After the onset of the Huns, most of the Alans dissolved among them and other Turks (Khazars, Volga Bulgarians, Utigurs). Some groups of these last Sarmatians moved to the Caucasus. Their modern descendants are Ossetians, whose language has remained the last language at least somehow connected with the previously widespread Sarmatian group.
Some Alans settled in inaccessible areas of the Central Caucasus, where representatives of the Koban archaeological culture of the Iron Age had previously settled. In the VI century, they survived the invasion of Altai Turks and Avars. Since about 650, the Alans were in vassal dependence on the Khazar Khaganate. A vast region between Dagestan and Kuban was named after them. The Alanian princes entered into marriages with the reigning dynasty of Georgia. Sarmatian states in the Caucasus existed for several centuries. The history of the Alans ended after the Tatar-Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Since then, their name has not been found in medieval chronicles.