Article | The Scythians and Sarmatians Around the River Danube

The aboriginal Saka and Sogdian-Turanian Aryans have been for the main part been displaced by the Altai (Turkic or Turkoman) peoples in today's Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps one of the reasons why the Altai-Turkic peoples are sometimes associated with the Saka.

Mavi Boncuk |

By Dbachmann, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=777725

The Scythians and Sarmatians Around the River Danube 

İlhami DURMUŞ Prof. Dr., Gazi Üniversitesi Fen- Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Bölümü, ilhamidurmus@gmail.com

Abstract 

Scythians and Sarmatians[1] were the steppe peoples of particular importance. Both of them had become dominant over the steppes in the region North of the Black Sea and then beginning from Crimea they expanded their power troughout the Black Sea coasts coming in touch with the settled peoples via Caucasia in the East and via the River Danube in the West. First they were the Scythians who met the settled peoples living around the River Danube. They went into economic relationship with those peoples besides political and military challenges. Their connection with the Greeks was mainly of economic grounds. Scythians were fallowed by the Sarmatians who tried to establish commercial relationship with the Greeks. It became inevitable for the Sarmatians to fight against the Romans who directed their Empire armies towards the Danube valley. It is known that the Iazyges, western branch of the Sarmatians, had a considerable role in these fightings. The Romans who appreciated their fighting capabilities and tactics began to insert the Iazygian cavalries within their armies. Scythians and Sarmatians semi-nomadic culture deeply effected the settled peoples around the River Danube both economically and militarily. Key words: Scythians, Sarmatians, Greeks, Romans, River Danube. 

Turkic Connections

The Scythians and Sarmatians were a nomadic Iranic people. But they would be gradually displaced and assimilated by Turkic peoples towards the Middle Ages. Generally, 'native' people from the Caucusus, Central Asia and the Pontic steppe would be the closest descendents to the Ancient Saka. For comparison, another similar situation would be the Sumerians (who were gradually assimilated by the neighbouring Akkadians). A recent ancient genome study titled Ancient genomes suggest the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe as the source of western Iron Age nomads, published by Maja Krzewinska et. al. on October 3, 2018, provided further info on the origins of Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians. 

All Pontic Caspian Iron Age Nomads (Northeast of the Black Sea, Western Asia, starting around 1000 BC) whose grave remains were analyzed, Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians, have mtDNA ancestry associated with Central Asia and East Asia, specifically the region around the Altai mountains. 

Moreover, all Cimmerians had Siberian ancestry. One of the Cimmerians had haplogroup Q1a, found among Siberians, East Asians and Native Americans and thought to have originated in the Altai Mountains. 

The results are a clear indication of a migration from Western/Southern Siberia first towards North of the Black Sea, and then to Anatolia/Turkey, a migration already known from ancient written records. 

Cimmerians and Scythians probably mixed with the Indo-European speaking populations residing in the Pontic Caspian and Iran. It is already known that many Scythian rulers had Turkish and Indo-European-Iranian names. This was known even before these genetic study results, thanks to the linguistic and cultural evidence presented largely by Russian scholars such as Klyosov and Kisamov. See Scythian, Scyth, Sukut known from Mesopotamian Cuneiform Records and also Was Scythian an Iranian Language by Borisoff, another Russian scholar. 

The study proves that Turks had migrated to the Pontic Caspian around 1000 BC at the latest, and entered Anatolia around 650 BC, led by Cimmerian King Dugdamme, (Dugdamis, in Greek Lygdamis). Cimmerians first conquered the Urartu kingdom in the East and later Phrygia in the West. King Midas' death may have been related to Cimmerian invasion of Anatolia. 

Needless to say, this was not the earliest entry of the Turks to Anatolia via Iran, as evidenced by cuneiform records from 2300 BC through 600 BC. See Turuk/Turkish migration waves out of Turkey, Iran and Mesopotamia towards Italy, Greece and Spain! 2200-800 BC and the Origins of the Etruscans! 

Moreover, Iran and Siberian Altai connection goes many thousand years earlier, to at least 4000 BC as seen in other genetic study results: Sumerian migrations and Uruk expansions. 

The 4-16 percent Siberian genetic ancestry found in Mycenaean Greeks (See Sumerian Influence on Ancient Greece: Minoan, Mycenaean and Classical Greece) and the Turuk raids attested from a few centuries earlier in Assyrian cuneiform records must be considered together with Cimmerian data which shows a similar migration about a 1000 years later from the Altai mountains.

Scythian samples from the East Pontic Caspian Steppes came out to be R1b. This was totally unexpected for those Western scholars who link Indo-European languages to genetic study results without any written and/or archaeological evidence.


That cultural and genetic merge throughout centuries probably explains why Turkic cultures and peoples of the Eurasian steppes also have a lot of links with ancient Scythians and Sarmatians

Scythians with horses under a tree. Gold belt plaque. Siberia, 4th–3rd century BC. © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2017. Photo: V Terebenin.

[1]  The brilliantly named ‘pseudo-Hippocrates’ wrote that: ‘The Scyths… have no houses but live in wagons. These are very small with four wheels. Others with six wheels are covered with felt; such wagons are employed like houses, in twos or threes and provide shelter from rain and wind … The women and children live in these wagons, but the men always remain on horseback.’

Nomadic peoples tended not to leave a lot behind in terms of cities or literature – what used to be called ‘civilisation’. What we know of the Scythians is largely through excavations of burial mounds (kurgans), and examples of rock art. It is from these remains that we have the archaeological evidence to see if the ancient writers like Herodotus were right – or if they were making it up as they went along.

In fact, our old friend Herodotus thought that the fact they were nomads meant they were extra scary:

‘For when men have no stablished cities or fortresses, but all are house-bearers and mounted archers, living not by tilling the soil but by cattle-rearing and carrying their dwellings on wagons, how should these not be invincible and unapproachable?’ (Histories, Book 4)

Being nomadic, of course, meant having portable possessions that were robust. The objects the Scythians buried with their dead are generally small or lightweight – such as small drinking flasks and wooden bowls. There is no furniture to speak of – the few surviving tables are low and come apart. Thick floor coverings were essential though – sheepskins, felt rugs and even an imported pile carpet have all been found in tombs.

The Scythians developed horse breeding and riding to a new level. They were accomplished riders and did not use spiked bits or muzzles. Scythian horse gear (saddles, bridles, bits etc) was also highly developed and functional, durable and light. We know this because the large burial mounds contain large numbers of sacrificed horses. These were accompanied by halters, bridles and saddles, and occasionally whips, pouches and shields. 

The saddle horses were buried with very elaborate costumes including headgear with griffins or antlers, saddle covers decorated with combat scenes, and long dangling pendants.The saddle horses were buried with very elaborate costumes including headgear with griffins or antlers, saddle covers decorated with combat scenes, and long dangling pendants.

There are hydronyms and toponyms in the lands inhabited by Scythians that can be reasonably interpreted as of Indo-Iranian origin, particularly several rivers based on a root like dan-, don-, which would made total sense if they came from Indo-Iranian *dáhnu (see for instance Sanskrit daanu and Avestan daanu), itself from Proto-Indo-European *deh2nu-, “river goddess”: Danube, Don, Dniester, Dnieper, Donets.

Scythians were also widely known as Saka in the East. Old Persian sources talk of 3 groups of Saka tribes they knew: the Sakā haumavargā (the first part of this qualification is very interesting to the “Iranic hypothesis”, too, because hauma was na extremely importante beverage/plant in the Early Indo-Iranian polytheism; those Sakas were placed roughly between Bactria and India); the Sakā tigraxaudā (Saka “with pointed caps” - the unusually pointed caps had also been described as a trademark of Scythians by Herodotus, who lived much to the west of the Persians and the Sakas that those had met most closely), and - very interestingly - the Sakā tayai paradraya (i.e. the Saka “beyond the sea”, placed between Greeks and Thracians, apparently indicating that those people found in the Black Sea region were also a group of the Sakas that Persians knew in Central Asia). Well, it seems then that the Sakas were also a general term used for people of a similar way of life and culture from the Black Sea to Central Asia - confirming they were basically the Persian version of the Greek word Scythian.

Ossetian actually has attestation of the the sound change from ry [rj] to l. Why is that useful? Because that change would explain the appearance of the word Alan in the Late Antiquity to refer to people from the same region and harboring broadly the same cultural ways as the former Sarmatians and Scythians of the Eastern European steppe (remember that “Scythian” or “Sarmatian” were probably exonyms used by foreigners, not endonyms that people used for themselves). Alan can be thus directly derived from Aryana, the Old Iranic term meaning “Aryan” or “Iranian”.

[2] The Sarmatians (Latin: Sarmatae, Sauromatae; Greek: Σαρμάται, Σαυρομάται) were a large Iranian confederation that existed in classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.The Scythians developed horse breeding and riding to a new level. They were accomplished riders and did not use spiked bits or muzzles. Scythian horse gear (saddles, bridles, bits etc) was also highly developed and functional, durable and light. We know this because the large burial mounds contain large numbers of sacrificed horses. These were accompanied by halters, bridles and saddles, and occasionally whips, pouches and shields. Originating in the central parts of the Eurasian Steppe, the Sarmatians started migrating westward around the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, coming to dominate the closely related Scythians by 200 BC. At their greatest reported extent, around 1st century AD, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south.

Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia (/sɑːrˈmeɪʃiə/) to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia (it included today's Central Ukraine, South-Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, Russian Volgaand South-Ural regions, also to a smaller extent north-eastern Balkans and around Moldova). In the 1st century AD, the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic tribes. In the 3rd century AD, their dominance of the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Germanic Goths. With the Hunnic invasions of the 4th century, many Sarmatians joined the Goths and other Germanic tribes (Vandals) in the settlement of the Western Roman Empire. Since large parts of today's Russia, specifically the land between the Ural Mountains and the Don River, were controlled in the 5th century BC by the Sarmatians, the Volga–Don and Ural steppes sometimes are also called "Sarmatian Motherland". Sarmatae probably originated as just one of several tribal names of the Sarmatians, but one that Greco-Roman ethnography came to apply as an exonym to the entire group. Strabo in the 1st century names as the main tribes of the Sarmatians the Iazyges, the Roxolani, the Aorsi and the Siraces.

The Greek name Sarmatai sometimes appears as "Sauromatai", which is almost certainly no more than a variant of the same name. Nevertheless, historians often regarded these as two separate peoples, while archaeologists habitually use the term 'Sauromatian' to identify the earliest phase of Sarmatian culture. Any idea that the name derives from the word lizard (sauros), linking to the Sarmatians' use of reptile-like scale armour and dragon standards, is almost certainly unfounded.[

Both Pliny the Elder (Natural History book iv) and Jordanes recognised the Sar- and Sauro- elements as interchangeable variants, referring to the same people. Greek authors of the 4th century (Pseudo-Scylax, Eudoxus of Cnidus) mention Syrmatae as the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the ethnonym as it was pronounced in the final phase of Sarmatian culture.

English scholar Harold Walter Bailey (1899–1996) derived the base word from Avestan sar- (to move suddenly) from tsar- in Old Iranian (tsarati, tsaru-, hunter), which also gave its name to the western Avestan region of Sairima (*salm, – *Sairmi), and also connected it to the 10–11th century AD Persian epic Shahnameh's character "Salm".

Oleg Trubachyov derived the name from the Indo-Aryan *sar-ma(n)t (feminine – rich in women, ruled by women), the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian word *sar- (woman) and the Indo-Iranian adjective suffix -ma(n)t/wa(n)t.[By this derivation was noted the unusual high status of women (Matriarchy) from the Greek point of view and went to the invention of Amazons (thus the Greek name for Sarmatians as Sarmatai Gynaikokratoumenoi, ruled by women).

The first Sarmatians are mostly identified with the Prokhorovka culture, which moved from the southern Urals to the Lower Volga and then northern Pontic steppe, in the 4th–3rd centuries BC. During the migration, the Sarmatians seem to have grown and divided themselves into several groups, such as the Alans, Aorsi, Roxolani and Iazyges. By 200 BC, the Sarmatians replaced the Scythians as the dominant people of the steppes.The Sarmatians spoke an Iranian language, derived from 'Old Iranian', that was heterogenous. By the 1st century BC, the Iranian tribes in what is today South Russia spoke different languages or dialects, clearly distinguishable.[26] According to a group of Iranologists writing in 1968, the numerous Iranian personal names in Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea coast indicated that the Sarmatians spoke a North-Eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Alanian-Ossetian. However, Harmatta (1970) argued that "the language of the Sarmatians or that of the Alans as a whole cannot be simply regarded as being Old Ossetian". 

The Sarmatians and Scythians had fought on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea. Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of a Caucasoid appearance. Sarmatian noblemen often reached 1.70–1.80 m (5 ft 7 in–5 ft 11 in) as measured from skeletons. They had sturdy bones, long hair and beards.[citation needed] In the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, the Greek physician Galen declared that Sarmatians, Scythians and other northern peoples had reddish hair. 


They are said to owe their name (Sarmatae) to it. The Alans were a group of Sarmatian tribes, according to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus. He wrote, "Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty, their hair is somewhat yellow, their eyes are frighteningly fierce".