The Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into West Asia. Although the Cimmerians were culturally Scythian, they were ethnically distinct from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related and who displaced and replaced the Cimmerians.: "As the Cimmerians cannot be differentiated archeologically from the Scythians, it is possible to speculate about their Iranian origins. In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D'yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka, reflecting the perception among inhabitants of Mesopotamia that Cimmerians and Scythians represented a single cultural and economic group"
The Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Neo-Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.
Name Etymology The English name is derived from Latin , itself derived from the Ancient Greek (), of an ultimately uncertain origin for which there have been various proposals. According to János Harmatta, it was derived from Old Iranic , meaning "union of clans." and Igor Diakonoff derived it from an Old Iranic term or , meaning "mobile unit." Askold Ivantchik derives the name of the Cimmerians from an original form or , of uncertain meaning. According to Ivantchik, the Greek form of the name started with /k/ rather than with /g/ as in the original name due to its transmission to the Greek language through the intermediary of the Lydian language, which did not distinguish between the voiced and non-voiced velar stops. Diakonoff later abandoned his own proposed etymology to support that of Ivantchik.
The name of the Cimmerians is attested in: Neo-Assyrian Akkadian as ( and ); Late Babylonian Akkadian as ( and ); and Hebrew as ().
Broader usage The Late Babylonian scribes of the Achaemenid Empire used the name "Cimmerians" to designate all the nomad peoples of the steppe, including the Scythians and Saka.
However, while the Cimmerians were an Iranic people sharing a common language, origins and culture with the Scythians and are archaeologically indistinguishable from the Scythians, all sources contemporary to their activities clearly distinguished the Cimmerians and the Scythians as being two separate political entities.
In 1966, the archaeologist Maurits Nanning van Loon described the Cimmerians as Western Scythians, and referred to the Scythians proper as the Eastern Scythians.
History
There are three main sources of information on the historical Cimmerians: Akkadian cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia; Graeco-Roman sources; archaeological data from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes, Caucasia, and West Asia.
Origins The arrival of the Cimmerians in Europe was part of the larger process of westwards movement of Central Asian Iranic nomads towards Southeast and Central Europe which lasted from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD. Other Iranic nomads, such as the Scythians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, and Alans, would later follow.
Beginning of steppe nomadism True nomadic pastoralism emerged at the beginning of the first millennium BC due to climatic changes that made the steppe environment of Central Asia and Siberia colder and more arid than before. The decline in solar activity during the 9th century BC turned the arid, inhospitable desert of south-central Siberia into lush, resource-rich grassland capable of supporting massive herds of grazing animals. These changes transformed the sedentary Bronze Age farmers, who relied on a mixed economy, into nomadic herders. Consequently, by the 9th century BC, all settlements of the sedentary Bronze Age populations in the steppe had disappeared, thereby fostering population mobility and the formation of warrior units needed to protect herds and occupy new territories.
These climatic conditions, in turn, prompted nomadic groups to become transhumant herders, constantly moving their herds from one pasture to another across the steppe, and to seek better grazing lands to the west, in Ciscaucasia and the forest-steppe regions of Western Eurasia.
The Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex The Cimmerians originated as a section of the first wave of the nomadic populations who originated in the parts of Central Asia corresponding to eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region, and who had, beginning in the 10th century BC and lasting until the 9th to 8th centuries BC, migrated westwards into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe regions, where they formed new tribal confederations which constituted the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
Among these tribal confederations were the Cimmerians in the Caspian Steppe, as well as the Agathyrsi in the Pontic Steppe, and possibly the Sigynnae in the Pannonian Steppe. The archaeological and historical records regarding these migrations are however scarce, and permit to sketch only a very broad outline of this complex development.
The Cimmerians corresponded to a part of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, to whose development three main cultural influences contributed to: present in the development of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex is a strong impact of the native Bilozerka culture, especially in the form of pottery styles and burial traditions; the two other influences were of foreign origin: attesting of the Inner Asian origin, a strong material influence from the Altai, Aržan and Karasuk cultures from Central Asia and Siberia is visible in the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex of Inner Asian origin were especially dagger and arrowhead types, horse gear such as bits with stirrup-shaped terminals, deer stone-like carved stelae and Animal Style art; in addition to this Central Asian influence, the Kuban culture of Ciscaucasia also played an important contribution in the development of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, especially regarding the adoption of Kuban culture-types of mace heads and bimetallic daggers. The Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex thus developed natively in the North Pontic region over the course of the 9th to mid-7th centuries BC from elements which had earlier arrived from Central Asia, due to which it itself exhibited similarities with the other early nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppe and forest steppe which existed before the 7th century BC, such as the Aržan culture, so that these various pre-Scythian early nomadic cultures were thus part of a unified Aržan-Chernogorovka cultural layer originating from Central Asia.
Thanks to their development of highly mobile mounted nomadic pastoralism and the creation of effective weapons suited to equestrian warfare, all based on equestrianism, these nomads from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes were able to gradually infiltrate into Central and Southeast Europe and therefore expand deep into this region over a very long period of time, so that the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex covered a wide territory ranging from Central Europe and the Pannonian Plain in the west to Caucasia in the east, including present-day Southern Russia.
This in turn allowed the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex itself to strongly influence the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe: among these influences was the adoption of trousers, which were not used by the native populations of Central Europe before the arrival of the Central Asian steppe nomads.
In the Caspian and Ciscaucasian Steppes Within the western sections of the Eurasian Steppe, the Cimmerians lived in the Caspian and Ciscaucasian Steppes, situated on the northern and western shores of the Caspian Sea and along the Araxes river, i.e., the Volga river, which acted as their eastern border separating them from the Scythians; to the west, the territory of the Cimmerians extended until the Bosporus, i.e. the Kerch Strait).
The Cimmerians were thus the first large nomadic confederation to have inhabited the Ciscaucasian Steppe, and they never formed the basic mass of the population of the Pontic Steppe, with neither Hesiod nor Aristeas of Proconnesus ever recording them living in this area; moreover the groups of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex from the Pontic Steppe and Central Europe have so far not been identifiable with the historical Cimmerians. Instead, the main grouping of Iranic nomads of Central Asian origin belonging to the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex in the eastern parts of the Pontic Steppe were the Agathyrsi to the north of the Lake Maeotis.
Some later place names mentioned by the ancient Greeks in the 5th century BC as existing in the Bosporan (Kerch Strait) region, might have owed their origin to the historical presence of the Cimmerians in this area, such as: the "Cimmerian ferry" (), the "country of Cimmeria" (), and the "Cimmerian Bosporus" (). However, a derivation of these names from the historical Cimmerian presence is still very uncertain.
The displacement of the Cimmerians Arrival of the Scythians A second wave of migration of Iranic nomads corresponded with the arrival of the early Scythians from Central Asia into the Caucasian Steppe, which started in the 9th century BC, when a significant movement of the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian Steppe started after the early Scythians were expelled out of Central Asia by either the Massagetae, who were a powerful nomadic Iranic tribe from Central Asia closely related to the Scythians, or by another Central Asian people called the Issedones, thus forcing the early Scythians to the west, across the Araxes river and into the Caspian and Ciscaucasian Steppes.
Like the nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, the Scythians originated in Central Asia in the steppes corresponding to either present-day eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region, which is attested by the continuity of Scythian burial rites and weaponry types with the Karasuk culture, as well as by the origin of the typically Scythian Animal Style art in the Mongolo-Siberian region.
Therefore, the Scythians and the nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex were closely related populations who shared a common origin, culture, and language, and the earliest Scythians were therefore part of a common Aržan-Chernogorovka cultural layer originating from Central Asia, with the early Scythian culture being materially indistinguishable from the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
This western migration of the early Scythians lasted through the middle 8th century BC, and archaeologically corresponded to the movement of a population originating from Tuva in southern Siberia in the late 9th century BC towards the west, and arriving in the 8th to 7th centuries BC into Europe, especially into Ciscaucasia, which it reached some time between and , thus following the same general migration path as the first wave of Central Asian Iranic nomads who had formed the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
Migration of the Cimmerians The westward migration of the Scythians brought them around to the lands of the Cimmerians, who around this time were leaving their homelands in the Caspian Steppe to move into West Asia.
The reasons for the departure of the Cimmerians are unknown, although they might possibly have migrated under the pressure from the Scythians, similarly to how various nomadic peoples drove each other into the peripheries of the steppes in Europe, West Asia and the Iranian Plateau during Late Antiquity and afterwards.