Posted by Iranian on August 16, 2006, 1:08 am, in reply to "tell us what is wrong? - Oslonor" Pliny the elder Origins
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Strabo mentions the Sarmatians in a number of places, never saying very much about them. He uses both Sarmatai and Sauromatai, but never together, and never suggesting that they are different peoples. He often pairs Sarmatians and Scythians in reference to a series of ethnic names, never stating which is which, as though Sarmatian or Scythian could apply equally to them all.
In Strabo the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga, and from north of the Dnepr into the Caucasus, where, he says, they are called Caucasii like everyone else there. This statement indicates that the Alans already had a home in the Caucasus, without waiting for the Huns to push them there.
Even more significantly he points to a Celtic admixture in the region of the Basternae, who, he says, are of Germanic origin. The Celtic Boii, Scordisci and Taurisci are there. A fourth ethnic element being melted in are the Thracians (7.3.2). Moreover, the peoples toward the north are Keltoskythai, "Celtic Scythians" (11.6.2). We know now from language studies that the Celts did play a significant role in Slavic ethnogenesis[citation needed]. Perhaps the words of Strabo are telling us between the lines that it was happening in his time.
Strabo also portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or Hamaksoikoi, "wagon-dwellers" and Galaktophagoi, "milk-eaters" referring, no doubt, to the universal koumiss eaten in historical times. The wagons were used for porting tents made of felt, which must have been the yurts used universally by Asian nomads before pick-up trucks and mobile homes, and are still used in some locations.
Tacitus
In Tacitus (Germania) we read of "mutual fear" between the Germans and the Sarmatians (Sarmati) and Dacians (ch.1). Those Sarmatians had to have been much further west than the Don River. We also read that, like the Persians, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing robes (ch 17). Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the Cotini and Osi, and iron from the Cotini (ch. 43), "to their shame" (presumably because they could have used the iron to arm themselves and resist). It is no surprise to find the Sarmatians in the last chapter in which they are mentioned (ch. 46) called "squalid", "slovenly", "ugly", which shows that the Romans shared the Germanic fear of them. Tacitus also characterizes them as roving nomadically over the mountains and forests of east Europe.
Tacitus is not the only Roman military man to have been interested in the Sarmatians; the admiral, Pliny the Elder, relying on intelligence from Roman military stations in the north (by that time amber from the Baltic was being purchased by Roman agents on location), provides the most defining statement regarding the Sarmatians (4.12.79-81):
From this point (the mouth of the Danube) all the races in general are Scythian, though various sections have occupied the lands adjacent to the coast, in one place the Getae ... at another the Sarmatae ... Agrippa describes the whole of this area from the Danube to the sea ... as far as the river Vistula in the direction of the Sarmatian desert ... The name of the Scythians has spread in every direction, as far as the Sarmatae and the Germans, but this old designation has not continued for any except the most outlying sections ....
What this passage seems to tell us is that the Scythians or Scythian rule once extended even to the Germans, but now remained only in the far districts. Jordanes supports this hypothesis by telling us on the one hand that he was familiar with the Geography of Ptolemy, which includes the entire Balto-Slavic territory in Sarmatia, and on the other that this same region was Scythia. By Sarmatia Jordanes means only the Aryan territory. The Sarmatians therefore did come from the Scythians.
Ptolemy
By the 3rd century BC, the Sarmatian name appears to have supplanted the Scythian in the plains of what is now south Ukraine. The geographer, Ptolemy, reports them at what must be their maximum extent, divided into adjoining European and central Asian sections. Considering the overlap of tribal names between the Scythians and the Sarmatians, no new displacements probably took place. The people were the same Indo-Europeans they used to be, but now under yet another name.
Scythia comprised an area in Eurasia whose location and extent varied over time. Scythians at various times inhabited:
• the Caucasus area, including Azerbaijan, Georgia
• Central Asian steppes: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan
• the Altay Mountains region where present-day Mongolia, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan come together
• the plains of Indus (Sinthos), Jehlum (Hydaspes), Chenab (Acesines) and Sutlej (Zaradros) rivers in Pakistan and North-Western India.
• the southern Ukraine with the lower Danube river area and Bulgaria.
Scholars generally regard the Scythians as Iranian nomadic peoples, speaking an Iranian language.
The Scythians first appear in Assyrian annals as Ishkuzai, reported as pouring in from the north some time around 700 BC and settling in Ascania and modern Azerbaijan as far as to the southeast of Lake Urmia. The Scythian tribes mentioned in the Greek sources resided in the steppe between the Dnieper and Don rivers.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus describes the Kimmerioi or Cimmerians (Gimirru in Assyrian annals) as a distinct autochthonous tribe, expelled by the Scythians, of the northern Black Sea coast (Hist. 4.11-12). Herodotus then goes further to state that "the Hellenes gave them" the name Scythians, and that the Scythians called themselves Scolotoi; and that Scolotoi, in turn, referred in general to several distinct tribes: Auchatai, Catiaroi, Traspians, and finally Paralatai or "Royal Scythians". Throughout his work Herodotus specifically distinguished between the nomadic Scythians in the South and agricultural Scythians to the North.
[As of 2006]] no consensus exists regarding these different Scythian subdivisions. The Western school of thought generally ignores Herodotus' distinction, and views all Scythians as a single group that spread throughout Greater Scythia, and eventually split into distinct cultures.
The pro-Slavic school of thought, following Boris Rybakov, claims that the nomadic Scythians of Herodotus had Iranian origins, while seeing the northern agricultural Scythians as proto-Slavs, ruled by Scythian chieftains. Rybakov points out the incompatibility in life-styles with boundaries between nomads and farmers and their distinct burial customs remaining constant throughout the centuries of the Scythians' existence. Rybakov also stresses the similarities between the agricultural Scythian culture and the later Slavic culture. The Scythian creation-myth recorded by Herodotus also points to farmers rather than nomads, as it centers around a plough; and while it has no parallels within Iranian folklore, folklorists recorded a virtually unchanged version as a Russian folktale in the 19th century.
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