Cimmerians

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Cimmerians

See Cimmeria (Conan)
Cimmeria (Conan)

Cimmeria is a fictional land of barbarians in antediluvian earth and the homeland of Conan the Barbarian in the works of Robert E. Howard....
or Cimmeria (Poem)
Cimmeria (poem)

"Cimmeria" is a poem by Robert E. Howard about the fictional country Cimmeria , created by Howard as part of his Hyborian Age which is the setting for his character Conan the Barbarian....
for the fiction of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard

This article is about writer Robert E. Howard. For the Medal of Honor recipient, try Robert L. Howard.Robert Ervin Howard was an United States author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres....
.

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians (Kimmerioi) were ancient equestrian nomads who, according to Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, originally inhabited the region north of the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
and the Black Sea

Black Sea

Ukraine

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
, in the 8th

8th century BC

The 8th century BC started the first day of 800 BC and ended the last day of 701 BC....
and 7th centuries BC.

r origins are obscure, but they are believed to have been Indo-European.

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Encyclopedia

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians (Kimmerioi) were ancient equestrian nomads who, according to Herodotus

Herodotus

Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
and the Black Sea

Black Sea

Ukraine

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
, in the 8th

8th century BC

The 8th century BC started the first day of 800 BC and ended the last day of 701 BC....
and 7th centuries BC.

Origins

Their origins are obscure, but they are believed to have been Indo-European. Their language is regarded as related to Iranian or Thracian

Thracian language

The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians in South-Eastern Europe....
, or they seem at least to have had an Iranian ruling class.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "They probably did live in the area north of the Black Sea, but attempts to define their original homeland more precisely by archaeological means, or even to fix the date of their expulsion from their country by the Scythians, have not so far been completely successful."

Very little is known archaeologically of the Cimmerians of the Northern Black Sea Coast. They are associated with the Srubna culture

Srubna culture

The Srubna culture , was a Late Bronze Age culture. It is a successor to the Yamna culture, the Catacomb culture and the Abashevo culture.It occupied the area along and above the north shore of the Black Sea from the Dnieper eastwards along the northern base of the Caucasus to the area abutting the north shore of the Caspian Sea, across t...
, which displaced the earlier catacomb culture

Catacomb culture

The Catacomb culture, ca. 2800-2200 BC, refers to an early Bronze Age culture occupying essentially what is present-day Ukraine. It was related to the Yamna culture, and would seem more of an areal term to cover several smaller related archaeological cultures....
(2000-1200 BC).

A few stone stelae found in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
and the northern Caucasus have been connected with the Cimmerians. They are in a style clearly different from both the later Scythian and the earlier Yamna/Kemi-Oba stelae.

Historical accounts

The first historical record of the Cimmerians appears in Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
n annals in the year 714 BC. These describe how a people termed the Gimirri helped the forces of Sargon II to defeat the kingdom of Urartu

Urartu

Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom in Eastern Anatolia , rising to power in the mid 9th century BC, and finally conquered by Median Empire in the early 6th century BC....
. Their original homeland, called Gamir or Uishdish, seems to have been located within the buffer state of Mannae. The later geographer Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
placed the Cimmerian city of Gomara in this region. After their conquests of Colchis

Colchis

In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgia , state monarchy and region in the Western Georgia , which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgians and its subgroups....
and Iberia

Caucasian Iberia

Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Ancient Greece and Roman Empire to the ancient Georgia kingdom of Kartli corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia....
in the First Millennium BC, the Cimmerians also came to be known as Gimirri in Georgian

Georgian language

Georgian is the official language of Georgia , a country in the Caucasus .Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad ....
. According to Georgian historians, the Cimmerians played an influential role in the development of both the Colchian and Iberian

Caucasian Iberia

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity,their Greek hero cult being one of the most distinctive features of Religion in ancient Greece....
which is gmiri, is derived from the word Gimirri, a direct reference to the Cimmerians which settled in the area after the initial conquests.

Some modern authors assert that the Cimmerians included mercenaries, whom the Assyrians knew as Khumri, who had been resettled there by Sargon. However, later Greek accounts describe the Cimmerians as having previously lived on the steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, a steppe , pronounced , is a grassland plain without trees . The prairie can be considered a steppe. It may be semi-desert, or covered with Poaceae or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude....
s, between the Tyras (Dniester

Dniester

The Dniester is a river in Eastern Europe....
) and Tanais (Don) rivers. Several kings of the Cimmerians are mentioned in Greek and Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
n sources, including Tugdamme

Tugdamme

Tugdamme was Cimmerians king of the mid-seventh century BC.Tugdamme's legacy began sometime around 660 BCE. It seems that his first known attacks were against the Greek coastal cities in Asia Minor....
(Lygdamis in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
; mid-7th century BC), and Sandakhshatra

Sandakhshatra

Sandakhshatra according to the Assyrian inscriptions provided by Ashurbanipal King of Assyria was the son of Tugdamme. These inscriptions that mention Sandakhshatra mention that his father Tugdamme was killed in battle but indicate that Sandakhshatra survived and thus became the next King of the Saka....
(late-7th century).

A "mythical" people also named Cimmerians are described in Book 11, 14 of Homer

Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
's Odyssey
Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
as living beyond the Oceanus

Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
, in a land of fog and darkness, at the edge of the world and the entrance of Hades; most probably they are unrelated to the Cimmerians of the Black Sea.

According to the Histories of Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
(c. 440 BC), the Cimmerians had been expelled from the steppes at some point in the past by the Scythians. To ensure burial in their ancestral homeland, the men of the Cimmerian royal family divided into groups and fought each other to the death. The Cimmerian commoners buried the bodies along the river Tyras and fled from the Scythian advance, across the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
and into Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
and the Near East

Near East

Near East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other....
. Their range seems to have extended from Mannae eastward through the Mede

Medes

The Medes were an Ancient Iranian peoples who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran. This area was known in Greek as Media or Medea ....
settlements of the Zagros Mountains

Zagros Mountains

The Zagros , are the largest mountain range in Iran and Iraq. They have a total length of 1 500 km from western Iran, on the border with Iraq to the southern parts of the Persian Gulf....
, and south of there as far as Elam

Elam

Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran.Elam was centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province , as far as Jiroft in Kerman province and Burned City in Zabol, as well as a small part of southern Iraq....
.

The migrations of the Cimmerians were recorded by the Assyrians, whose king, Sargon II, died in battle against them in 705 BC. They are subsequently recorded as having conquered Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
in 696-695 BC, prompting the Phrygian king Midas

Midas

In Greek mythology, Midas or King Midas is popularly remembered for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold: the Midas touch....
to take poison rather than face capture. In 679 BC, during the reign of Esarhaddon

Esarhaddon

Esarhaddon , was a king of Neo-Assyria who reigned 681 ? 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
of Assyria, they attacked Cilicia

Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia now known as ?ukurova, was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian peninsula, and a political entity in Roman times....
and Tabal

Tabal

Tabal was a Luwian language speaking Neo-Hittite kingdom of South Central Anatolia, forming after the collapse of the Hittite Empire and surviving into Roman times....
under their new ruler Teushpa

Teushpa

Teushpa was a 7th century BC king of the Cimmerians but is also mentioned as king of the Umman-manda according to King Esarhaddon's inscriptions....
. Esarhaddon defeated them near Hubushna (tentatively identified with modern Cappadocia

Cappadocia

Cappadocia, Wikipedia:IPA for English /k?p?'do???/ , was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor . The name continued to be used in western sources and in the Christianity tradition throughout history and is still widely used as an international Tourism in Turkey concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders characterized by...
).

In 654 BC or 652 BC – the exact date is unclear – the Cimmerians attacked the kingdom of Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkey provinces of Manisa Province and inland Izmir Province....
, killing the Lydian king Gyges

Gyges of Lydia

Gyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 716 BC to 678 BC . He was succeeded by his son Ardys II....
and causing great destruction to the Lydian capital, Sardis

Sardis

Sardis, also Sardes , modern Sart in the Manisa province of Turkey, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine Empire times....
. They returned ten years later during the reign of Gyges' son Ardys II

Ardys II

Ardys II was the twenty-seventh king of Lydia, and second king of the Mermnad dynasty, the son of King Gyges of Lydia; see List of Kings of Lydia....
and this time captured the city, with the exception of the citadel. The fall of Sardis was a major shock to the powers of the region; the Greek poets Callinus

Callinus

Callinus was a poet who lived in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus in Asia Minor in the mid-7th century BC. He is the earliest known greeks elegiac poet....
and Archilochus

Archilochus

Archilochus was a Ancient Greece poet and supposed mercenary....
recorded the fear that it inspired in the Greek colonies of Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest Izmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Hellenes settlements....
, some of which were attacked by Cimmerian and Treres raiders.

The Cimmerian occupation of Lydia was brief, however -- possibly due to an outbreak of plague

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an infection that is epidemic appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is "expected," based on recent experience ....
. Between 637 and 626 BC, they were beaten back by Alyattes II

Alyattes II

Alyattes , king of Lydia , the real founder of the Lydian empire, was the son of Sadyattes, of the house of the Mermnadae.For several years he continued the war against Miletus begun by his father, but was obliged to turn his attention to the Medes and Babylonians....
of Lydia. This defeat marked the effective end of Cimmerian power. The term "Gimirri" was used about a century later in the Behistun inscription

Behistun Inscription

The Behistun Inscription is a multi-lingual inscription located on Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the town of Jeyhounabad in western Iran....
(ca. 515 BC) as a Babylonian equivalent of Persian Saka

Saka

The Sakas or Sacae were a population of Central Asian nomadic tribes speaking an eastern Iranian languages language....
(Scythians), but otherwise Cimmerians are not heard of again in Asia, and their ultimate fate is uncertain. It has been speculated that they settled in Cappadocia, known in Armenian

Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
as Gamir (the same name as the original Cimmerian homeland in Mannae). However, certain Frankish

Franks

The Franks or Frankish people were a West Germanic ethnic group first identified in the 3rd century as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River....
traditions would locate them at the mouth of the Danube

Danube

The Danube is the longest river in the European Union and Europe's second longest river after the Volga.The river originates in the Black Forest in Germany as the much smaller Brigach and Breg River rivers which join at the eponymously named German town Donaueschingen, after which it is known as the Danube and flows eastwards for a distance...
(see Sicambri

Sicambri

The Sicambri were a Germanic people living in what is now called the Netherlands at the turn of the first millennium.Originating in the Germanic peoples-Celts contact zone , they had become Franks by the 4th century, associated with the Low Franconian Salian Franks....
).

Timeline

721-715 BC – Sargon II
Sargon II

Sargon II was an Neo-Assyrian Empiren king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V....
mentions a land of Gamirr near to Urartu
Urartu

Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom in Eastern Anatolia , rising to power in the mid 9th century BC, and finally conquered by Median Empire in the early 6th century BC....
.
714 – suicide of Rusas I of Urartu
Rusas I of Urartu

Rusa I was the monarch of Urartu. He succeeded his father, the great Sarduri II....
, after defeat by both the Assyrians and Cimmerians.
705 – Sargon II of Assyria dies on an expedition against the Kulummu.
679/678 – Gimirri under a ruler called Teushpa invade Assyria from Hubuschna (Cappadocia
Cappadocia

Cappadocia, Wikipedia:IPA for English /k?p?'do???/ , was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor . The name continued to be used in western sources and in the Christianity tradition throughout history and is still widely used as an international Tourism in Turkey concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders characterized by...
?). Esarhaddon of Assyria defeats them in battle.
676-674 – Cimmerians invade and destroy Phrygia, and reach Paphlagonia
Paphlagonia

Paphlagonia was an ancient area on the Black Sea coast of north central Anatolia, situated between Bithynia to the west and Pontus to the east, and separated from Phrygia by a prolongation to the east of the Bithynian Olympus....
.
654 or 652 – Gyges of Lydia dies in battle against the Cimmerians. Sack of Sardis; Cimmerians and Treres plunder Ionian colonies.
644 – Cimmerians occupy Sardis, but withdraw soon afterwards
637-626 – Cimmerians defeated by Alyattes II.
ca. 515 – Last historical record of Cimmerians, in the Behistun inscription of Darius.

Language

Of the language of the Cimmerians, only a few personal names have survived in Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
n inscriptions:

Te-ush-pa-a; according to Professor J. Harmatta it goes back to Old Iranian Tavis-paya "swelling with strength". Mentioned in the annals of Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon

Esarhaddon , was a king of Neo-Assyria who reigned 681 ? 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
, has been compared to the Hurrian war deity Teshub
Teshub

Teshub was the Hurrians god of sky and storm. He was derived from the Hattians Taru. His Hittites and Luwian name was Tarhun .He is depicted holding a triple thunderbolt and a weapon, usually an axe or Mace ....
; others interpret it as Iranian, comparing the Achaemenid name Teispes (Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
7.11.2).

Dug-dam-mei (Dugdammê) king of the Ummân-Manda (nomad
Nomad

Nomadic people, , also known as nomads, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than Settler in one location....
s) appears in a prayer of Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal , the son of Esarhaddon, was the last great monarch of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, which survives in part today at Nineveh....
to Marduk
Marduk

Marduk was the Babylonian language name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to slowly rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acqu...
, on a fragment at the British Museum
British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than 7 million Object , are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present....
. According to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian Du?da-maya "giving happiness". Other spellings include Dugdammi, and Tugdammê. Yamauchi also interprets the name as Iranian, citing Ossetic
Ossetic language

Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an Eastern Iranian languages language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Caucasus Mountains....
Tux-domæg "Ruling with Strength."The name appears corrupted to Lygdamis in Strabo
Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
1.3.21.

Sandaksatru, son of Dugdamme. This is an Iranian reading of the name, and Mayrhofer (1981) points out that the name may also be read as Sandakurru. Mayrhofer likewise rejects the interpretation of "with pure regency" as a mixing of Iranian and Indo-Aryan. Ivancik suggests an association with the Anatolia
Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
n deity Sanda
Sanda

Sanda may refer to:* Sanshou, a Chinese combat sport* Sanda, Hyogo, a city in Japan* Sanda University, in Shanghai, China* Sanda in Lahore, Pakistan...
. According to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian Sanda-Kuru "Splendid Son". Kur/Kuru is still used as "son" in Kurdish language
Kurdish language

The Kurdish language is a term used for the language spoken by Kurdish people. It is mainly concentrated in the parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey....
s and in Persian, korr is used for the male offspring of horses.

Some researchers have attempted to trace various place names to Cimmerian origins. It has been suggested that Crimea

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
is named after the Cimmerians as well as the Armenian city of Gyumri

Gyumri

Gyumri is the capital and largest city of the Shirak Province in northwest Armenia. It is located about 75 miles from the capital Yerevan, and, with a population of 168,918 ...
. This, however, seems to be a dubious premise. The name "Crimea" is traceable to the Crimean Tatar

Crimean Tatar language

The Crimean Tatar language , also known as Crimean and Crimean Turkish is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria....
word qirim "my steppe

Steppe

Taurica

Taurica also known as Tauris, Taurida, Tauric Chersonese, and Chersonesus Taurica was the name of Crimea in Classical antiquity....
"(Peninsula) of the Tauri

Tauri

The Tauri , also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae were a people settling on the southern coast of the Crimea peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean Mountains and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Black Sea....
" in antiquity (Strabo 7.4.1; Herodotus 4.99.3, Amm. Marc. 22.8.32).

Based on ancient Greek historical sources, a Thracian or (less commonly) a Celt

Celt

Celts , is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic languages. The term is also used in a wider sense to describe the Modern Celts of those peoples, notably those who participate in a Celtic culture....
ic association is sometimes assumed. According to Ferdinand Friedrich Carl Lehmann-Haupt, the language of the Cimmerians could have been a "missing link" between Thracian and Iranian.

Possible offshoots

The Cimmerians are thought to have had a number of offshoots. The Thracians

Thracians

The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European peoples who spoke the Thracian language - a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family....
have been identified as a possible western branch of the Cimmerians. If Herodotus is to be believed, both peoples originally inhabited the northern shore of the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
, and both were displaced around the same time by invaders from further east. Whereas the Cimmerians would have departed this ancestral homeland by heading east and south across the Caucasus, the Thracians migrated west and south into the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is the historical name of a geographic subregion of southeastern Europe. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains, which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia....
, where they established a successful and long-lived culture. The Tauri

Tauri

The Tauri , also Scythotauri, Tauri Scythae, Tauroscythae were a people settling on the southern coast of the Crimea peninsula, inhabiting the Crimean Mountains and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the Black Sea....
, the original inhabitants of Crimea, are sometimes identified as a people related to the Thracians.

Although the Cimmerians of historical record only appear on the stage of world history for a brief time (during the 7th century BC), numerous Celt

Celt

Germanic peoples

File:Germanische-ratsversammlung 1-1250x715.jpgThe Germanic peoples are a historical Ethnolinguistics group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European languages Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age....
have traditions of being descended from the Cimmerians or Scythians, and some of their ethnic names might bear out this belief (e.g. Cymru, Cwmry or Cumbria

Cumbria

Cumbria is a non-metropolitan county in the North West England of England. Cumbria came into existence as a county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, Cimbri

Cimbri

The Cimbri were a Celtic or Germanic peoples tribe who together with the Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC....
). It is unlikely that either Proto-Celtic or Proto-Germanic entered Europe as late as the 7th century BC, their formation being commonly associated with the Bronze Age Urnfield

Urnfield culture

The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremation the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were then buried in fields....
and Nordic Bronze Age

Nordic Bronze Age

The Nordic Bronze Age is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age archaeological culture in Scandinavian pre-history, ca 1800 BCE - 500 BCE, with sites that reached as far east as Estonia....
cultures, respectively. It is, however, conceivable that a small-scale (in terms of population) 8th century "Thraco-Cimmerian

Thraco-Cimmerian

Thraco-Cimmerian is a historiographical and archaeological term, composed of the names of the Thracians and the Cimmerians. It refers to 8th century BC to 7th century BC century BC cultures that are linked in Eastern Central Europe and in the area north of the Black Sea....
" migration triggered cultural changes that contributed to the transformation of the Urnfield culture into the Hallstatt C

Hallstatt culture

The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La T?ne culture....
culture, ushering in the European Iron Age

Iron Age

In archaeology, the Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron were prominent....
. Later Cimmerian remnant groups may have spread as far as to the Nordic Countries

Nordic countries

File:Location Nordic Council.svgThe Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and far northeastern North America, called the Nordic region, consisting of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland and ?land....
. For example the Cimbri

Cimbri

The Cimbri were a Celtic or Germanic peoples tribe who together with the Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the Roman Republic in the late 2nd century BC....
tribe, considered to be a Germanic tribe hailing from the Himmerland (Old Danish Himber sysæl) region in northern Denmark .

The etymology of Cymro "Welshman" (plural: Cymry) and Cwmry (for Cumbria), connected to the Cimmerians by 17th century celticists, is now accepted by Celtic linguists to derive from the Brythonic

Brythonic languages

The Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Wales Celtic studies Sir John Rhys from the Welsh language word Brython, meaning an indigenous Brython as opposed to an Anglo-Saxons or Gaels....
word combrogos and Proto-Brythonic *kom-brogos, meaning "compatriots", (i.e. fellow-Brython

Brython

Historically, the Britons were the P-Celtic indigenous peoples inhabiting the island of Great Britain south of the river Forth. They were speakers of the Brythonic languages and shared common cultural traditions; the surviving P-Celtic languages are Welsh language, Cornish language and Breton....
s as opposed to the Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons is the term usually used to describe the invading tribes in the south and east of Great Britain starting from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, lasting until the Norman conquest of England of 1066....
), and is thus related to its sister language Breton

Breton language

The Breton language is a Celtic languages spoken by some of the inhabitants of Brittany in France....
's keñvroad, keñvroiz "compatriot" .

In addition, in sources beginning with the Royal Frankish Annals

Royal Frankish Annals

The Royal Frankish Annals or Annals of the Kingdom of the Franks are annals written for the early Frankish kings, covering the years 741 to 829....
, the Merovingian kings of the Franks

Franks

The Franks or Frankish people were a West Germanic ethnic group first identified in the 3rd century as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River....
traditionally traced their lineage through a pre-Frankish tribe called the Sicambri

Sicambri

Danube

Gelderland

Gelderland is a Provinces of the Netherlands of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. The capital city is Arnhem....
in modern Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
and are named for the Sieg

Sieg

The Sieg is a river in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany named after the folk of the Sigambrer. It is a right tributary of the Rhine and 153 kilometres in length....
river .

If the Scythians are assumed to be related to the Cimmerians, as has often been claimed, many other peoples claiming possible Scythian descent could also be added to this list.

The association of the Cimmerians with one of the Lost Tribes of Israel plays a certain role in British Israelism

British Israelism

British Israelism is the claim that people of Western European descent are also the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is often accompanied by the belief that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David....
.

Josephus, in his Antiquities, says the descendants of Gomer who were then called Gauls by the Romans, were previously called Gomerites.

Archaeology

Koban culture
Koban culture

The Koban culture is a late Bronze Age and Iron Age culture of the northern and central Caucasus. It is preceded by the Colchian culture of the western Caucasus....
(Northern Caucasus, 12th to 4th centuries BC)
Cernogorovka culture (9th to 8th centuries)
Novocerkassk culture (8th to 7th century, between Danube and Volga)

Bibliography

Ivanchik A.I. "Cimmerians and Scythians", 2001
Terenozhkin A.I., Cimmerians, Kiev, 1983
Cimmerian. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 30, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9082650
Collection of Slavonic and Foreign Language Manuscripts - St.St Cyril and Methodius - Bulgarian National Library: http://www.nationallibrary.bg/slavezryk_en.html

External links

by Jona Lendering

Cimmerians

Origins

Historical accounts

Timeline

Language

Possible offshoots

Archaeology

Bibliography

See also

External links