Sarmatians


The Sarmatians were a large Iranian confederation that existed in classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.
Originating in the central parts of the Eurasian Steppe, the Sarmatians were part of the wider Scythian cultures. They 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 to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia. 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 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".
The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe.

Etymology

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, linking to the Sarmatians' use of reptile-like scale armour and dragon standards, is almost certainly unfounded.
Both Pliny the Elder and Jordanes recognised the Sar- and Sauro- elements as interchangeable variants, referring to the same people. Greek authors of the 4th century 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 derived the base word from Avestan sar- from tsar- in Old Iranian, which also gave its name to the western Avestan region of Sairima, and also connected it to the 10–11th century AD Persian epic Shahnamehs character "Salm".
Oleg Trubachyov derived the name from the Indo-Aryan *sar-mat, the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian word *sar- and the Indo-Iranian adjective suffix -mat/wat. By this derivation was noted the unusual high status of women from the Greek point of view and went to the invention of Amazons.

Ethnology

The Sarmatians were part of the Iranian steppe peoples, among whom were also Scythians and Saka. These are also grouped together as "East Iranians". Archaeology has established the connection 'between the Iranian-speaking Scythians, Sarmatians and Saka and the earlier Timber-grave and Andronovo cultures'. Based on building construction, these three peoples were the likely descendants of those earlier archaeological cultures. The Sarmatians and Saka used the same stone construction methods as the earlier Andronovo culture. The Timber grave and Andronovo house building traditions were further developed by these three peoples. Andronovo pottery was continued by the Saka and Sarmatians. Archaeologists describe the Andronovo culture people as exhibiting pronounced Caucasoid features.
of Kazakhstan in early spring 2004
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 and Scythians had fought on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea. The Sarmatians, described as a large confederation, were to dominate these territories over the next five centuries. According to Brzezinski and Mielczarek, the Sarmatians were formed between the Don River and the Ural Mountains. Pliny the Elder wrote that they ranged from the Vistula River to the Danube.
The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature, and women's prominent role in warfare, which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons.

Origin

The two theories about the origin of the Sarmatian culture are:
In 1947, Soviet archaeologist Boris Grakov defined a culture flourishing from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older kurgans. It was a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea eastward to beyond the Volga, and is especially evident at two of the major sites at Kardaielova and Chernaya in the trans-Uralic steppe. The four phases – distinguished by grave construction, burial customs, grave goods, and geographic spread – are:
  1. Sauromatian, 6th–5th centuries BC
  2. Early Sarmatian, 4th–2nd centuries BC, also called the Prokhorovka culture
  3. Middle Sarmatian, late 2nd century BC to late 2nd century AD
  4. Late Sarmatian: late 2nd century AD to 4th century AD
While "Sarmatian" and "Sauromatian" are synonymous as ethnonyms, they are given different meanings purely by convention as archaeological technical terms. The term "Prokhorovka culture" derives from a complex of mounds in the Prokhorovski District, Orenburg region, excavated by S. I. Rudenko in 1916.
In Hungary, a great Late Sarmatian pottery centre was reportedly unearthed between 2001 and 2006 near Budapest, in the Üllő5 archaeological site. Typical grey, granular Üllő5 ceramics form a distinct group of Sarmatian pottery found everywhere in the north-central part of the Great Hungarian Plain region, indicating a lively trading activity. A 1998 paper on the study of glass beads found in Sarmatian graves suggests wide cultural and trade links.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have given rise to the Greek legends of Amazons. Graves of armed females have been found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, "About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons."

Language

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. 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 argued that "the language of the Sarmatians or that of the Alans as a whole cannot be simply regarded as being Old Ossetian".

Genetics

A genetic study published in Nature Communications in March 2017 examined several Sarmatian individuals buried in Pokrovka, Russia between the 5th century BC and the 2nd century BC. The sample of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup R1b1a2a2. This was the dominant lineage among males of the earlier Yamnaya culture. The eleven samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to the haplogroups U3, M, U1a'c, T, F1b, N1a1a1a1a, T2, U2e2, H2a1f, T1a and U5a1d2b. The examined Sarmatians were found to be closely related to peoples of the earlier Yamnaya culture and Poltavka culture.
A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of twelve Sarmatians buried between 400 BC and 400 AD. The five samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup R1a1, I2b, R and R1. The eleven samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to C4a1a, U4a2, C4b1, I1, A, U2e1h, U4b1a4, H28 and U5a1.
A genetic study published in Science Advances in October 2018 examined the remains of five Sarmatians buried between 55 AD and 320 AD. The three samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup R1a1a and R1b1a2a2, while the five samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroup H2a1, T1a1, U5b2b and D4q.
A genetic study published in Current Biology in July 2019 examined the remains of nine Sarmatians. The five samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup Q1c-L332, R1a1e-CTS1123, R1a-Z645 and E2b1-PF6746, while the nine samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroup W, W3a, T1a1, U5a2, U5b2a1a2, T1a1d, C1e, U5b2a1a1, U5b2c and U5b2c.

Appearance

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 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".

Greco-Roman ethnography

in the 5th century BC placed the land of the Sarmatians east of the Tanais, beginning at the corner of the Maeotian Lake, stretching northwards for fifteen days' journey, adjacent to the forested land of the Budinoi.
Herodotus recounts that the Sauromatians arose from marriages of a group of Amazons and young Scythian men. In the story, some Amazons were captured in battle by Greeks in Pontus near the river Thermodon, and the captives were loaded into three boats. They overcame their captors while at sea, but were not able sailors. Their ships were blown north to the Maeotian Lake onto the shore of Scythia near the cliff region. After encountering the Scythians and learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, but only on the condition that they move away and not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled toward the northeast beyond the Tanais river and became the Sauromatians. Herodotus' account explains the origins of their language as an "impure" form of Scythian. He credits the unusual social freedoms of Sauromatae women, including participation in warfare, as an inheritance from their Amazon ancestors. Later writers refer to the "woman-ruled Sarmatae".

Herodotus later relates how the Sauromatians answered the Scythian call for help against the Persian King Darius I, to repel his campaign in Scythia, along with the Gelonians and the Boudinians. The Persians invaded much of the Sauromatian territory, but were eventually forced to withdraw due the tribespeoples' tactics of delay and use of a scorched earth policy.
Hippocrates explicitly classes them as Scythian and describes their warlike women and their customs:
Polybius mentions them for the first time as a force to be reckoned with in 179 B.C.
Strabo mentions the Sarmatians in a number of places, but never says much about them. He uses both the terms of 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.
Strabo wrote that the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga, and from north of the Dnieper River 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 said, were of Germanic origin. The Celtic Boii, Scordisci and Taurisci are there. A fourth ethnic element interacting and intermarrying are the Thracians. Moreover, the peoples toward the north are Keltoskythai, "Celtic Scythians".
Strabo portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or Hamaksoikoi, "wagon-dwellers", and Galaktophagoi, "milk-eaters". This latter likely referred to the universal koumiss eaten in historical times. The wagons were used for transporting tents made of felt, a type of the yurts used universally by Asian nomads.
Pliny the Elder writes :
According to Pliny, Scythian rule once extended as far as Germany. 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 were, therefore, a sub-group of the broader Scythian peoples.
Tacitus' De Origine et situ Germanorum speaks of "mutual fear" between Germanic peoples and Sarmatians:
According to Tacitus, like the Persians, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing robes. Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the Cotini and Osi, and iron from the Cotini, "to their shame".

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, but were referred to under yet another name.
Later, Pausanias, viewing votive offerings near the Athenian Acropolis in the 2nd century AD, found among them a Sauromic breastplate.
, ancient Greek colony situated in today's Rostov oblast
Pausanias' description is well borne out in a relief from Tanais. These facts are not necessarily incompatible with Tacitus, as the western Sarmatians might have kept their iron to themselves, its having been a scarce commodity on the plains.
In the late 4th century, Ammianus Marcellinus describes a severe defeat which Sarmatian raiders inflicted upon Roman forces in the province of Valeria in Pannonia in late AD 374. The Sarmatians almost destroyed two legions: one recruited from Moesia and one from Pannonia. The latter had been sent to intercept a party of Sarmatians which had been in pursuit of a senior Roman officer named Aequitius. The two legions failed to coordinate, allowing the Sarmatians to catch them unprepared.

Decline in the 4th century

The Sarmatians remained dominant until the Gothic ascendancy in the Black Sea area. Goths attacked Sarmatian tribes on the north of the Danube in Dacia, in present-day Romania. The Roman Emperor Constantine I summoned his son Constantine II from Gallia to campaign north of the Danube. In 332, in very cold weather, the Romans were victorious, killing 100,000 Goths and capturing Ariaricus, the son of the Gothic king. In their efforts to halt the Gothic expansion and replace it with their own on the north of Lower Danube, the Sarmatians armed their "servants" Limigantes. After the Roman victory, however, the local population revolted against their Sarmatian masters, pushing them beyond the Roman border. Constantine, on whom the Sarmatians had called for help, defeated the Limigantes, and moved the Sarmatian population back in. In the Roman provinces, Sarmatian combatants enlisted in the Roman army, whilst the rest of the population sought refuge throughout Thrace, Macedonia and Italy. The Origo Constantini mentions 300,000 refugees resulting from this conflict. The Emperor Constantine was subsequently attributed the title of Sarmaticus Maximus.
In the 4th and 5th centuries the Huns expanded and conquered both the Sarmatians and the Germanic tribes living between the Black Sea and the borders of the Roman Empire. From bases in modern-day Hungary, the Huns ruled the entire former Sarmatian territory. Their various constituents flourished under Hunnish rule, fought for the Huns against a combination of Roman and Germanic troops, and departed after the Battle of Chalons, the death of Attila and the appearance of the Bulgar ruling elements west of the Volga.
Eventually the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe decisively assimilated and absorbed the Sarmatians around the Early Medieval Age. A related people to the Sarmatians, known as the Alans, survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately giving rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.

Legacy

Sarmatism

is an ethno-cultural concept with a shade of politics designating the formation of an idea of Poland's origin from Sarmatians within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility that existed in times of the Renaissance to the 18th centuries. Together with another concept of "Golden Liberty", it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth's culture and society. At its core was the unifying belief that the people of the Polish Commonwealth descended from the ancient Iranic Sarmatians, the legendary invaders of Slavic lands in antiquity.

Tribes