May 06 2024 24 mins
Sarmatians:
As with the Cimmerians and with the Scythians, so with the Sarmatians, their past comes to us sealed in a shroud of murkiness. Some light is shed on that past however, as they are first mentioned in first century AD Roman literature (referred to there as Alans?). Old Roman maps point to them and the areas of their occupation interchangeably as either Alans (Josephus 7.4.3; 7.7.4) or Geloni (Herodotus). Ptolemaic maps are said to reference those same areas as Sarmatia. Another source document detailing something of the presence and reach of this people is an ancient Parthian manuscript known as the Vologeses Inscription, while one of the richest sources of knowledge is the many graves, found and unearthed in the regions they inhabited.
It is generally thought and accepted that the Sarmatians were nomads of Iranian blood who undertook migration from Central Asia between the sixth and the fourth centuries BC, arriving eventually at the Ural Mountains (apparently following an ideology and strategy, or a route plan similar to that of the Scythian, several centuries earlier, and who in some sense, are near relatives of theirs). By the fifth century BC, control of the plains between the Don River and Urals was their domain (there were at least three separate groups, each of which while maintaining some form of unity, developed independently along the steppe between the Ural Mountains in the east and the Danube River in the west). The fourth century saw them attempt expansion of that domain as one of their several groups, the Alans or Alani (some say), crossed over the Don, to challenge and discomfit the now settled (and, maybe, complacent, less threatening and, unsuspecting) Scythians, virtually wiping them out according to one source (over two hundred years), thereby establishing themselves as the rulers of southern Russia, by the second century—this in spite of the Scythian superior numbers. In the first century, they formed an alliance with the tribes of Germany, which was formidable enough to be a threat to the mighty Roman Empire. The reality that says “all good things must come to and end”, however, began to set in, when, after almost three hundred years (apparently having turned on their German allies), the Sarmatians sought yet again to expand in the third century AD, only to invade Romania (then Dacia) and the lower Danube River region to be overwhelmed by the Goths. Many of them went on to join the Goth invasion of Western Europe, while their homeland was sacked in 370 AD, demolished by an influx of Huns from the east. By the sixth century, history had lost track of its third consecutive group of savage plundering, ravaging warmongers.