Cimmerians – to the Issue of Determining the Carriers of Culture. Historiographic Aspect

Abstract

Purpose of the study . Cimmerians are the first ethnonym known in Ukraine. Interesting pages of the history not only of Ukraine but also the countries of Asia Minor and the Caucasus are connected with the Cimmerians, which makes the people an indicator of the historical situation in these regions to a certain extent. At the same time, the questions of the origin and the disappearance of this people remain unclear, as well as their identification with archaeological cultures of the early Iron Age, which determines the relevance of this topic. Research methodology the article is based on general scientific methods and uses a systematic approach to the study of written and archaeological sources. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the denial of an opinion that the Cimmerians, known all over Asia Minor, belonged to an autochthonous population of the Northern Black Sea region. Those were tribes from the Caucasus region, which in the middle of the 8th century BC invaded the Northern Black Sea region, while other Cimmerian troops simultaneously acted in a southerly direction, fought with the army of Urartu and robbed in Asia Minor. Conclusions . Contrary to the assertions of A.I. Terenozhkina, the carriers of Arzhan type’s culture with stirrup-shaped bits were not Cimmerians. That was the first expansion of the eastern nomads on the territory of Ukraine. Cimmerians should be considered the carriers of Novocherkassk culture with two-pointed bits which appeared on the Northern Black Sea Coast and originated from the North of Caucasus, displacing local farmers from the steppe. They drove forest-steppe farmers to strengthen their settlements and partially migrate to the left bank of the Dnieper, from where the local carriers of the Bondarino culture were forced to leave for the North. Importantly, thanks to Cimmerian warlike and aggressive policies, this ethnonym became a household name in the entire Black Sea region and remained the “Cimmerian land” in minds of ancient authors.