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Remarks on the Presence of Iranian Peoples in Europe and Their Asiatic Relations, in: J. Pstrusińska/A. T. Fear (eds.), Collectanea Celto-Asiatica Cracoviensia, Kraków 2000, 101-140.The scope of the problems involving the history of steppe Iranian¬speaking peoples in Europe is large and continues to grow as new information becomes available. For this reason this paper is limited to the most important aspects. The very significant role that the Scythians, Sauromatians, and various so-called “Sarmatian” tribes (including the Royal Sarmatians, Iazygs, Aorsi, and Alans) played in the history of Southeastern Europe has commonly been recognized. This is, however, not the case with their role in the history of Cen¬tral and Western Europe.In the 1st millenium B.C. and in the first centuries A.D., the native populations of Southeastern and Central Europe were faced with the expansion and movement of the Central Asian peoples pressing westwards. Some indig¬enous tribes retreated, setting in motion other peoples, others mingled with the newcomers, giving rise to new hybrid cultures. The contribution of Iranian peoples to the cultures of ancient Europe is discernible in many aspects, including Germanic religion, Celtic folk-poetry, and early Slavic civilization. The in¬flux of Iranian steppe peoples in Europe was linked with tribal movements in Central Asia. This was a consistent pattern, for we have evidence of several great migrations in the 1st millenium B.C. and the 1st millenium A.D. Already Herodotus (4.13), living in the 5th century B.C., had observed such processes: “Except the Hyperboreans, all these nations (and first the Arimaspians) ever make war upon their neighbours; the Issedones were pushed from their lands by the Arimaspians, and the Scythians by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians, dwell¬ing by the southern sea, were hard pressed by the Scythians and left their country”Most Iranian tribes entering Europe took possession of the last outpost of the Eurasian steppe in Central Europe: the Hungarian plain. Here, they underwent a number of changes and were transformed, both ethnically (as they mingled with the indigenous substratum) and economically (denomadicization). The interaction of these Iranian groups with the local populations of Europe was largely ignored by our written sources. However, archaeology points to considerable cultural interchange. The movements of many steppe tribes to¬ward Europe introduced new ethnic elements of Asiatic origin into this large area. Iranian groupings of the pre-Scythian period, the Scythians, the Sauromatians, various Sarmatian tribes, the Roxolani, the Aorsi, and the Alans contributed to the development of culture not only in the Ponto-Caspian steppes, but also in other areas as they were driven into many countries at different points in time. The history of Southeastern and Central Europe in the ancient period can be properly understood only within the context of the relations between the sedentary tribes and the Eurasian steppe nomads. Such a relationship is clearly visible in the medieval history of Rus, the Hungarians, the Bulgars, as well as in that of Poland.
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2024
The paper analyses the Sarmatian culture east of the Carpathians during the 1st-3rd centuries AD, shedding light on their burial practices, artefacts, and socio-economic interactions. The term ‘Sarmatians’ encompasses several nomadic groups with common genetic, linguistic or territorial ties, including the Iazyges, Roxolani, Alans, Siraces and Aorsi. Archaeological evidence indicates significant cultural changes during the Middle and at the beginning of Late Sarmatian periods, marked by rich burials, imported goods and weapons. The study focuses on necropolises, which reveal burial patterns, grave goods, and anthropological insights such as intentional cranial modification. Notable grave goods include beads, mirrors and swords, reflecting the social status and cultural connections of the Sarmatian elite. Trade networks facilitated the exchange of horses for luxury goods, highlighting the economic importance of the Sarmatians in Eurasia. Despite their interactions with neighbouring regions, the Sarmatians maintained a conservative cultural identity distinct from Roman influence. This research highlights the complexity of Sarmatian society and its enduring legacy between the Carpathians and the Prut River.
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2020
The Pechenegs: Nomads in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Medieval Europe, 2021
The content of the article consists of a generalization of the results of multidisciplinary research conducted using the graphic analytical method and the study of ancient anthroponymy and toponymy of Eurasia. To confirm the conclusions drawn during the research process, historical information, and data from archeology, anthropology, ethnography, geography, and other disciplines were used. The narration of this article begins with the substantiation of the Urheimat of the Proto-Turks in Transcaucasia in the area of Mount Ararat. The further history of the Turks continues in the steppes of the Azov and Black Sea regions, which ends with their expansion as carriers of Corded Ware cultures and the migration of most of them east towards Altai. The return of former CWC carriers to the steppes heralds the beginning of the Scythian period in history. The article contains links to 82 authors from different countries in Europe and Asia, as well as 11 illustrations, mainly maps. Genetics show that 80-90% of Y-chromosomes of the Bronze Age in Europe have counterparts in the steppe, i.e. they were brought by the Turks. The presence of the Turkic people in Western Europe is also confirmed by toponymy.. Most of the Turkic people who migrated from the steppes were men who married local women and had many children. The children were raised by their mothers in their language, so they learned their mothers' language better than their fathers.
For published version, please see: Sauer, E.W., 2017. ‘Introduction’, in Sauer, E.W. (ed.), Sasanian Persia between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 1-17.
Parseh Journal of Archaeological Studies, 2023
This paper utilizes an approach that combines studies of Samanid period artifacts and textual accounts with modern genetic studies to explore the identity of the people who were involved in long distance trade from the far eastern regions of the Central Asia into Northern Europe. Although this study does not analyze the Samanid works, it reiterates and illustrates how important Iran/Persia was in the history of Europe as well as Central Asia. The information contained in the artifacts and texts gives us the evidence needed to understand the vast trade network and the people who were responsible for the movement of these goods, people and ideas. This study reconfirmed recent genetic studies that thepeople, collectively termed Rus or Vikings, were a mixture primarily of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Turks, with additional admixing with local populations. The importance of the Persian and Arabic sources addressing contact between the Rus and Eastern people has been thoroughly discussed by Thorir Jonsson Hraundal. In these texts, the Rus were referred to by different names including Majus, Northmanni, Urduman, Warank as well as by other names. One of his many observations is the unmistakable influence of Turkic culture on that of the Rus. This complex ancestry is supported by recent genetic studies and will be discussed in more detail below in light of archaeological evidence. Thus, the term Rus refers to a way of life rather than a homogenous ethnic or cultural group. However, this study refined the identity of the people responsible by observing a correlation between the distribution of the genetic haplogroup R1a sub-clade and the long-distance trade routes across Central Asia to Northern Europe, with the central focus in Eastern Europe. Despite the vast distance, the evidence indicates that there were cultural contacts between people with linked ancestry. The study is important because it begins to reveal the unexpected influence of Eastern cultures on those of Northern Europe.
This paper aims to understand the cultural diversity among the first modern human populations in the Iranian Zagros and the implications of this diversity for evolutionary and ecological models of human dispersal through Eurasia. We use quantitative data and technotypological attributes combined with physiogeographic information to assess if the Zagros Upper Paleolithic (UP) developed locally from the Middle Paleolithic (MP), as well as to contextualize the variation in lithics from four UP sites of Warwasi, Yafteh, Pasangar, and Gh ar-e Boof. Our results demonstrate (1) that the Zagros UP industries are intrusive to the region, and (2) that there is significant cultural diversity in the early UP across different Zagros habitat areas, and that this diversity clusters in at least three groups. We interpret this variation as parallel developments after the initial occupation of the region shaped by the relative geotopographical isolation of different areas of the Zagros, which would have favored different ecological adaptations. The greater similarity of lithic traditions and modes of production observed in the later phases of the UP across all sites indicates a marked increase in inter-group contact throughout the West-Central Zagros mountain chain. Based on the chronological and geographical patterns of Zagros UP variability, we propose a model of an initial colonization phase leading to the emergence of distinct local traditions, followed by a long phase of limited contact among these first UP groups. This has important implications for the origins of biological and cultural diversity in the early phases of modern human colonization of Eurasia. We suggest that the mountainous arc that extends from Anatolia to the Southern Zagros preserves the archaeological record of different population trajectories. Among them, by 40 ka, some would have been transient, whereas others would have left no living descendants. However, some would have led to longer term local traditions, including groups who share ancestry with modern Europeans and modern East/Southeast Asians.
Masters of the Steppe, 2020
This book co-edited with Svetlana Pankova presents 45 papers offered for and/or presented at a major international conference held at the British Museum as part of the public programme associated with the 2017 exhibition 'Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia'. Papers include new archaeological discoveries, results of scientific research and studies of museum collections, most presented in English for the first time. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction explaining how the conference was devised alongside the exhibition and how the exhibition itself was created. The book ends with a long concluding essay exploring the ramifications of the papers and other research into Eurasian nomads, and is followed by a comprehensive subject index. A full list of contributors and their affiliations is also provided. All papers were peer-reviewed. Papers are embargoed for two years but we hope that you can find copies through your institutions and personal Eurasian networks. The title page and main list of contents are attached for reference.
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The paper reveals that Iranian peoples significantly influenced cultures across Europe, notably in Germanic religion, Celtic folk-poetry, and early Slavic civilization, occurring from the 1st millennium B.C. to the 1st millennium A.D.
The study finds that migrations of Iranian nomads like the Scythians forced indigenous tribes in Central Europe to retreat or hybridize, significantly altering the cultural landscape even in regions such as the Hungarian plain.
Diodorus and Pliny both connect the Sauromatians to Iranian roots, stating they originated from Media around the 7th century B.C., with later classical sources affirming their presence near the Tanais/Don river area.
Classical references to Sarmatian peoples first appeared in the writings of Pseudo-Scylax around the 4th century B.C., although earlier sources suggest their presence as early as the 5th century B.C.
Artifacts from the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex indicate a strong Eastern impact from Central Asia, evidencing the influence of nomadic Iranian tribes on the development of Central European cultures.
1. Alemany, Agusti (Barcelona) -Arzhantseva, Irina (Moscow) Alanica Bilingua: Sources vs. Archaeology. The Case of East and West Alania 2. *Bais, Marco (Bologna-Roma) Alans in Armenian Sources after the 10th c. A.D. 3. Balakhvantsev, Archil (Moscow) The Date of the Alans' First Appearance in Eastern Europe 4. *Baratin, Charlotte (Paris) Le renouvellement des élites iraniennes au sud de l'Hindukush au premier siecle avant notre ere: Sakas ou Bactriens? 5. Bezuglov, Sergej (Rostov-na-Donu) La Russie meridionale et l'Espagne: a propos des contacts au début de l' époque des migrations 6. Borjian, Habib (Tehran) Looking
Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millenium CE, Edited by Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder (Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology, Volume 7) Bonn 2015 [Vor- und Fruhgeschichtliche Archäologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn], 2015
M.J. Olbrycht, Arsacid Iran and the Nomads of Central Asia – Ways of Cultural Transfer, in: Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millenium CE, Edited by Jan Bemmann, Michael Schmauder (Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology, Volume 7) Bonn 2015 [Vor- und Fruhgeschichtliche Archäologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn], 333-390. ABSTRACT Arsacid Iran and the Nomads of Central Asia – Ways of Cultural Transfer' One of history’s greatest paradoxes is the phenomenon of military needs serving as an essential spur to technological progress (thanks to the invention of new kinds of weaponry) and to the furtherance of numerous aspects of culture. Moreover, wars promote mutual contact and exchange between different peoples. This applies in particular to Iranian and Central Asian history, which has been determined to a great extent by warlike nomadic peoples. Arsacid Iran faced a number of invasions from Central Asia, and the invading tribes more than once brought new types of arms which were then adopted by the Parthians. Mutual influences also resulted from peaceful contacts (the Silk Road trade, diplomatic contacts, tributes, bridal exchange between royal houses). The Parthians were not averse to assimilating new military technologies, such as enhanced types of the bow (the Hunnic and Sasanian types), swords, daggers, and scabbard slides, developed by the nomads of South Siberia, Mongolia, and Central Asia, or created in China. The perennial contacts the Arsacids kept up with the steppe peoples and principalities under dynasties of steppe origin augmented the nomadic features in Parthia’s culture and aristocracy’s ethos. Principalities of this kind – the Indo-Saka of Greater Sakastan and the Kushans on the area of today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan – flanked Parthia on the east, while on the west the Parthians neighbored on Arab nomads, troublemakers in Babylonia penetrating right into northern Mesopotamia, where they set up their local power centers at Edessa and Hatra. The nomadic ethos, which remained strong even after the settlement of the Arab elites, made them ready to adopt salient elements of Parthian culture. Throughout the Parthian Empire and along its marches the lifestyle of the nomadic shepherds proliferated, but at the same time trade, craftsmanship, agriculture, and life in the cities flourished. The Arsacids managed to combine all these different social and ethnic building-blocks into the core of a vast cultural community which R. Ghirshman has called an “Oriental koine”, stretching from Syria to the borders of China, from the Crimea and Sarmatia to the Indo-Saka. The koine went well beyond the borders of the Parthian Empire. The culture of the ruling groups in the Arsacids’ vassal and neighboring states followed Parthian customs, hence the similarities in dress, arms, and ethos. We may speak of an peculiar network of elites looking up to and emulating the same cultural patterns.
Archaeologia Lituana, 2022
Cultural interactions between the societies of Old Europe and the Steppe 'Kurgan people' played a significant role in the academic writings of Maria Gimbutas. In her texts, the interplay between mentioned human groups was described as a dichotomy and was put into a framework of violent struggle. Three waves of destructive intrusion of steppe pastorals were reconstructed and the determinative role of 'kurgan people' in the spread of Indo-European nations was described (Gimbutas, 1993). However, although Gimbutas' model is still influential and is used as a methodological framework for the most recent genomic studies (
Anabasis: Anabasis: Studia Classica et Orientalia, 2014
It gives a broad outline of the persistent presence of the Steppe Iranians in Persian history and culture, by bringing together two fields that have often been treated independently. After an overview of the history of interactions between Persia and the Iranian-speaking Steppe nomads, we will extend our attention to the Iranian national history to offer some insights on the myths and legends of the Shahnama that are originated from or influenced by the mutual relations between the Steppe nomads and the dynasties who ruled on the Iranian Plateau. Keywords: Eurasian Steppes, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Persian Empire, Iranian national traditions, Avesta, Shahnama
Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 2019
Masters of the Steppe: The Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia, 2020
How and why major museum exhibitions are put together are rarely explained in detail, let alone in print: this introduction to a volume of studies arising from a joint British Museum and State Hermitage Museum exhibition and conference helps redress that. Here you can read the reasoning behind the 2017/18 exhibition 'Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia', and see how research and international collaboration underpin these projects. The separate conclusions at the conclusion of the present volume discuss in greater depth approaches to Eurasian pastoral nomadism, compare with evidence from Arabia, and raise much bigger questions over cultural identity and the transfer of ideas and technologies.
Masters of the Steppe: The Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia, 2020
This is the concluding essay to the volume of proceedings arising from a conference at the British Museum devoted to Scythians and other Eurasian nomads. It draws together the themes expressed in more detail in individual papers and addresses other questions raised during the course of development of the associated exhibition 'Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia' and the separate catalogue published to accompany that.
Monographien des RGZM, Band 123, 2017
The book’s aim is to make a comprehensive introduction of the Sarmatians, the crucial people in the world of Iranian language speaking nomads. The first part of the volume deals with the history and archaeology of these tribes starting from their emergence to the Hunnic invasion after which Iranian domination of the steppe belt was replaced by the power of Turkic nomads. Based on literary sources and archaeological material, the second part synthetises the history of the Sarmatians in the Carpathian Basin from the 1st to 5th century AD. A special emphasis is put on the steppe relations of the Alföld Sarmatians, innovations brought by new migration waves and, their impact on the autochthonous population. The third part is an outlook to the afterlife of the Sarmatians the traces of which stretch out from Britain to China.
The given article is devoted to characteristic features of material factors that can be used in justifying a nomadic life-style of the population that manufactured relevant goods, weapons, tools and that organized its economic and cultural production in accordance with natural and ecological possibilities of its habitat. Nomadic traits are most easily established on the basis of the following factors: a means of using draught animals (teaming bulls and bullocks in a wagon-transportable house); a wide use of nomadic herding economy products in the production (sheep wool, bones of relevant animals are main types of raw materials); a character of small ceramic forms that practically do not change their technological and typological characteristics; a degree of spread and a specific weight of leather and felt products in relevant cultures, they are reflected in real samples and in tools (special knifes for cutting leather and felt, and, on a greater scope, versatile tools for cutting animal carcasses); organization of nomadic houses heating in the conditions of constant fuel shortages (a use of censers on legs and their varieties). A great degree of technical culture compactness and a transfer of techniques, shapes and ornamentation characteristics of goods from one sphere of production to another are typical for the whole technology of nomadic cultures of the region. A particular attitude to the recovery and spread of metallic (metallurgic) raw materials was a specific feature of the nomadic environment of the given region, this fact making a specific imprint on the improvement of technology for digging, underground, mining work conducted by these tribes. Due to a well developed herding economy, nomads not only occupied sparsely populated ecological niches in the steppe where the agricultural population could develop only sectors of river valleys and river basins full of water, but also became a transparent medium for a spread of experience and skills in metallurgy, strengthening cultural, economic and spiritual, ritual links between synchronous groups that settled in large territories. The article has been stipulated by a necessity to emphasize the factors of cultural, production and spiritual closeness that was developed due to a unification of the nomadic life-style. Other aspects of the processes linked with an extensive settlement in the steppes during the Bronze Age, namely, ethnocultural characteristics of various groups, a possibility of the ethnic population formation, new principles of the territorial and ethno-social (including family) division of the population were just mentioned. It is understandable as differentiating processes could be connected to a greater extent with changes in the political situation and historical events taking place both in the steppes and the environment (forests, deserts, mountains), while integrating processes, a leveling of demographic environment are more closely related to ecological constants of the region, against the background of which the isolation of sharp demarcation lines stable in space and time that existed between close groups of population of the single ecological niche can outline the territories controlled by the population that belongs to different linguistic macro-families. In the region under consideration, factors for such observations have not been fully systematized, and it is this direction of investigation that can provide a justification in the form of facts for the resolution of the Indo-European issue. Research approaches that have been available for a long period of time are not sufficient for a definite narrowing of the study to establish a common homeland of the Indo-Europeans, the stages and specific directions and succession of their settlement. There is only one thing that is clear: the culture of the North Indo-Aryans is a local, later manifestation of a relevant ethnolinguistical stratum, deformed by innovations introduced to all spheres of life of the given population due to the appearance of war chariots drawn by horses that resulted in a new strategy of aggressive wars that support and strengthen the processes of extended (migrational) settlements.
Marek Jan Olbrycht