The Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into West Asia. Although the Cimmerians were culturally Scythian, they formed an ethnic unit separate from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related and who displaced and replaced the Cimmerians.
The Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.
Name
The English name is derived from Latin , itself derived from the Ancient Greek (),) of an ultimately uncertain origin for which there have been various proposals: according to János Harmatta, it was derived from Old Iranic , meaning "union of clans." and Igor Diakonoff derived it from an Old Iranic term or , meaning "mobile unit." Askold Ivantchik derives the name of the Cimmerians from an original form or , of uncertain meaning. Igor Diakonoff later abandoned his own etymology to support Ivantchik's proposed etymology of the name of the Cimmerians. According to Ivantchik, the Greek form of the name started with /k/ rather than with /g/ as in the original name due to its transmission to the Greek language through the intermediary of the Lydian language, which did not distinguish between the voiced and non-voiced velar stops.
The name of the Cimmerians is attested in Akkadian as () or (), and in the form () in Hebrew.
In 1966, the archaeologist Maurits Nanning van Loon described the Cimmerians as Western Scythians, and referred to the Scythians proper as the Eastern Scythians.
History
There are three main sources of information on the historical Cimmerians: Akkadian cuneiform text from Mesopotamia which deal with the activities of the Cimmerians in West Asia; Graeco-Roman sources which cover Cimmerian history in Europe; archaeological data from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes, Caucasia, and West Asia.
Origins
The arrival of the Cimmerians in Europe was part of the larger process of westwards movement of Central Asian Iranic nomads towards Southeast and Central Europe which lasted from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD, and to which also later participated other Iranic nomads such as the Scythians, Sauromatians, and Sarmatians.
Beginning of steppe nomadism
The formation of genuine nomadic pastoralism itself happened in the early 1st millennium BC due to climatic changes which caused the environment in the Central Asian and Siberian steppes to become cooler and drier than before. These changes caused the sedentary mixed farmers of the Bronze Age to become nomadic pastoralists, so that by the 9th century BC all the steppe settlements of the sedentary Bronze Age populations had disappeared, and therefore led to the development of population mobility and the formation of warrior units necessary to protect herds and take over new areas.
These climatic conditions in turn caused the nomadic groups to become transhumant pastoralists constantly moving their herds from one pasture to another in the steppe, and to search for better pastures to the west, in Ciscaucasia and the forest steppe regions of western Eurasia.
The Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex
The Cimmerians originated as a section of the first wave of the nomadic populations who originated in the parts of Central Asia corresponding to eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region, and who had, beginning in the 10th century BC and lasting until the 9th to 8th centuries BC, migrated westwards into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe regions, where they formed new tribal confederations which constituted the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
Among these tribal confederations were the Cimmerians in the Caspian Steppe, as well as the Agathyrsi in the Pontic Steppe, and possibly the Sigynnae in the Pannonian Steppe. The achaeological and historical records regarding these migrations are however scarce, and permit to sketch only a very broad outline of this complex development.