Face Music - History: Horstmen – Nomads
      • History of the Horsemen




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- Face Music / Albi

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  • Cimmerians – Gimir – Gimirri
    - 8th and 7th century before Christ
map sketch:

- Strait of Kerch

According to Herodotus, the Cimmerians were Indo-European horsemen that had originally inhabited the region at the Cimmerian Bosporus (today's Strait of Kerch) between the Crimean Peninsula and southern Russia, on the one side, and the northern Caucasus area, on the other one. Aristeas of Proconnesos was the first to tell of these nomad tribes (Cimmerians), inhabitants of the steppes at the northern shores of the Black Sea.

The Cimmerians were displaced from their tribal areas in the 8th century BC by the invading Scythians. Consequently, they invaded Asia Minor, following the coastal line of the sea. Some tribes even entered crossing the Caucasus. They then settled in Anatolia between the Mannaeans (Mannai – kingdom at the Lake Urmia) and the Medes (Ancient Iranian people). They made several attempts to invade Assyria (Assyria – 679/678 BC). The Assyrians called them Gimirri, a denomination for the northern tribes in general, later also including the Scythians. The Cimmerians also attacked the kingdom of the Phrygians (Phrygia – 676-674 BC) and the kingdom Urartu (714 BC). They conquered the kingdom Lydia. Furthermore they allied with the Treres (Thracian tribe) and raided the Egyptian coast. The Cimmerians were fought back by Alyattes, king of Lydia, in 600 BC and consequently also expelled from Anatolia.

map sketch:

- Ancient Orient 824 BC and 671 BC
- Cimmerian, Skythen / Meder immigration


Their origins are supposedly at the western coast of the Caspian Sea. Their language is assumedly related with the Thracian and the Iranian.

Archaeological findings dating back to Early Iron Age between 9th and 7th century BC at the northern coast of the Black Sea are allocated to the Cimmerian population. Their equestrian culture substituted the Belosjorka culture whose representatives lived in attached settlements and on agriculture and livestock. With the beginning of the Early Iron Age, there may be made out a change from cultivation towards nomadic cattle breeding. The archaeological findings were more or less completely restricted to forest steppe and steppe; areas covered with large forests were, on the contrary, completely avoided. The cultural traditions prevailing in the northern area of the Caucasus (Koban Culture) probably influenced the development of metal processing (12th to 4th century BC).

February - July 2009 – Albi - translated by Hermelinde Steiner - November 2009
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