During this period, Indo-European speaking tribes (thought to be relatives of the Celts and Iranians), developed a tough, mobile way of life that allowed them to spread from the coast of the Black Sea to the western region of modern China. These included such groups as the Iranian-speaking Kimmerians and Scythians, who brought pastoral nomadism to non-Indo-European groups in northern Central Asia, notably the ancestors of the Turks, Mongols, and the Tungusic and Manchu-speaking tribes of modern north-western China. By late Roman times (4th century AD), the predominant movement of tribes on the steppes would be from Central and Northern Asia to China, and westward to Europe and Iran plus excursions into India.

Cimmerians or Kimmerians

About 1200 BC, the Cimmerians (Turkish Kam-er, Kim-er - "river man", akin to "Suv-ar", "Bulak-ar" ("Bolkar, Bulgar"), "Sub-ar", "Suv-ar", "Shum-er") began to occupy the steppes of western Central Asia. The Assyrians called Cimmerians “Gimirrai”. Their name Gimirru -- given to them by the Assyrians -- means 'people travelling back and forth'; this name still exists in our word 'Crimea'. In Hebrew, they were identified as the ‘Gomer’.

The Kimmerians were a proto-Iranian group, which held the steppes of the Ukraine and southern Russia for quite a long while. They are best known today for their large and treasure-heavy burial mounds, called Kurgans. They, or rather their name, have also found a place in modern fantasy literature; Robert E. Howard adopted the name as the home tribe of his fictional hero, Conan the Barbarian. In the 8th Century BC, they came under increasing pressure from the Scythians, and in response migrated around the Black Sea to lay waste to large portions of Thrace and Anatolia. They were eventually dispursed by Lydia, but pockets of their language and culture persisted until the 5th Century BC. They are poorly documented in modern sources.

Massagetai or Massagetae (meaning hero-tribe)

These were nomadic people inhabiting the Central Asian steppes east of the Caspian Sea. It is not exactly clear just who these people were - they resembled Scythians to a degree, although Herodotus takes pains to differentiate between the two, and some scholars have connected the name Massa Getai with the later Goths - but this etymology is not widely accepted. The Persians made several attempts to conquer the Massagetai with little success; indeed, it was the Massagetai who killed the first and arguably greatest of the Persian kings, Cyrus the Great. They were also associated with the Thracians, who were their neighbors in Eastern Europe.

Scythians or Skythians or Saka

They were among the first people to completely master the art of horsemanship, and their ferocity and mobility became legendary because of it. The name the Scythians used for them means "Man killers", which seems to back the legends. Superb mounted archers, they also maintained a brilliant and artistically gifted culture whose artifacts can be appreciated in museums around the world. Information about them is fragmentary; much of it derives from the Greek historian Herodotus, who is said to have visited them.

After briefly making a bid for Persia, the Scythians settled in Eastern Europe where they controlled trade between the Greeks and the settled tribes of Eurasia (keeping a tight hold on Greece's wheat supply). The Scythians were decimated by Philip of Macedon and never recovered. A number of tribes closely related to the Scythians remained to the east and north, closer to the Scythian ancestral areas. The Saka were one of the more famous of these, located in the area of modern Kazakhstan. They had the same name: in their own language, which belonged to the Indo-Iranian family, they called themselves Skudat ('archers'?). The Persians rendered this name as Sakâ and the Greeks as Skythai. The Chinese called them, at a later stage in history, Sai.

By 700 BC, the Scythians were known to the Middle Eastern states (Assyrian Ashguzai, Hebrew Ashkenax, Turkish As or “nomad”, Güz, Kish, Kiji - “tribe, people”). The Assyrians welcomed them as allies and used them against Cimmerians, against Medes and even against Egyptians. Herodotus’s map shows Agathirsi (Agach-ir, Turkish for ‘forest people’), Scythians and Massagets, Malanchleni, Budini and Geloni, Thissagets and Jurcae living in south-west Russia and general area.

In 124 BC, peoples known as Asi (Yazig), Pasiani (Budini/Beçen/Besenyo/Peçenek), Tocharian, Sabir (Sabaroi) tribes invaded Sogdiana and Bactria. Over the next five years two Parthian kings lost their lives in wars with them. Later Sakauraka (Turkic for ‘Saka-farmers’) tribe was also conquered by them.

The Scythians included the following tribes:

• The Sakâ haumavargâ ('haoma-drinking Sacae') were subjected by Cyrus the Great. Herodotus calls them Amyrgian Scythians. Haoma was a trance inducing drink, made from fly agaric. This mushroom does not occur south of the river Amudar'ya (Oxus). Consequently, we may assume that these nomads lived in Uzbekistan. Herodotus informs us that they wore trousers and pointed caps; they fought as archers. He also mentions their use of the battle ax (which they called sagaris).
• The Sakâ tigrakhaudâ ('Sacae with pointed hats') were defeated in 520/519 BC by the Persian king Darius I the Great, who gave this tribe a new leader. One of the earlier leaders was killed, the other, named Skunkha, was taken captive and is visible on the relief at Behistun. (It is possible that Darius created a new tribe from several earlier tribes.) Herodotus calls the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ the Orthocorybantians ('pointed hat men'), and informs us that they lived in the same tax district as the Medes. This suggests that the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ lived on the banks of the ancient lower reaches of the Amudar'ya, which used to have a mouth in the Caspian Sea south of Krasnovodsk. The pointed hat is a kind of turban.
• The Apâ Sakâ ('Water Sacae') are also known as the Pausikoi, as Herodotus prefers to call them. Later authors, like Arrian of Nicomedia (in his Anabasis) and Ammianus Marcellinus (in his Roman history) call them the Abian Scythians; still later, we encounter them as the Apasiaki, first east and later southwest of the Aral Sea. They must be situated along the ancient lower reaches of the Amudar'ya.
• The tribe that Herodotus calls 'Massagetes' must have been called something like Mâh-Sakâ in Persian, which means 'Moon Sacae', but this is confusing. Ma-Sakâ means Moon Sacae, and it is known that the Massagetes venerated only one god, the Sun.
• The nomad tribe known as Dahâ, which means 'robbers', (or Daai, Dai, Daoi), is mentioned for the first time in the Daiva inscription of Xerxes; he must have subjected them. Herodotus calls the Dai a Persian nomad tribe, but they cannot have lived in Persia proper, because they are mentioned in the Anabasis of Arrian as living along the lower reaches of the Syrdar'ya. In the days of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, they were famous for their mounted archers. It is possible that this tribe disintegrated after the fall of the Achaemenid empire; one of the tribes that came into being, was that of the Parni, who went south in the 3rd Century BC and founded the Parthian Empire.
• The Sakâ paradrayâ ('Sacae across the sea') were living in Ukraine. These are the nomads that the Greeks called Scythians. In 514 or 513 BC, King Darius launched a disastrous campaign against the Sakâ paradrayâ. Herodotus gives a long description of their way of life and discerns many tribes in the neighborhood:
  1. The Royal Scythians lived in the southern part of Ukraine, immediately north of the Greek towns.
  2. The Scythian-Farmers seem to be identical with the archaeological culture known as Chernoles, which has been identified with the Iron Age Slavs.
  3. Probably, we may identify the Neuri with the so-called Milograd culture, the archaeological remains of which have been found on the confluence of the rivers Dnepr and Pripyat, north of modern Kiev. They may be the ancestors of the Balts.
  4. Herodotus' story about the Man-eaters received some confirmation with the excavation of human remains that were gnawed at by human jaws; these excavations were along the river Sula, to the southeast of Kiev.
  5. The Argippaeans are sometimes identified with the ancestors of the Calmucs.
  6. The Issedones may be identical to the Wu-sun who (according to Chinese texts) lived on the shore of Lake Balchash.
• Getae – refers to the people living in the Balkans and closely associated with the Thracians and Dacians.

Asses are first mentioned in Assyrian sources as the Scythian name Ishkuza = Ish-Oguz, where Ish is a variation of the word As.

Sarmatians

The Sarmate (Sauromatae, Sarma-te Turkish for ‘with sac’) spoke the same language as the Scythians, and lived west of Azov Sea and Don River. About 310 BC, the Sirace, a Sarmatian tribe occupied Kuban region north of Caucasus(translation Sarig=yellow, blond). Sirs may have been ancestors of the Cumans/Kipchaks. In the late first century BC, the Sarmatian coalition consisted of four tribes:

• The Iazyges, which had once lived on the shores of the Sea of Azov, were now living on the northern bank of the Danube. They were to move to what is now eastern Hungary, where they settled in about 50 AD. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius defeated them in 175.
• The Urgi lived on the banks of the Dnepr, south of Kiev.
• The Royal Scythians were still living in the south of Ukraine and had become the most important Sarmatian tribe. They and the Urgi became known as the Sarmati. The Romans seem to have accepted their settlement in Hungary, but the situation was sometimes tense.
• The Roxolani initially lived between the Don and the Dnepr but settled on the lower reaches of the Danube, where the Iazyges had been living before they migrated to Hungary.

A people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains between the 6th and 4th Century BC, and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans. Like the Scythians to whom they were closely related, the Sarmatians were highly developed in horsemanship and warfare. Their administrative capability and political astuteness contributed to their gaining widespread influence. In the 4th Century BC, they crossed the Don and conquered the Scythians, replacing them as rulers of almost all of southern Russia by the 2nd Century. Sarmatia perished when hordes of Huns migrated after 370 AD into southern Russia. Those surviving became assimilated or escaped to the west to fight the Huns. The Sarmatians never formed a single unified polity; rather they were divided into numerous tribes, the most important of which were the Alans.

The Alans were also known as Alani, Alanliao, As, Asses, Aorses, Ishkuza, Balanjar, Belenjer, Burtas, Halans, Ishtek, Lan, Ostyak, Ovs, Steppe Alans, Usuns, Yass, Yancai and other variations. In China, Alans were earlier known as Yancai ("Vast Steppe"). Burtas is derived from the Turkish Burt-As meaning ‘Bee-hive As’.

The Alans, from whom the modern Ossetians claim descent, were a branch of the Sarmatians descended from a mélange of peoples, including eastern tribes such as the Massagetae. From Chinese sources, Alans are listed as one of four Hunnic tribes (Xu-la, Lan, Hiu-bu, Siu-lin) most favoured by kings of Eastern Huns of 3rd Century BC.

The name Alan is thought to be derived from the same root as “Iran” and “Aryan” (the Ossetian self-designation is “iron”). Some Alan tribes went west during the 4th Century AD and joined the Visigoths and Vandals in Spain (Catalonia may derive from a Goth-Alan union) and North Africa. The majority remained in the Caucasus region, around the Darial Pass. Their capital was Maghas (destroyed by the Golden Horde in 1339) and at various times they controlled the port city of Phasis, now in Georgia.

The Aorsi were the easternmost of the Sarmatian nations, inhabiting the region around the lower Volga River and as far east as the Aral Sea. There may have been two Aorsi nations; one in the north and one in the south. The Chinese knew the Aorsi as “Yen-Ts’ai”.

Iazyges were the westernmost tribal groupings, inhabiting Moldavia and eventually pushing their way into Thrace, northern Dacia, and Pannonia. The Iazyges were the nation with which the Romans had the most contact.

Roxolanoi was a tribe probably deriving their name from the proto-Iranian Raokhshna, or “shining”. The name may also derive from a term meaning, essentially, “The Western Alans”. They were among the most powerful of the Sarmatians, inhabiting much of the region north of the Black Sea. The ruling dynasty of the Bosporan Kingdom from the end of the 1st Century BC on was Sarmatian in origin, and probably belonged to the Roxolanoi originally.

Ptolemy (circa 83-161 AD) writes that in European Sarmatia “below Agathyrsi (Akatsirs, from the Türkish agach ers ‘forest people’) live Savari (Türkic Suvars), between Basternae and Rhoxolani (Tr. Uraksy Alans, i.e. ‘Alans-farmers’) live Huns”.

Sauromatae were the dominant tribal group during the early period of Sarmatian history (c.600-300 BC). They were supposed to have been descended from a mingling of Amazon women and Scythian men. The only recorded event involving them occurred in 507 BC, when they joined the Scythians in repelling a Persian invasion.

Sirace was a tribal group, which migrated to the Black Sea region from what is now Kazakhstan, settling in the Kuban region along the east coast of the Sea of Azov. The Siraces were a relatively small nation, able to muster approximately 20,000 horsemen in the mid First Century BC.

Early Hu

This Chinese name is applied to the earliest known northern peoples, who were of Aryan, Turkic and Mongol ethnicity. Many spoke one of the three branches of the Altaic language family, Mongolian, Turkic and Tunguzic. Alternate Chinese names included Linhu (the Forest Hu), and Donghu or Tung Hu (the Eastern Hu) a proto-Tunguz group mentioned in Chinese histories as existing as early as the Fourth Century BC.

Two ancient Chinese categorical designations were used to identify these neighbors: Rong and Di. Rong was used mostly with the word 'Xi' to identify barbarians to the west/northwest of China, while 'Di' with the word 'Bei' for north. Sometimes, the Chinese sources refer to Rongdi suggesting a combination of tribes or just that the identity of the barbarians was unknown. It was because of these peoples that the various Chinese states built he defensive walls later joined into the “Great Wall”. When the Han Dynasty united China, Xiongnu (or Hun) designated the nomads in north and northwest of China, while Donghu would be the name given to the nomads to the east of the Huns.

The Rong nomads were also known as 'Shanrong' (Mountain Rong) or Xunyu or Xianyun or Chunwei during early Chinese history (Xia Dynasty and earlier), Guifang (ghost domain) during the Shang Dynasty, again Xianyun during the Zhou Dynasty, and then Xiongnu (Huns) during the Han Dynasty.

Rongs were differentiated into "Jiangrong" (carrying the name Jiang of the tribe of Yandi the Fiery Lord), "Xirong" (Western Rong), "Quanrong" (Doggy Rong, a derogatory designation, similar to Mongols' calling the Tartars or Tatars "Noghai" the running dogs), and "Shanrong" (Mountain Rong) or "Beirong" (Northern Rong, who are most likely the ancestors of ancient Koreans).

The Di or Rongdi later split into Bai-di and Chi-di. The Baidi (White Di) lived in ancient Yan'an, Suide and Ningxia on the western Yellow River bend. Chinese histories record that the Baidi were defeated by the Chinese and remnants were know as Bai-bu-hu. The Chidi (Red Di) dwelt in a place near modern Shangdang. The Chinese also defeated them and the remnants were known as Chi-she-hu nomads later.

By the 1st Century AD, two major subdivisions of the Donghu had developed: the Xianbei in the north and the Wuhuan in the south. The Xianbei were also called “Bai Lu”, namely, light-skinned robbers or savages. Ancient Chinese treated brownish hair as yellow and Xianbei people possessed lighter skin due to their dwelling in the northern altitude.

Qiang

The Qiangs or Ch’iang were the descendants of the Yandi tribal group carrying the tribal name "Jiang". The “New History Of T’ang Dynasty” (Xin Tang Shi) stated that the Tibetans belonged to the Xi Qiang, or the western Qiangic peoples. There were 150 different groups of Qiangic peoples, widely dispersed among Sichuan, Ganshu, Qinhai and Shenxi Provinces of modern China.

Ancient classics stated that the word 'qiang' means the shepherds in the west. The Qiangs were alternative race of the Jiang surname tribes of San Miao (Three Miao), who originally resided in the middle Yangtze River area and were mostly relocated to western China to guard against the western barbarians. This was their punishment for aiding an unsuccessful usurper (reportedly during the period of 2357-2258 BC). One branch of the Qiang was the Tanguts, who are covered below.

Eurasian Nomads: Part 1

Background
Indo-European Period (4,000 BC-300 AD)
Hsiung-nu Period (250 BC-450 AD)
Turkic Kaganate (552-744)

Eurasian Nomads: Part 2

Magyars
Székely
Pechenegs
The Uighur Empire (744-840)
Xueyantuo
Kirghiz or Kyrgyz
Kipchaks
Kimeks
Tatars or Tartar
Steppe Kingdoms (840-1278)
Khitan or Kidan
Tanguts
Jurchen or Jurchid
Turks or Turkmen
Mongol World Empire (1206-1368)
Steppe Peoples' Political Decline (14th C. onward)
Descriptions of Non-Mongolian Physiques