Concept in Definition ABC

The reference cultural The closest modern day we have to the Cimmerians is the appearance in comics and films of Conan the barbarian As the town of the hero, but the reality is largely unknown to the general public.

The Cimmerians were a nomadic people who dominated the Eurasian steppes in the area now occupied by Russia and Ukraine between the 8th and 7th centuries BC. C.

It was a people of warriors, of which not much is known since they left us very few written inscriptions and, as a good nomadic people, nor buildings, just tombs, from which most of the information has been obtained along with historical sources of their contemporaries.

One of the sources that best inform us of them is the Greek historian Herodotus, known as the “father of history”.

The Greeks resorted many times to the Cimmerians as mercenaries, realizing their worth as archers and as horsemen, roles that the Greeks themselves understood as necessary in the war, but which they refused to carry out, considering it much more noble to fight on foot in the training phalanx.

In fact, some historians point to the Cimmerians as the first to tame and ride horses.

The origin of the Cimmerians is unknown, speculating on an Indo-European people, or a Thracian origin, although they are also related to the Persians.

They have also been linked to the Scythians, another nomadic people who lived in the area and developed their fullness a posteriori, displacing the Cimmerians against other peoples, such as the Assyrians. The Scythians could have learned their arts as horsemen from the Cimmerians.

In the case of the Thracians, it could even be that they were successors and not ancestors of the Cimmerians.

His relationship with the Greek kingdoms or who received the influence Greek was not always peaceful, as in 654 BC. C, when they invaded the Kingdom of Lydia, in the present coast western Turkey.

The last record history of the Cimmerians dates from the Behistún inscription, made in 515 BC. C. under the reign of the Persian sovereign Darius I the Great.

After this, the Cimmerians simply disappear. The most widely accepted theory is that they separated into groups and disintegrated.

One of these groups would have landed in Anatolia and would have been massacred by the Assyrians. Another would have gone to Thrace. Elements of this group could have reached much further west than Europe, including present-day Wales, in the British Isles, whose Celtic name Cymru resembles "Cimmerian" or "Cimmerian."

Finally, another group could have settled in the Crimean peninsula.

Be that as it may, and despite their disappearance, the Cimmerians left their mark on some traditions of ancient peoples, although none inheritance idiomatic beyond suspicion in certain names. They disappeared into the mist of history ...

Photo: Fotolia - Erica Guilane-Nachez

Themes in Cimmerians