The Sauromatian culture (Russian: Савроматская культура, romanized: Savromatskaya kulʹtura) was an Iron Age culture of horse nomads in the area of the lower Volga River to the southern Ural Mountain, in southern Russia, dated to the 6th to 4th centuries BCE. Archaeologically, the Sauromatian period itself is sometimes also called the "Blumenfeld period" (6th-4th centuries BCE), and is followed by a transitional Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period (4th-2nd centuries BCE), also called the "Prokhorov period".[3]
The name of this culture originates from the Sauromatians (Ancient Greek: Σαυρομάται, romanized: Sauromatai; Latin: Sauromatae[sau̯ˈrɔmat̪ae̯]), an ancient Scythian people mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors, and with whom it is identified. The Sauromatian culture was nomadic: no permanent settlements have been found, and they are only known from some temporary camps and large kurgan tombs.[4]
Origins
The Sauromatian culture emerged during the 6th century BCE out of elements of the Bronze Age Srubnaya culture and the neighbouring Andronovo culture, combined with Saka nomadic elements from Central Asia.[5][6][7][8] The Sauromatian culture was first mentioned and named by Herodotus (484–c.425 BCE), who explained that it was located to the east of the Don River, 15 days distance from the northern part of the Sea of Azov.[9]
Transitional period (8th-7th centuries BCE)
The Sauromatians () formed from a substrate of Bronze AgeSrubnaya and Andronovo populations, with large admixture from Iron AgeSaka nomads () from the 7th-6th century BCE.[10]
The Andronovo culture and the Timber Grave culture (Srubnaya culture) seem to have merged into a transitional culture during the 8th–7th centuries BCE. Still, there are wide regional and ethnic variations: the western populations of the lower Volga River were mainly influenced by the Timber Grave culture and their anthropomorphic type was Mediterranean, while smaller populations in the Samara-Ural area were mainly influenced by the Andronovo culture and had Europoïd-Andronovo anthropomorphic types.[5]
The Sauromatian period (6th-4th century BCE) conventionally starts in the 6th century CE, after this transitional period. Throughout the period, an important influx of nomadic populations from Central Asia took place, which shaped the Sauramatian culture of the southern Ural area.[11]
The Sauromatian culture also interacted with the western Ciscaucasian group of the Scythian culture, due to which it exhibited many resemblances to this latter group of the Scythian culture.[7] From the 7th-6th century BCE, Sauromatian artistic designs started to appear in western Scythian art, which became more intricate as a result.[12]
Culturally, the Sauromatian culture was also affected by the culture of the PersianAchaemenid Empire, whose influence reached them through Central Asia. This Achaemenid influence was most prominent in the north-eastern part of Sauromatian territory during the 6th century BCE.[13] Greek influence took over from the 4th century BCE, and Greek artifacts can be found in the nomadic burials of this period, as far as the southern Urals.[14]
Location and identification
The Sauromatian culture covered an area ranging from the eastern foothills of the lower Don river in the west to the lower Volga river in the east, and from the southern Ural Mountains in the north to the eastern foothills of the Caucasus in the south.[7]
The Sauromatian culture was divided into two main local groups: a Samara-Ural group from the southern Urals to the Caspian Sea, and a Lower Volga group located between the Volga River, the Don River, and the Transvolga. The Samara-Ural group of the Sauromatian culture has not yet been identified with any population recorded by ancient authors.[6][8] Nomads of the south Uralian region are sometimes identified with the tribes mentioned by ancient authors, such as the Issedones or the Dahae.[15] As can be inferred from their closeness, close kin connections existed between the Lower Volga and the Samara-Ural groups.[6] Still, an argument has been made that they also could be considered as two different cultures.[5]
The Samara-Ural group
"Golden Lady " from the Taksai kurgans, and some of her golden jewelry, c. 500 BCE.[16][17][18] Her outfit has many similarities with the Saka "Golden men" discovered at Issyk or Baigetobe kurgans.[19]
The region south of the Urals was very sparsely populated, "almost uninhabited", during the end of the Bronze Age, as known burials, which were of the Andronovo type, were extremely few.[5][20][11] Archaeological research suggests that the area only started to develop and population started to increase when it received waves of Asian nomadic migrations from the 7th-6th century BCE.[11][21]
From the 7th century BCE, Pamir-Ferghana anthropological types started to appear, and Eastern influence became prevalent, mainly through migrations.[5] Characteristic Saka-style deer stones are recorded in near the kurgans of Gumarovo.[22] Recent studies suggest that the population of the southern Urals actually became quite multi-ethnic, and the term "Early nomads of the southern Ural piedmont" is now often preferred to the traditional historical term "Sauromatians".[11] Early Saka nomads had started to settle in the Southern Urals as early as the 7th century BCE, coming from Central Asia, the Altai-Sayan region, and Central and Northern Kazakhstan.[23] The Itkul culture (7th-5th century BCE) is one of these Early Saka cultures, based in the eastern foothills of the Urals and specialized in metallurgy, which was assimilited into the Early Sarmatian culture.[23] Circa 600 BCE, groups from the Saka Tasmola culture settled in the southern Urals.[23] Circa 500 BCE, other groups from the area of Ancient Khorezm settled in the western part of the southern Urals, who also assimilated into the Early Sarmatians.[23] All these nomadic populations are identified by their kurgan burial mounds and their numerous artifacts, such as Taksai kurgans (c.500 BCE).[11] Other south Ural kurgans of the 6th-4th centuries BCE include the kurgans of Kyryk-Oba, Lebedevka, Tara-Butak, Akoba, Nagornoye, Zhalgyzoba etc...[24]
Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period
As a result, a large-scale integrated union of nomads from Central Asia formed in the area in the 5th–4th century BCE, with fairly uniformized cultural practices.[23] This cultural complex, with notable ‘‘foreign elements’’, corresponds to the ‘‘royal’’ burials of the Filippovka kurgans (c. 400 BCE), and defines the "Early Prokhorovka period" of the Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatians.[23] The Sauromatians of the southern Ural, such as those buried in the Filippovka kurgan (c.400 BCE), combined Western (Timber Grave and Andronovo) and Eastern characteristics, and generally displayed an increased incidence of eastern Asiatic features.[25] They most closely resembled the Saka populations of Central Asia, particularly from the Altai region (Pazyryk), and were very different from the western Scythians, or even the Sarmatians of the Volga River area to the west.[25] The archaic stle of the animal style in the Filippovka kurgan prompted some authors to date it to the 6th century BCE.[26]
The culture of the Samara-Ural group ended in the first decades of the 3rd century BCE (circa 300-250 BCE), possibly due to changing climatic conditions and the arrival of new nomads from Central Asia and southern Western Siberia, possibly Alans, which defined the succeeding Sarmatian period.[23] Sarmatian culture is generally thought to have formed in the Ural steppes, and the general westward mouvement of these nomadic tribes may have provoked the demise of the classical Volga Sauromatians, who may even have belonged to a different genetic profile.[27][28]
Two-planed stag, Filippovka kurgan, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 4th century BCE.[29]
Gold bear, Filippovka kurgans, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 5th-4th century BCE.[30]
Warriors with daggers and bows. Dagger blade decoration from Kurgan 4, Burial 2, Filippovka, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 5th-4th century BCE.[31]
The Lower Volga group
The section of the Lower Volga group of the Sauromatian culture located between the Don and Volga rivers corresponds to the Sauromatians mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors.[6][8] They first formed during the 7th century BCE, after the Scythians had migrated westwards and become the masters of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The historian Marek Jan Olbrycht has suggested that the Sauromatians might have been a Scythian group who migrated from Media during the period of Scythian presence in Western Asia, after which they merged with Maeotians who had a matriarchal culture. These early Sauromatians lived in the area of the Don river, near the Sea of Azov in the North Caucasus,[8] and their western neighbours were the Scythians proper.[7]
The Sauromatians may have been the Saⁱrima- (𐬯𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬨𐬀) people mentioned in the Yašts as one of the five peoples following the Zoroastrian religion, along with the Aⁱriia- (𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀), Tūⁱriia- (𐬙𐬏𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀), 𐬛𐬁𐬵𐬀 (Dāha-), and Sāinu- (𐬯𐬁𐬌𐬥𐬎), although this identification is still uncertain.[8][32]
Social and economic development
Digital reconstruction of a young man (25-35) from the Lower Volga Mayerovsky III (Майеровский III) cemetery (Nikolaevsky District, Volgograd region), kurgan 5, burial 1A, Sauromatian period, 6th-5th century BCE.[33]Sauromatian sword types (South Urals), 5th-4th centuries BCE.[34]
The burials of the Lower Volga Sauromatians were poorer and less sophisticated than those of their neighbours, either those of the Scythians to the southwest or the southern Urals Sauromatians to the northeast. This suggests that Lower Volga Sauromatians had a lesser level of social and property differentiation. The kurgans of the southern Urals Sauromatians were much larger and richer, suggesting the existence of a rich military aristocracy in the 5th century BCE. No such burials have been found in the Volga area, suggesting that a more basic clan structure remained in place, with a poorer and weaker military aristocracy.[35]
Political development
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Sauromatians were descendants of Amazons and young Scythians who lived in the area beyond the Tanais. Women rode on horseback, joined their husbands in war, and wore the same dress as men.[36] The Sauromatians spoke a "corrupt form" of the Scythian language, which might be explained by the influence of the Andronovo culture in the development of the Sauromatian culture.[6]
During the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, the Lower Volga Sauromatians were constituted of either a number of tribes or of a single tribe sharing a common ethnic identity, and united into a single polity bounded to the west by the Don river and to the east by the Volga river. By the end of the 5th century BCE, groups of the Sauromatians had moved to the west and settled around Lake Maeotis along the Royal Scythians and the Maeotians.[6][8][37]
The Sauromatians maintained peaceful relations with their western neighbours, the Scythians, who were also an Iranic equestrian nomadic people. A long road starting in Scythia and continuing towards the eastern regions of Asia existed thanks to these friendly relations.[6]
During the 6th century BCE, related Iranic nomads from the Central Asian steppes migrated westwards into the country of the Lower Volga Sauromatians, due to which the bulk of the Sauromatians retreated to the west, in western Ciscaucasia.[38] Due to this, the Scythians progressively lost their territories in the Kuban region to the Sauromatians over the late 6th century BCE, beginning with the territory to the east of the Laba river, and then the whole Kuban territory.[39]
By the end of the 6th century BCE, the Scythians had lost their territories in the Kuban Steppe and had been forced to retreat into the Pontic Steppe, except for the westernmost part of the Kuban Steppe, which included the Taman Peninsula,[40] where the Scythian Sindi tribe formed a ruling class over the native Maeotians, due to which this country was named Sindica. By the 5th century BCE, Sindica was the only place in the Caucasus where the Scythian culture survived.[39][41]
The retreating Sauromatians continued to move westwards, migrating into Scythia itself[42] over the course of 550 and 500 BCE and were absorbed by the Pontic Scythians with whom they mingled. A large number of settlements in the valleys of the steppe rivers were destroyed as a result of these various migratory movements.[40][41]
The retreat of the Scythians from the Kuban Steppe and the arrival of the Sauromatian immigrants into the Pontic steppe over the course of the late 6th to early 5th centuries BCE caused significant material changes in the Scythian culture soon after the Persian campaign which are not attributable to a normal evolution of it. Some of the changes were derived from the Sauromatian culture of the Volga steppe, while others originated among the Kuban Scythians, thus resulting in the sudden appearance within the lower Dnipro region of a fully formed Scythian culture with no local forerunners, and which included a notable increase in the number of Scythian funerary monuments.[43][41]
Sites belonging to the Sauromatian culture consist of kurgans whose contents are poorer than those of Scythian burials, attesting of the presence of less extensive class stratification among the Sauromatians as compared to their western Scythian neighbours.[6]
A camel pendant from Filippovka,[45] of the kind found in Pyatimary burials.[46]
The remains of the Sauromatian culture consist nearly only of graves, which were themselves mostly secondary burials that had reused older kurgans. The grave goods present in these burials characterised the Sauromatians as well-armed cavalry warriors, although many of them appear to have also fought on foot.[7]
The Sauromatian kurgans of the 5th century BCE found in the southern foothills of the Ural Mountains were, however, more developed, large and rich, and belonged to a military aristocracy. One example of such rich Sauromatian sites is the Pyatimary (Пятимары) group, located on the Ilek river.[6]
The Sauromatian kurgans of the Volga area were instead all poorer, and none of them possessed the stature and richness of the Ural kurgans. This is an attestation of the clan structure of Sauromatian society subsisting for longer in the region between the Don and the Volga, while the tribal aristocracy in this area was weaker in both economic and military terms as compared to the aristocracy near the Urals.[6]
The presence of pedestalled sacrificial altars made of stone or flat stone dishes with raised rims in female Sarmatian graves also confirms that claims of Graeco-Roman authors that Sarmatian women were warriors as well as priestesses. These priestesses held a very important status in Sauromatian society.[6][42]
Weapons
Numerous weapons, armour, helmets were already found in the excavations of the Early Sarmatian Filippovka kurgan (c. 450-300 BCE):[47] The weapons are very similar to those of the Tagar culture.[48]
Out of all military Sauromatian burials which contain weapons, twenty percent of the graves belong to women warriors, with this relatively large number attesting of the veracity of Graeco-Roman authors' claims that Sauromatian women held a special role and participated in military operations and in social life. Women's burials occupied the central position and were the richest in multiple Sauromatian funerary complexes.[6][42]
Filippovka 1 Iron armour from burial 2 mound 4
Filippovka 1, Horn armour from mound 29
Filippovka 1, bronze arrowheads from burial 2, mound 4
Filippovka 1, iron helmets from mound 11
Filippovka 1, iron swords and daggers
Filippovka 1, bronze and inlaid gold dagger
Gilded iron dagger, with designs of horses and warriors, from Filippovka kurgan 4, Burial 2.[49]
Sarmatian ancestry proportions. The Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period (Prokhorovka period in Southern Ural) sees a marked influx of Central Asian nomads (Altaian-like ancestry), which continued into the Late Sarmatian period, and made them genetically quite similar to Asian Saka populations.[50][25]Possible depiction of a Sauromatians warrior, with straight hair, saw-toothed patterned trousers, coat and bows. Filippovka kurgan, c.400 BCE.[51]
The Sauromatian culture came to an end when, in the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE, they were conquered by nomadic Central Asian populations from regions east of the Urals who moved into the trans-Ural steppes and the lower Volga region.[6][8] The Sauromatians joined these new conquerors. Their combination with these eastern nomads gave rise to the Sarmatians.[52] They were initially able to preserve their separate identity, although their name, modified into "Sarmatians" eventually came to be applied to the whole of the new people formed out of these migrations, whose constituent tribes were the Aorsi, Roxolani, Alans, and the Iazyges.[6][8][37]
Despite the Sarmatians having a similar name to the Sauromatians, ancient authors distinguished between the two, and Sarmatian culture did not directly develop from the Sauromatian culture; the core of the Sarmatians was instead composed of the newly arrived migrants from the southern Ural foothills.[6][8][37] This evolution is also reflected in the genetic profile of the Sauromatians and Sarmatians, which sees a marked influx of Central Asian nomads (Altaian-like ancestry), continuing into the Late Sarmatian period.[50]
From an archaeological standpoint, there is no continuity between the lower Volga Sauromatians and the Sarmatians of the 3rd century BCE onward. The Sarmatians were instead derived from the southern Urals Sauromatians, combined with new migrants from beyond the Urals, who migrated into the lower Volga region and conquered the lower Volga Sauromatians. Sarmatians polities such as the Aorsi, the Roxolani, the Alans and the Iazyges then became known. These powerful tribes further expanded westward and conquered the Scythians. and the north Caucasus.[53]
Genetics
One Sauromatian from the Caspian region of the 7th century BCE had maternal haplogroup U5a1.[54][55]
Autosomal DNA Sauromatian culture of the Samara-Ural group from the north-eastern Caspian (7th century BCE)
^Vyazov, Leonid A.; Ershova, Ekaterina G.; Ponomarenko, Elena V.; Gajewski, Konrad; Blinnikov, Mikhail S.; Sitdikov, Ayrat G. (2019). "Demographic Changes, Trade Routes, and the Formation of Anthropogenic Landscapes in the Middle Volga Region in the Past 2500 Years". Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road. pp. 411–452. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-00728-7_19. ISBN978-3-030-00727-0.
^Gursoy, M. (28 February 2023). "Жазба Және Археологиялық Деректер Негізінде Савромат-Сармат Тайпаларының Шығу Тегі". BULLETIN Series Historical and Socio-political Sciences. 1 (72): 158. doi:10.51889/2022-1.1728-5461.16. In particular, B. N. Grakov proposed a general four-stage chronology of the Savromat-Sarmatian tribes, based on the specifics of their burial structures, burial traditions and material world: 1.The Savromat period or Blumenfeld -VI-IV centuries BC. 2.Savromat-Sarmatian or Prokhorov period-IV-II Centuries BC. 3.The middle Sarmatian period or Suslov -II BC -II Centuries AD. 4.The late Sarmatian period or Shipov –II –IV centuries AD. Since this proposal is generally supported by the majority, this chronology is taken as a basis in the research papers.
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). The metal road of the Eastern Eurasian steppe: the formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. 287. ISBN978-981-329-155-3. No permanent settlements were found in the Sauromatian culture; only some temporary camps were found. The excavation materials mainly focused on the tombs. Based on current research findings, the Sauromatian culture can be classified into two types: the Lower Volga type and the Samara-Ural type. The artifacts in these two types have regional differences. The tombs in the Sauromatian culture are covered with enormous mounds. The tombs of the Lower Volga type are covered with earthwork mounds, while those of the Samara-Ural type are covered with stone-piled mounds or cairns. Some of the tombs are surrounded by a layer of pebbles, while some are set with deer stones.
^ abcdeYang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). The metal road of the Eastern Eurasian steppe: the formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. pp. 296–297. ISBN978-981-329-155-3. It has long been speculated that the Andronovo culture and the Timber Grave culture merged into a transitional culture, which later developed into the Sauromatian culture. Because the tomb type of the lower Volga River was mainly influenced by the Timber Grave culture, the Samara-Ural type reflects the influence of the Andronovo culture (Sulimirski 1970, pp. 39–53). Most of the remains of the transitional culture can be dated to the 8th–7th century B.C. and were mostly found in the Don-Volga region, with only a few in the South Ural region. Most of the tombs of this period are catacomb tombs with flexed skeleton. The tombs in the Ural were similar in form to those of the Andronovo culture. Most grave goods (Fig. 5.17) continued to be prevalent in the Sauromatian culture. There are significant differences between the lower Volga type and the Samara-Ural type, not only in the burial customs but also in human bones. The bone data show that there were two main types of Sauromatian: the Europoid Andronovo type in the Kazakh steppe and the Mediterranean type in the Volga River valley. Not until the 5th century B.C. did the Pamir-Ferghana type (Sulimirski 1970, pp. 39–53) appear in the Central Asian steppes. Therefore, in recent years, some scholars have suggested that these two types should belong to different cultures (Moshkova 1995). However, the similarities and differences between these two types remain for further discussion. In the course of its development, the Sauromatian culture was constantly influenced by both eastern and western factors particularly the eastern one. This influence was likely to be achieved through population migration, as evidenced by the presence of Pamir-Ferghana-type humans in the cultural distribution. Due to the increase in mobility, the migration of the people was extensive, and large-scale migration of the people was consistent among cultures.
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). The metal road of the Eastern Eurasian steppe: the formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. 287. ISBN978-981-329-155-3. The name of the Sauromatian culture was first seen in the book by the Greek historian Herodotus. In his book The Histories, Herodotus wrote that the Sauromatian tribe near the eastern part of the Scythians was located to the east of the Don River, 15 days distance from the northern part of the Sea of Azov (Herodotus 1999b).
^ abcdeSummerer 2020, p. 604, notes 82, 85: "The southern Ural piedmont is traditionally associated with the Sauromatians, a collective ethnonym used for all nomadic people living in the vast region east of the Don at the time of Herodotus. However, recent studies see the inhabitants of this region as multi-ethnic and favour the more neutral term of early nomads of the southern Ural piedmont. While the Bronze Age in the southern Ural region is archaeologically well evidenced, there seems to be a hiatus in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. It has been suggested that new nomad groups came into the region during the 6th century BC. The earliest archaeological evidence of this immigration is a group of kurgan burials of the late 6th or early 5th century BC, of which Taksai-1 is part."
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). The metal road of the Eastern Eurasian steppe: the formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. 284. ISBN978-981-329-155-3. After the 6th century B.C., some Greek colonies appeared along the Black Sea. The Greeks exchanged wool, fur, and slaves for painted ceramics, textiles, decorations, weapons, wine, and olive oil. From that time, the impact of the Greek artistic style on the Scythian culture gradually increased, while the influence of the Assyrian artistic style from West Asia gradually decreased. In the meanwhile, the Scythian artistic style became more complicated, involving some Sauromatian and Persian cultural elements.
^For a description of the earring, see Pankova, Svetlana; Simpson, St John (1 January 2017). Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia. British Museum. p. 137, item 67.
^MOSHKOVA, MARINA G. (1995). A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE SAUROMATIAN AND SARMATIAN TRIBES (Chap.4)(PDF). Berkeley: ZINAT PRESS. p. 95. A recently published article by A.S. Skripkin (1988, p.28) assumes that because the Prokhorovskaya or Early Sarmatian Culture spread from the southern Ural steppes as the result of military expansion, the possibility of a Sauromatian and Sarmatian genetic continuity must be excluded.
^Yablonsky, Leonid Teodorovich (2010). "New Excavations of the Early Nomadic Burial Ground at Filippovka (Southern Ural Region, Russia)". American Journal of Archaeology. 114 (1): 129–143. doi:10.3764/aja.114.1.129. JSTOR20627646. S2CID191399666. Russian scholars all agree that the Sarmatian proto-homeland, the place of origin for this centuries-old culture, was in the southern Ural steppes and the forest steppe of the eastern Urals. And it is in these regions that the earliest cemeteries of Sarmatian type are located. One of these cemetery sites includes the barrows of Filippovka(fig. 1), which Pshenichniuk, a pioneer of scientific research on them, dated to no later than the fourth century B.C.E
^Gulyaev, V. I. (21 September 2019). "The Bear Cult and Kurgans of the Scythian Elite". Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia. 47 (3): 85–93. doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.3.085-093.
^Melyukova 1990, p. 111: "In level of social and economic development as well as in culture the Sauromatian tribes were somewhat more primitive than the Scythian, although a number of common characteristics can be found. The Sauromatian kurgans which have been excavated are as a whole poorer than those of the Scythians; they also show that there was less social and property differentiation between the Sauromatian aristocracy and the ordinary members of the community. More developed, evidently, were the tribes from the southern foothills of the Urals, where the large and rich kurgans of a military aristocracy dating to the 5th century B.C. - such as the Pyatimary group on the River llek - are known. No such burial grounds have to date been discovered in the Volga area. This has led scholars to suppose that the clan structure disintegrated more slowly amongst the Sauromatae in the area between the Volga and the Don and that the clan-tribal aristocracy here was economically and militarily weaker than the aristocracy near the Urals."
^Sulimirski 1985, p. 189:"Sauromatian armament differed only slightly from that of the Scyths. By the end of the 5th century B.C. articles and weapons of Central Asian types, mostly modelled on Achaemenian prototypes, began to appear first in the South Urals, and then also on the lower Volga. This was due to the influx of the Sarmatian Alanic nomads from the Kazakhstan and Central Asian steppes who overran the Sauromatian country. The bulk of the Sauromatians yielded to the invaders and retreated southwards into the northwest Caucasus, and westwards into the Ukraine, where they brought about great changes in Scythian culture and initiated the Late Scythian Period."
^ abJärve, Mari; Saag, Lehti; Scheib, Christiana Lyn; Pathak, Ajai K.; Montinaro, Francesco; Pagani, Luca; Flores, Rodrigo; Guellil, Meriam; Saag, Lauri; Tambets, Kristiina; Kushniarevich, Alena; Solnik, Anu; Varul, Liivi; Zadnikov, Stanislav; Petrauskas, Oleg; Avramenko, Maryana; Magomedov, Boris; Didenko, Serghii; Toshev, Gennadi; Bruyako, Igor; Grechko, Denys; Okatenko, Vitalii; Gorbenko, Kyrylo; Smyrnov, Oleksandr; Heiko, Anatolii; Reida, Roman; Sapiehin, Serheii; Sirotin, Sergey; Tairov, Aleksandr; Beisenov, Arman; Starodubtsev, Maksim; Vasilev, Vitali; Nechvaloda, Alexei; Atabiev, Biyaslan; Litvinov, Sergey; Ekomasova, Natalia; Dzhaubermezov, Murat; Voroniatov, Sergey; Utevska, Olga; Shramko, Irina; Khusnutdinova, Elza; Metspalu, Mait; Savelev, Nikita; Kriiska, Aivar; Kivisild, Toomas; Villems, Richard (22 July 2019). "Shifts in the Genetic Landscape of the Western Eurasian Steppe Associated with the Beginning and End of the Scythian Dominance". Current Biology. 29 (14): 2430–2441.e10. Bibcode:2019CBio...29E2430J. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.019. ISSN0960-9822. PMID31303491.
^Yang, Jianhua; Shao, Huiqiu; Pan, Ling (2020). The metal road of the Eastern Eurasian steppe: the formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer. p. 295. ISBN978-981-329-155-3. The horse, with a long tail, is decorated on the body with S-shaped spirals, which also appear on the background (Fig. 5.15: 28). The knight, who has short and straight hair, a pair of saw-toothed patterned trousers and a waistband coat and who is carrying another bow on his back, is drawing the bow. Through this design, the craftsman may have intended to show the image of a Sauromatian warrior at war or of a hunter hunting.
^Melyukova 1990, p. 112: "Archeologists have established that no direct line of development can be drawn from Herodotus' Sauromatae, that is the 6th~4th centuries B.C. population of the area between the Volga and the Don, to the Sarmatians of the 3rd century B.C. It appears that the nucleus of the Sarmatian people formed in the foothills of the south Urals, with the participation of migrants from the foreststeppes beyond the Urals. In the 4th~3rd centuries B.C. part of the population of the south Urals moved into the lower Volga and the trans-Urals steppes and conquered the Sauromatae living here. As a result new Sarmatian polities - known to the ancient world as the Aorsi, the Roxolani, the Alans and the Iazyges - were formed. These were the threatening and militarily powerful unions of tribes which from the 3rd century B.C. began their great advance westwards, across the Don and into the steppes of the north Black Sea area, where they "devastated a considerable part of Scythia and, exterminating the conquered to the last man, they turned the greater part of the country into a desert." They also moved southwards, into the north Caucasus"
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![Two-planed stag, Filippovka kurgan, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 4th century BCE.[29]](File:%D0%97%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE_%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B9._Gold_of_the_Sarmatian_-_Gold-plated_deer.jpg)
![Gold bear, Filippovka kurgans, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 5th-4th century BCE.[30]](File:%D0%97%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE_%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B9._Gold_of_the_Sarmatian_-_Bear.jpg)
![Warriors with daggers and bows. Dagger blade decoration from Kurgan 4, Burial 2, Filippovka, Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian, 5th-4th century BCE.[31]](File:Filippovka,_individuals_on_a_dagger_blade,_Kurgan_4,_Burial_2.jpg)
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