Cimmerians

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. The English name is derived from Latin Cimmerii, itself derived from the Ancient Greek (Κιμμεριοι),) of an ultimately uncertain origin for which there have been various proposals: according to János Harmatta, it was derived from Old Iranic *Gayamira, meaning "union of clans." Sergey Tokhtasyev and Igor Diakonoff derived it from an Old Iranic term *Gāmīra or *Gmīra, meaning "mobile unit." Askold Ivantchik derives the name of the Cimmerians from an original form *Gimĕr- or *Gimĭr-, of uncertain meaning. According to Ivantchik, the Greek form of the name Κιμμεριοι 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 (גֹּמֶר‎) in Hebrew. The Cimmerians were a nomadic Iranic people of the Eurasian Steppe. Archaeologically, there was no difference between the material cultures of the pre-Scythian populations living in the areas corresponding to the Caucasian steppe and the Volga and Don river regions around it, and there were also no other significant differences between the Cimmerians and the Scythians, who were related populations indistinguishable from each other in terms of culture and origins. In 1966, the archaeologist Maurits Nanning van Loon described the Cimmerians as Western Scythians, and referred to the Scythians proper as the Eastern Scythians.