What do you know about Sarmatians?

Question

Would you please mention your sources? Thank you.

Peter C, I did spell it properly. I mean Sarmatians - not Samaritans. If you do not know the word - for goodness sake, check it out in the dictionary.

Answer 1

The Sarmatians, Sarmatae or Sauromatae were a multi-ethnic confederacy of western Scythia, mentioned by classical authors from Herodotus onward. Their major element in the south was Iranian.

In history, however, many tribes were under the name, which was Sarmatian to some, and Sauromatian to others. Pliny the Elder (N.H. book iv) equates the two names, saying that the Latin Sarmatae is identical to the Greek Sauromatae. At their greatest reported extent these tribes ranged from the Vistula river to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, and from the mysterious domain of the Hyperboreans in the north southward to the shores of the Black and Caspian seas, including the region between them as far as the Caucasus mountains. The richest tombs and the most significant finds of Sarmatian artifacts have been recorded in the Krasnodar Krai of Russia.

The full array of peoples who went under the aegis of "Sarmatians" must have spoken many languages, but it is perhaps no coincidence that the boundary between the so-called Centum-Satem isogloss in the Indo-European languages apparently split at the European border of the Sarmatians. The Sarmatians flourished from an era before the earliest European historical sources and endured until the arrival of the Huns in the 4th century AD. That event shattered whatever political unity they still had, causing their constituent peoples to go their own ways. The Sarmatians who avoided Roman subordination eventually were wiped out or conquered by the Huns.

Answer 2

It is all on www.samaritans.org.uk/ , but for goodness sake take more care - you will not find out anything if you do not spell it properly!