Bronze Age Nomads
In the second half of the III Millenium and through the beginning of the I Millenium BC a new period of the old history of Ukraine began - so called the Bronze Age. Its most significant characteristic was the spreading of bronze products - the first artificial alloy invented by a man. Sometimes the Bronze Age is called a period of "the first Great settling", because exactly at the period an ethnic map of Europe began to be formed. At the Bronze Age time division of labor between farming and cattle-breeding tribes became intensified. Cattle-breeders settled steppe zones, and farmers settled along rivers of the forest-steppe zone of Ukraine. To protect themselves from enemies they built fortified cities - sites of ancient settlement. The most typical of the Bronze Age were tribes of early yamna ("Kurgan"), late yamna, catacomb and felling (zrubna) cultures.
Kurgan (????á?) is the Russian word (of Turkic origin) for tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood. In 1956 Marija Gimbutas introduced her Kurgan hypothesis combining kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" after their distinctive burial mounds and traced its diffusion into Europe.
The tribes of "felling culture" (the name originates from the tradition to bury the dead in wooden cribs under tumulus) have been identified with historical Cimmerians. This Iran-speaking ethnos was the first population on the territory of Ukraine, mentioned in the chronicle "Odyssey" by Homer. The Cimmerian tribe community, the first of the Black Sea steppe inhabitants converted from settled cattle-breeding to nomadic; existed until the VII century BC, when it was replaced by their near relations - the Scythians. The Cimmerians began to smelt from mud ore an iron for the first time on the territory of Ukraine, and in the X Century BC devised the furnace and mastered steel production [hence, the "Secret of Steel"], becoming the best masters of iron and smith craft that symbolized the beginning of the last old epoch before a new era - the Iron Age.
In the VIII century BC numerous tribes of the Scythians invaded the Black Sea steppes. Moving to the west up to the Danube River they were assimilated with the Cimmerians. The great semi-state formation - Great Scythia appeared which has been described by Herodotus in the "History". In the IV century B.C. Atej joined tribe unions of Scythians for a short period of time. After Atej came off second-best in 339 BC in a war with Macedonian king Philip II (the father of Alexander Macedonian) the armed might of Scythia fell into decline. For more than a half of a century the main role on the south of Eastern Europe was played the tribes of Sarmatians, [Sarmaty], which settled to the east from the Don River. The Sarmaty migration at the point of the III-II centuries BC devastated Scythia. Scythians gradually disappeared from the historical arena with the exception of a small kingdom in the Crimea (Scythia Minor), which existed to the end of the III century.
Unlike Scythians, Sarmaty did not form a common "kingdom". Though inherited from ancient geographers, who substituted on the maps the word Scythia to the word Sarmatia, the last name has been preserved to new years under a state-geographic meaning. Ptolemej divided Sarmatia into Asian and European for the first time, taking the River Don as their border. As a matter of fact, Sarmatia was not a state as no conqueror has been found to join numerous tribe communities of roksolany, yazyhy, alany etc. But the western border of their controlled territory in the I century passed the Dnipro banks and in the II century reached the Visla River. Possessions of Sarmaty tribe communities at the head of Alan leaders reached the Aral Sea. But invasion of the Hoty (the middle of the III century) and Huns (at the end of the IV century) ended presence of Sarmaty in the Northern Black Sea.
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