Cimmerians

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians are ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BCE, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia.

The archeologist Renate Rolle and others have argued that no one has demonstrated with archeological evidence the presence of Cimmerians in the southern parts of Russia or elsewhere.

Scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries had relied upon Herodotus's account.

But, Sir Henry Layard's discoveries in the royal archives at Nineveh and Calah have enabled the study of new source material that is several centuries earlier than Herodotus's history.

The Assyrian archeological record shows that the Cimmerians, and the land of Gamir, were located not far from Urartu, south of the Caucasus.

Military intelligence reports to Sargon in the 8th century BEC describe the Cimmerians as occupying territory south of the Black Sea.