The Sarmatians
For almost 400 hundred years, from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD, the Sarmatians, who emerged from the lower Volga region, dominated the steppes north and east of the Black Sea.
Initially, they mingled peacefully with their fellow Iranian speakers, the Scythians, as well as with the Greeks who lived on the northern shore of the Black Sea. However, as enemy tribes began to pressure them from the east, the Sarmatians became more aggressive. Eventually, they overwhelmed the Scythians, absorbing many of the commoners into their own ranks. Like all nomadic rulers of the Ukrainian steppes, the Sarmatians were not a single, homogeneous tribe, but a loose federation of related and frequently feuding tribes, such as the lazygians, the Roxolanians, and the Alans. Each of these Sarmatian tribes tried to establish its rule over Ukraine. But because their attempts coincided with those prolonged, widespread population shifts commonly called the Great Migration of Peoples and because Ukraine was at the center of these chaotic population movements, Sarmatian control was frequently challenged and disrupted. Finally, in the 2nd century AD, it was completely destroyed by the terrible onslaught of the Huns from the east, the encroachments of the Germanic Goths from the north, and determined Roman resistance in the west.From the fragmentary information available about the Sarmatians, it is evident that they looked and lived much like the Scythians and other Iranian-speaking nomads. A contemporary wrote about the Alans that “they are tall and handsome, their hair tends to be blond and the ferocity of their glance inspires dread.”4 Their dress consisted of long, billowy trousers, leather jerkins, and soft leather boots and caps. Meat, milk, and cheese constituted the basis of their diet. They lived in tents that were mounted on two- or four-wheeled platforms.
A striking Sarmatian peculiarity was the prominent role played by their women. Repeating a legend according to which the Sarmatians were the offspring of a union between the Amazons and the Scythians, Herodotus stated that Sarmatian women followed “the ancient Amazon mode of living, going out on horseback to hunt, joining their husbands in war and wearing the same dress as the men.”5 Archaeological evidence indicates that Sarmatian women were often buried with their weapons and that they frequently performed important religious functions.When war did not provide them with all their material needs and desires, the Sarmatians engaged in trade. Their caravans ranged far and wide, bringing to Tanais, their capital on the Don River, silks from China, crystal from the Caucasus, and semiprecious stones from Iran and India. In the view of Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian, their contacts with the Greeks and Romans did them more harm than good. “Our mode of life has caused a change for the worse among these people, introducing among them luxury and sensual pleasures and, to satisfy these vices, base artifices that lead to innumerable acts of greed.”6 Other nomadic tribes soon replaced the Sarmatians, but the latter were the last of the Indo-European peoples to come out of the east. After them, the Eurasian steppes would become for almost a millennium the domain of the Turkic peoples.