Who were Cimmerians?

I'm a historian from Iran and my book titled "Himmerland, the Cradle of Persian Civilization" has been published here in Persian, I think everyone knows that Cimmerians were an Iranian people who lived in the north and east of Europe and migrated to Iran in the 8th century BC, do you know another thing about them that I don't know?!

That is a very good question.
There were either a Germanic speakers tribe, but I have no idea what branch of Germanic they were speaking, if it was West or East,less likely Norse.
They could have been also part of the large Gauls/Keltoi ethnicity which had different languages.
I do not know how early Gauls/Keltoi had their languages.
Cimmerians could have also been Thracian speakers.
Or they could have been Iranian speakers.

I'm sure you know more than me.

mihaitzateo said:

That is a very good question.
There were either a Germanic speakers tribe, but I have no idea what branch of Germanic they were speaking, if it was West or East,less likely Norse.
They could have been also part of the large Gauls/Keltoi ethnicity which had different languages.
I do not know how early Gauls/Keltoi had their languages.
Cimmerians could have also been Thracian speakers.
Or they could have been Iranian speakers.

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What a multicultural nation they were! It can be true that they lived in different Germanic, Celtic and Thracian lands but they were an Iranian-speaking people, of course Persian (Cimmerian) is actually a Thraco-Iranian language, mostly because different sound changes in this language, for example we see *ḱ>s in Indo-Iranian but *k>θ in Thraco-Iranian or *ǵ>z in Indo-Iranian but *ǵ>ð in Thraco-Iranian, ... compare Old Persian daθa "ten" but Indo-Iranian dasa, Greek déka, ...

I think you are a Romanian, ancient Persians considered the northern part of Romania as one of their original lands, it is interesting to read it: http://www.livius.org/articles/person/darius-the-great/sources/the-gherla-inscription/

One of the most remarkable inscriptions from Antiquity is the following fragmentary text, written in Persian cuneiform script, found in 1937 on a clay tablet in Gherla, and published in 1954:

[...] king [Darius] son of Hystaspes [...]
[...] did [...]

This is of course not a text full of very important information, but the fact that it exists is remarkable, because Gherla is in the northwestern part of modern Romania.

Although this is the only Achaemenid royal inscription that was ever found in Europe, it is not without parallel. The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus tells us that Darius, after conquering eastern Thrace (in c.514), visited the source of a river and left the following inscription:

"The head-springs of the Tearus give the best and fairest water of all rivers; and to them came (leading an army against the Scythians) the best and fairest of all men, Darius, son of Hystaspes, of the Persians and of all the continent king."

I would suggest reading academic papers instead of talking through your hats.

See: https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...Sarmatians(Science-2018)?highlight=Cimmerians

Cyrus said:

I'm a historian from Iran and my book titled "Himmerland, the Cradle of Persian Civilization" has been published here in Persian, I think everyone knows that Cimmerians were an Iranian people who lived in the north and east of Europe and migrated to Iran in the 8th century BC, do you know another thing about them that I don't know?!

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Are the circassians ( the indigenous people of the cimmerian lands) the forefathers of the cimmerians ?........................90% blue eyed people

Sile said:

Are the circassians ( the indigenous people of the cimmerian lands) the forefathers of the cimmerians ?........................90% blue eyed people

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I don't know about circassians but ancient Persians had mostly blonde hairs and blue eyes, reliefs of ancient Elamite and Persian immortal warriors of the Achaemenid empire from the palace of Darius the Great in Susa:

Cyrus said:

I don't know about circassians but ancient Persians had mostly blonde hairs and blue eyes, reliefs of ancient Elamite and Persian immortal warriors of the Achaemenid empire from the palace of Darius the Great in Susa:

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Are you sure ? Do you have any sources ? Cause most are depicted brown eyed and dark haired also the skin color is darker when compared to modern Iranians. When the Persians arrived in Persis/Pars Province they probably had been overwhelmingly dark haired and brown eyed. Even in the Andronovo Culture, most likely the cultural sphere of the so called "Aryans", you have just 50-60% blonde/red haired and blue/green eyed individuals.

Cyrus said:

I don't know about circassians but ancient Persians had mostly blonde hairs and blue eyes, reliefs of ancient Elamite and Persian immortal warriors of the Achaemenid empire from the palace of Darius the Great in Susa:

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Persians..where once called Parsi , they lived in modern Tajikstan circa 1000BC.......they then migrated to Iran ( Persia )
So they are originally , South-Central Asians

Anfänger said:

Are you sure ? Do you have any sources ? Cause most are depicted brown eyed and dark haired also the skin color is darker when compared to modern Iranians. When the Persians arrived in Persis/Pars Province they probably had been overwhelmingly dark haired and brown eyed. Even in the Andronovo Culture, most likely the cultural sphere of the so called "Aryans", you have just 50-60% blonde/red haired and blue/green eyed individuals.

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50/60% of Blonde Hairs is almost the same as today most european countries you know, Danemark have 68% of Blonde Hairs, while Finland have 80. So if Andronovo had 60% of blond hairs, it's actually a lot.

Cyrus said:

I'm a historian from Iran and my book titled "Himmerland, the Cradle of Persian Civilization" has been published here in Persian, I think everyone knows that Cimmerians were an Iranian people who lived in the north and east of Europe and migrated to Iran in the 8th century BC, do you know another thing about them that I don't know?!

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Well, I didn't read enough about Cimmerians personally, but recently researchers discovered the remains of several Cimmerians in Moldova.
From a genetic point of view, they looked quite Asiatic for modern Iranians. They resemble speakers of Eastern Iranic languages more.

JajarBingan said:

Well, I didn't read enough about Cimmerians personally, but recently researchers discovered the remains of several Cimmerians in Moldova.
From a genetic point of view, they looked quite Asiatic for modern Iranians. They resemble speakers of Eastern Iranic languages more.

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Do we poses any tested DNA / testable DNA?

Cyrus said:

I don't know about circassians but ancient Persians had mostly blonde hairs and blue eyes, reliefs of ancient Elamite and Persian immortal warriors of the Achaemenid empire from the palace of Darius the Great in Susa:

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Can not say anything about Cimerians... But that is absolutely beautiful art. How old is it?

halfalp said:

50/60% of Blonde Hairs is almost the same as today most european countries you know, Danemark have 68% of Blonde Hairs, while Finland have 80. So if Andronovo had 60% of blond hairs, it's actually a lot.

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Yes, i also thought that the proportion of blondes resembles kinda the average of modern germans or dutch people.
My point was that the Andronovo culture is not equal to Persians of the Achaemenid Empire. Before the Persians arrived in Persis/Pars they met and mixed with mostly dark haired and dark eyed people. First they heavily mixed with the people of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological complex for about thousand years and then they migrated to modern northern Iran there they also lived for about 200 hundred years where they would also get mixed with caucasian like people and then they moved to the South where they met the Elamites with whom they for sure heavly mixed and then gave rise to the first Persian Empire at about 500 BC.
I am not saying that there were not fair people when the First Persian Empire was established but they were definitely not the majority. The Greeks would have noticed if the Persians were unusually fair compared to their neighbours and written it down like they did for the Scythians, Tharicians and others.

The two tested samples from Chernogorovka were basal R-Z93* as well as importantly Q-Y558. Might be related to Azeri Q-F1827. The culture is authentic Cimmerian, as before there was an N-Y6503* in a Cimmerian related culture from Hungary combined with autosomal data it is clear Cimmerians did exist (as opposed to some attempts to portray them as "mythical") as an interesting population with significant Inner Asian admixture. Cimmerians then became entangled with several Thracian groups and thats why one can see today some of that genetics in the East, and why their archaeological horizon was so often labeled "Thraco-Cimmerian".. What hasn't been done yet is testing of some related Thraco-Cimmerian cultures, which is interesting for me because that's what I descend from, my ancestors claimed to descend from a clan which descended of a tribe in turn descended of one of these groups.

About Persians, they descend from a nomadic population that settled. It's obvious what Proto-Persians should have had: under R-Z2122 there is clear evidence that CTS6 was established in Iran almost 3000 ybp.. These were settled former nomads who founded a civilization. They ofc must have carried other lineages as well, but for now CTS6 seems "certain".

Anfänger said:

Yes, i also thought that the proportion of blondes resembles kinda the average of modern germans or dutch people.
My point was that the Andronovo culture is not equal to Persians of the Achaemenid Empire. Before the Persians arrived in Persis/Pars they met and mixed with mostly dark haired and dark eyed people. First they heavily mixed with the people of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological complex for about thousand years and then they migrated to modern northern Iran there they also lived for about 200 hundred years where they would also get mixed with caucasian like people and then they moved to the South where they met the Elamites with whom they for sure heavly mixed and then gave rise to the first Persian Empire at about 500 BC.
I am not saying that there were not fair people when the First Persian Empire was established but they were definitely not the majority. The Greeks would have noticed if the Persians were unusually fair compared to their neighbours and written it down like they did for the Scythians, Tharicians and others.

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That's exactly what I think. Persians in the Achaemenid Empire were definitely not the same as their (partial) ancestors of the Andronovo horizon, their movements certainly changed not only their culture, but also their genetic makeup, especially because they came to inhabit very populous and - most importantly - very civilized places compared to theirs.

As far as I know, the ancient sources do not mention Iranians as being very distinctive from their Greeks or Semitic neighbors to warrant authors' writing about their exotic looks. The ancient Persian art also does not depict a particularly "fair" population.

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As for Cimmerians, as other members above have already said, they looked a bit like the eastern Scythians in that they were mainly West Eurasian, with lots of R1a-Z93, but with quite significant East Eurasian input autosomally and even in Y-DNA lineages. I think that, if they were not themselves Iranic (some authors speculated they were like a missing link between Daco-Thracian and Indo-Iranian speakers), they must've mixed extensively with the eastern, prumably Iranic or even (earlier) Indo-Aryan, populations along the centuries to get all that eastern influence.

Archetype0ne said:

Do we poses any tested DNA / testable DNA?

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Yep

Anfänger said:

Are you sure ? Do you have any sources ? Cause most are depicted brown eyed and dark haired also the skin color is darker when compared to modern Iranians. When the Persians arrived in Persis/Pars Province they probably had been overwhelmingly dark haired and brown eyed. Even in the Andronovo Culture, most likely the cultural sphere of the so called "Aryans", you have just 50-60% blonde/red haired and blue/green eyed individuals.

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There are actually many evidences, for example we read in the famous Cyrus Cylinder which is considered as the world's first charter of human rights: "he looked out in justice and righteousness for the black-headed people whom he had put under his care.", "Cyrus assiduously looked after the justice and well-being of the Black-Headed People over whom he had been made victorious." ... https://www.britishmuseum.org/resea..._object_details.aspx?objectId=327188&partId=1

Of course the aboriginal people of Iran who had mostly black hair have been always in majority, but you can still find many people in Iran who seem to be descendants of ancient Cimmerians (Persians) immigrants.

Sile said:

Persians..where once called Parsi , they lived in modern Tajikstan circa 1000BC.......they then migrated to Iran ( Persia )
So they are originally , South-Central Asians

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Persianization of Tajiks dates back to the Middle ages, there is absolutely no evidence which shows Persian, Kurdish, Median and other western Iranian languages were spoken in the east of Iran in the ancient times, we read nothing about these people in Avesta and other eastern Iranian sources.

JajarBingan said:

Well, I didn't read enough about Cimmerians personally, but recently researchers discovered the remains of several Cimmerians in Moldova.
From a genetic point of view, they looked quite Asiatic for modern Iranians. They resemble speakers of Eastern Iranic languages more.

Click to expand...

Of course eastern Iranian people such as Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and etc also lived in Moldova, in fact it was one of the major lands of Scythians, Persianization of them seem to be possible too.