[Donnchadh Aravanta]

I apologise if this has already been addressed, but I came across something in my archaeological dictionary that made me think. I accidently came across an entry of 'Cimmerians' and it stated:

'Nomadic tribal people who inhabited the steppes of Russia in the 8th century BC, having been forced there by the Scythians.'

~ Brockhampton Reference Series: Dictionary of Archaeology.

There is a little more but I don't want to write it all out, as the main point is made there. Everything I've seen so far points towards Cimmerians having a language akin to Irish (and their location being near there as well) and with the real Cimmerians inhabiting Russia, I wondered well, what does everyone think of that?

I've only recently started my true foray into archaeology as I start my degree in October, but I've always liked the fantasy of linking Howard's works to real peoples.

I also did a quick Google search and came across
this.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to debunk any theories or Howard's work in any way. I'm just very interested in ancient culture and peoples and having seen other posts and people's links, I thought others might appreciate this find as well.

Once again, I apologise if this has been discussed before.

[Kane]

The answers to your question can be found in the latter part of Howard's essay, The Hyborian World.
Before the reshaping of the landmasses there is a migration of the various nations into new lands. This was caused by the invasions comming out of Pictland. one part of that migration was that a group of Cimmerians traveled west to establish new colonies. They mixed with the local people and became the forefathers of the tribed that you mentioned.

[Donnchadh Aravanta]

Thanks for clearing that up, I've not read a great deal of Conan fiction (but I will get around to it!), so I wasn't aware of that.

Thanks again.

[Isaacson]

Hi Donnchadh Aravanta, and all.

Some good advice here from Kane. But I feel that the "disclaimer" by REH, at the start of his "The Hyborian Age" essay, is of premiere importance. As this instantly informs us how the given information in the yarns should be read and treated.

Quote REH:

"(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional background for a series of fictional stories" ... etc).


Cheers, Danny.

[Kane]

Isaacson is correct. As much as I enjoy the Conan series, and REH in general, we do need to remember that what he wrote was fiction.
While modern reserach may someday prove that there were pre and post Ice age civilations, I highly doubt that anything will ever approach the scale of Howard's Hyborian World.

[Eamon]

Was there ever a place called Cimmeria? I thought there was?

[Ant]

Not a place called Cimmeria, but certainly a people called Cimmerians...

See http://www.livius.or...cimmerians.html or http://members.tripo...Unite/cimmeria/.

Ciao,
Ant

[Taranaich]

The historical Cimmerians were a pretty interesting race too. Depending on which scholars you believe, they were either ancestors of the Dacians (who would become the last major barbarians to contend with the Republic until it became the Empire), or the Scythians (who would give rise to the Huns, who would eventually come marching upon Rome themselves.

There are even some scholars who link the Cimmerians to the Cimbri, who were the ancestors of the British celts. I love history

[Kortoso]

Taranaich, on Mar 14 2006, 09:09 AM, said:

There are even some scholars who link the Cimmerians to the Cimbri, who were the ancestors of the British celts.  I love history

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That theory was certainly current in Howard's day.

[Kortoso]

Seeking the Ancient Cimmerians

Quote

Turkish archeologists intend to prove the historical existence of the Cimmerians, one of Europe’s most ancient peoples. The legendary Conan the Barbarian was one of the Cimmerians, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1982 Hollywood movie Conan the Barbarian.

Scientists still debate the existence of the land of Cimmerians . There are references to the ancient mystical country in the works by Homer and Herodotus, and in the Assyrian cuneiform tables excavated in Mesopotamia . According to the tables, the Cimmerians originated in Asia Minor in the 8th century B.C.

According to the works by Stephan of Byzantine, the Cimmerian settlements were located for 100 years in Antandrosis, an ancient town lying in the northwestern part of present-day Turkey .

Archeologists hope to find evidence to prove the existence of the Cimmerians during the upcoming excavation. In the future, Antandorsis may become the second Ephesus in terms of historical significance if an archeological expedition strikes it rich, Travel.ru reports.

[Taranaich]

About damn time I say! There are so many mysterious ancient peoples alluded to that need a lot of research done, the Cimmerians obviously high on my list. It would be fantastic to find some first-hand evidence of their existence, rather than mentions of them: how awesome would it be to find a Cimmerian tomb!

I'm pretty sure they do exist though: if a gigantic city like Troy can remain undiscovered for thousands of years then I'm sure Antandorsis is well within the realms of possibility. However, due to the links of the Cimmerians with nomads like the Scythians and Sarmatians, I wonder if the Cimmerians would have towns at all?

[PainBrush]

I haven't checked out that link above yet - but after a lot of digging around lately I finally found the info I was looking for with the details of the ' Cimri ' or ' Kimbroi ' peoples of ' Himmerland ' - that was part of the main inspiration for Howards Cimmerians . I felt 'compelled ' - NAY ! - I say -' posessed 'with the need of finding this stuff because of some banter tossed around a short while back on the boards where some of our resident ' scholars ' * ahem * cough-cough * would have had sport at the ' dumb-guy 's expense for mentioning that Howards ' FICTIONAL ' Cimmerians were at least ' partly ' based on some of the earliest Norse peoples - as well as ' MOSTLY ' Celtic . That apparently chafed some nads of a couple of you barbarians on here who would only be better satisfied if Conan lived at the end of a rainbow guarding his pot-'o'gold & Whisky & had shamrocks flying out his butt as he sang ' Danny Boy ' - or ' the Sickbed of Cuchullain ' !! hahaha .

I will post it all on here later ( it's a couple or a dozen pages in the first book I dug out - so it'll prob. be at least a few paragraphs long by the time I type all the 'pertinent' stuff ) - I even HAVE MAPS !!!! & I can tell ya - they were 'not' from Turkey - but much further North - try the far Northern shores & islands in the Baltic !! They were early Scand-landers . - Note that I am only talking here about the folks I recall Howard basing ' his 'Cimmerians on - maybe not the exact same folks as in that Turkey info - which I believe I recalled hearing a long while back somewhere that they were confused with the ' Scythians ' & some other warrior tribe/s ( Sarmations , Sumerians ?!?! ) - like Taranaich mentioned above . But anyhow , - the guys I'm talking about were from WAAAYYY earlier than even those folks & were penned down by 'pre'historic to the first 'historic' accounts by some Greeks who were chronicling this stuff . Greeks were ' writing it down ' - but that doesn't mean in the wildest imagination that they were talking about any Greek peoples either as I've also heard 1 or 2 people say in the past ( though maybe not anybody on here - dunno where I recall reading that )

None of this stuff is by some 'un-named' sources either - try the pretty well respected historian Ptolemy as the first source I'll start with . A really interesting page that popped up when I was trying to find any of this stuff online also takes me full circle to another topic where I recalled that Howard had some ideas about those " Lost 10 Tribes " of pre-history & kinda maybe worked some of those ideas into his Hyboria - anyway - it's a pretty interesting page & links some of the other " Lost' tribes names to nations that became " Goths " ( tribe of Gad/Gotland etc.) Tribe of 'Dan ' ( Danmark & maybe the origin in forgotten history of " Wo'dan' - Thors daddy etc. ) - I haven't really gotten into that site in any depth yet so I don't know much about it - or if it's rock-solid stuff - but at a quick perusing it's really damn interesting so far...................

LOST TRIBES PAGE

Quote

THE TRIBE OF GAD OR "GOTH"

THE DISPERSION OF GAD

The Tribe of Gad was exiled with Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh to
Halah, Habor, the River of Gozan, and to Hara (1-Chronicles 5:26). Gad
re-appeared as the Guti who were allied to the Saka and Gimiri (Cimiri) in
Mesopotamia and the Zagros Mountain region. From this area the Guti split
into known groups. One group went west to become the Geti of the Balkans.
Ancient writers who lived at the time recognized that the Geti and the
Goths were the same people. Another group of Goths was in the east,
branching out from Hara in Eastern Iran. In the sphere surrounding the area
of "Hara" the Gadites reappeared as the Pasar-Gadae, in the name Gadrosia,
in the Gadanopydres of Carmania; and in the Gu-te (Goths) whose name is
sometimes mistakenly transliterated from Chinese records as
"Yuehchi"1. The Gu-te were known to the Western World as Massagetae. The
Romans knew that the Massagetae were Goths though the term could also be
applied to other peoples of the area. The name "Goth" itself means GAD and
is another way of enunciating it in Hebrew while the Goths actually in some
cases referred to themselves by the term "Gad" or something close to it.
The Goths are recorded as having called themselves "GUDA"2 or "GODO"3..
"GAD" is recognized as a root occurring in Gothic toponomy4; i.e. the root
"GAD" in a place-name is accepted by historians as evidence indicating that
that place was probably once connected with the Goths. Gadites were also
known in Scotland (as "Gadeni") and Ireland as the "Gaedhals".

THE GOTHS OF GAD
Goths were to be found amongst the sundry northern tribes who
invaded England with the Anglo-Saxons and a Saxon group was known as the
GEDDINGAS.
The main body of Gad was that associated with the Goths and
with the so-called "Nordic" peoples. Goths were to settle in many lands but
numerically they probably remained concentrated in Scandinavia and Sweden
(Gotaland and Gothia)5 is the only place where today they can be
distinguished as a specific people.....on & on & blah blah blah , look it up yerselfs......................[size=5]

This post has been edited by PAINBRUSH: 19 August 2006 - 06:51 AM

[WALKAN]

So, if I get this right, REH based his Cimmerians on the Kimbri and not on the Cimmerians? So why did he call them Cimmerians?

[PainBrush]

I'm not saying they were 2 different peoples , differences in spelling from language to language maybe confuse the subject - Cimmerian in old greek is spelled 'Kimmerioi' or ' Cimbri' or 'Kimbroi' from what I've been reading . Here's a quick paragraph I snagged online ;
" The Cimmerians (Greek: Κιμμέριοι, Kimmerioi) were ancient equestrian nomads who, according to Herodotus, originally inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea, in what is now Russia and Ukraine "

That's according to Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. , but modern archaeology shows that the Kimmbrioi & the Scythans were first from the Altay-Sayan mountains way up in Siberia 3000 B.C. !! & they migrated all over - some south to end up undoubtedly as the folks herodotus described some thousands of years later , some west to the northern European areas , some into what is today Mongolia . I don't want to put my foot in my mouth - so I won't try to type all the historical / geographical stuff off the top of my head - I would undoubtedly get something wrong if I did ! - & I'm still digging through my bookshelves trying to find out where I read that stuff about the peoples Howard based his Cimmerians on , I think a good bit of it was in some letter he wrote & probably why I'm having such a hard time finding it . I don't have a degree in world history - or geography or ancient tribes cultures or races of people - I'm only typing here stuff I've read in a lot of books - if anybody else has better details - please jump in .........



Here's a link to an excellent page I stumbled across - it has a lot of stuff about all the different dozens of tribes & peoples from the Steppe-lands . Not too much about the Cimmerians as far as all I've posted above - but some decent info on the 'later' Cimmerians , Scythians , Huns etc. etc.

CIMMERIANS

STEPPE PEOPLES

This post has been edited by PAINBRUSH: 18 August 2006 - 10:02 PM

[Taranaich]

Well, the thing about nomadic cultures is that they generally take up a VAST amount of land due to the necessity of feeding their horses, so it's certainly possible that the Cimmerians could have been some sort of confederacy of other nomadic peoples stretching from Turkey to Denmark. Or, perhaps they were originally from Denmark/Turkey, and a number of them migrated to Turkey/Denmark much as the Galatians and Vandals travelled far away from their homelands to form new kingdoms.

I also find the link to Gomer quite fascinating. I wonder if Noah's ark could have been a folk memory of a group of Hyborian-age folk attempting to survive the Second Cataclysm? Perhaps thinking of the people on the ark as a family was a simplification, that they were in fact a group of people from different nations trying to escape the Pictish/Hyrkanian wars before the Cataclysm struck?

Let's see...

Noah's sons were Ham, Shem and Japeth.

The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Aram, Arpachshad and Lud. They founded various Mesopotamian cultures: the Elamites, Assyria, the Aramaeans, the Hebrews and Arabs and the Lydians respectively.

The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan. They founded the empire of Kush, Upper and Lower Egypt, the Libyans and obviously Canaan.

The sons of Japeth were Gomer, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras. They are linked with the Cimmerians, Medes, the Ionians, the Iberians and Illyrians and Italics, the Phrygians and Sea Peoples, and the Thracians. His other son Magog is not associated with any people in the bible, but according to folklore he is connected to the Irish and Scythians.

More interesting stuff here.

Sorry to clutter up the topic with biblical stuff.

[PainBrush]

It isn't just Biblical stuff , it's historical stuff - so clutter away , if it's pertinent to historical Cimmerians in whatever period in time I would think it's fair game & not off-topic . That book is undoubtedly the greatest history book there ever was & will be - I won't go so far as to say that everything in it has been proven factual yet - but I will say that there isn't a single thing in it's histories that has been dis-proven either , only miscalculations in time or place . While looking all this stuff up about Cimmerians & lost races etc. I found a lot also like what you mentioned about the tribe of Gomer in particular being related to the historical Cimmerians - similar sounding word roots I guess - might be something to it . The stuff about the flood - almost every single culture across the world had ancient stories about a great flood - way too much for just a coincidence , some stories of it historians say were written down even before the Biblical texts - all that means is that the Biblical texts may have been written down later - not that it describes a different or earlier event .

[Kortoso]

Well Shazam! I found me a picture of a real Gomer:
http://tinyurl.com/ljywa
Is he a Cimmerian after all?

[PainBrush]

hahaha I knew it was only a matter of time from the first mention of 'Gomer' !!

[john welch]

[

Silk Road yields up a Celtic mystery

Irish Times
Fri, Aug 25, 06

The burial sites of Cherchen Man and people were marked with stone
structures ringed by round-faced, Celtic figures as shown.

CHINA: A red-haired body found in a remote desert in western China
provides an extraordinary link between China and the Celts of Europe.
Clifford Coonan reports from Urumqi in Xinjiang Province

He stands as solid as a warrior from the Táin Bó Cúailgne, his hair
a reddish brown flecked with grey, framing high cheekbones, a long
nose, full lips and a ginger beard.

When he lived 3,000 years ago he stood 6ft tall and was buried wearing
a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. He looks like a Bronze Age
European.

In fact, he's every inch a Celt. Even his DNA says so.

This though is no early Celt from Ireland. This is the mummified corpse
of Cherchen Man, unearthed from the scorched sands of the Taklamakan
Desert in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in far western China and now
housed in a new museum in the provincial capital of Urumqi.

In the language spoken by the local Uighur people in Xinjiang,
Taklamakan means "You come in and never come out."

The extraordinary thing is that Cherchen Man was found - with the
mummies of three women and a baby - in a burial site thousands of miles
to the east of where the Celts established their biggest settlements in
southern Europe, France and Ireland.

DNA testing confirms that he and hundreds of other mummies found in
The extraordinary thing is that Cherchen Man was found - with the
mummies of three women and a baby - in a burial site thousands of miles
to the east of where the Celts established their biggest settlements in
southern Europe, France and Ireland.

DNA testing confirms that he and hundreds of other mummies found in
Xinjiang's Tarim Basin are of European origin. We don't know how he got
there, what brought him there or how long he and his kind lived there.
And as the desert's name suggests, he never came out.

His discovery provides an unexpected connection between east and west
and some valuable clues to early European history.

One of the women who shared a tomb with Cherchen Man has light brown
hair which looks like it was brushed and braided for her funeral only
yesterday.

Her face is painted with curling designs and her striking red burial
gown has lost none of its lustre during the three millenniums that this
tall, fine-featured woman has been lying beneath the sand of the
Northern Silk Road.

The bodies are far better preserved than the Egyptian mummies and it is
sad to see the infants on display; to see how the baby was wrapped in a
beautiful brown cloth tied with red and blue cord, then a blue stone
placed on each eye. Beside it was a baby's milk bottle with a teat,
made from a sheep's udder.

Based on the mummy, the museum has reconstructed what Cherchen Man
would have looked like and how he lived. The similarities to the
traditional Bronze Age Celts are uncanny and analysis has shown that
the weave of the cloth is the same as that found on the bodies of salt
miners in Austria from 1300 BC.

The burial sites of Cherchen Man and his fellow people were marked with
stone structures that look like the dolmens you see in Ireland, ringed
by round-faced, Celtic figures, or standing stones.
Among their icons were figures reminiscent of the sheela-na-gigs, wild
females who flaunted their vulvas and can still be found in Kiltinan
and Moate Castle.

A female mummy wears a long, conical hat which has to be a witch or a
wizard's hat. Or a druid's, perhaps? The wooden combs they used to fan
their tresses are familiar to students of ancient Celtic art.

At their peak, about 300 BC, the influence of the Celts stretched from
Ireland in the west to the south of Spain and across to Italy's Po
valley, and probably extended to parts of Poland and Ukraine and the
central plain of Turkey in the east.

These mummies seem to suggest, however, that the Celts penetrated well
into Central Asia, nearly making it as far as Tibet.

The Celts came to Ireland about 500 BC and established themselves for
nearly 1,000 years. Historians reckon they probably arrived at
different times and are considered a group of peoples loosely connected
by similar language, religion and cultural _expression.

The Eastern Celts spoke a now-dead language called Tocharian which is
related to Celtic languages and part of the Indo-European group. They
seem to have been a peaceful lot as there are few weapons among the
find and there is little evidence of a caste system.

Even older than the Cherchen find is that of the 4,000-year-old Loulan
Beauty, who has long flowing fair hair and is one of a number of
mummies discovered at Qäwrighul near the town of Loulan. One of these
mummies was an eight-year-old child wrapped in a piece of patterned
wool cloth and closed with bone pegs.

The Loulan Beauty's features are Nordic. She was 45 when she died and
was buried with a basket of food for the next life, including
domesticated wheat, combs and a feather.

The Taklamakan Desert has given up hundreds of desiccated corpses in
the past 25 years and archaeologists say the discoveries are some of
the most significant finds in the past quarter century.

"From around 1800 BC, the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were
exclusively Caucausoid or Europoid," says Victor Mair, a Pennsylvania
University professor who is one of world's leading authorities on the
mummies and who has dedicated years to researching their story.

He has been captivated by the mummies since he spotted them partially
obscured in a back room in the old museum in 1988 and has gone to
extraordinary lengths, dodging difficult political issues, to further
knowledge about these remarkable people.

East Asian migrants arrived in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin
about 3,000 years ago, Mair says, while the Uighur peoples arrived
after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in
modern-day Mongolia, about AD 842.

A believer in the "interrelatedness of all human communities"
Mair resists attempts to impose a theory of a single people arriving in
Xinjiang and his belief is that the early Europeans headed in different
directions, some travelling west to become the Celts in Britain and
Ireland, others taking a northern route to become the Germanic tribes,
and then another offshoot heading east and ending up in Xinjiang.

This section of the ancient Silk Road is one of the world's most barren
precincts. You are further away from the sea here than at any other
place on Earth and you feel it. This is where China tests its nuclear
weapons. There are labour camps scattered around the desert - who would
try to escape?

Its remoteness, however, has worked to the archaeologists' advantage.
The ancient corpses avoided decay because the Tarim Basin is very dry,
with alkaline soils, and scientists have been able to glean valuable
information about many aspects of our Bronze Age forebears from the
mummies, from their physical make-up to information about how they
buried their dead, what tools they used and what clothes they wore.
In her book The Mummies of Urumchi, the renowned textile expert
Elizabeth Wayland Barber examines the tartan-style cloth and reckons it
can be traced back to Anatolia and the Caucasus.

Her theory is this group divided, starting in the Caucasus - one group
went west and another east.

Even though they have been dead for thousands of years, every perfectly
preserved fibre of the mummies' make-up has been relentlessly
politicised.

The received wisdom in China says that 200 years before the birth of
Christ, China's emperor Wu Di sent an ambassador to the west to
establish an alliance against the marauding Huns, then based in
Mongolia.

The route across Asia that the emissary, Zhang Qian, took eventually
became the Silk Road to Europe. Hundreds of years later Marco Polo came
and the opening up of China began.

The very thought that Caucasians were settled in a part of China
thousands of years before Wu Di's early contacts with the west and
Marco Polo's travels has enormous political ramifications. That these
Europeans should have been in restive Xinjiang hundreds of years before
East Asians, is explosive

Best preserved of all the corpses is Yingpan Man, known as the Handsome
Man, a 2,000- year-old Caucasian mummy discovered in 1995. He had a
gold foil death mask - a Greek tradition - covering his blond, bearded
face and wore elaborate golden embroidered red and maroon wool garments
with images of fighting Greek or Romans.

The hemp mask is painted with a soft smile and the thin moustache of a
dandy.

Currently on display at a museum in Tokyo, the handsome Yingpan man was
big, two metres tall (6ft 6in) and pushing 30 when he died. His head
rests on a pillow in the shape of a crowing cockerel.

[PainBrush]

Great stuff !! - Thanks for posting that . Do you have a link for anything online for Irish Times ? I did a quick search but haven't had any luck so far . Was there any photos accompanying that story ?