O-: cas111jd
responds:
O-: Cilicia was already a vassal state.
Wasn't trying to
sell a candidate, just offer options..we don't know. A rebelling vassal is
one of a long list of things that caused empire
compilers trouble.
O-: ..Assyria for aid. It seems unlikely that a
small state like Cilicia
O-: could manage to defeat the Assyrian grande
armee, even in
O-: ambush.
Document the request for aid? Sargon II was
active against Phrygians as well. We don't know the degree of defeat..just the
indicator that Sargon was killed. You can't keep putting super refugees
everywhere it is convenient to sell your point. The counter point remains: if
they were that tactically sound..they would not be refugees. :-) The
location of his demise was south and not often contested.
O-: I
believe the Cimmerians were mounted
O-: warriors, the remnants that had
survived and chosen to flee
O-: after an initial Scythian defeat on the
steppes.
They were very horsey..no contest.
O-: Why should we not
suspect that Cimmerian pastoralists lingered in central
O-: Anatolia, with
their mobile tool kits too scanty to recognize today? They didn't
O-: last
very long, so why should we claim that without archaeological
O-: evidence,
we must conclude that they did not exist?
Nobody is arguing they
didn't exist: I agree an element wound up in Central Anatolia, I just don't
agree that every event and reverse of History in all of wide Anatolia for a
century and a half was attributable to one group or one people that history then
looses.
O-: Their presence was ephemeral.
I agree; too much
so to accomplish what you suggest for the period covered.
O-: After the
Lydians defeated them, they probably surrendered
O-: without a fight to
the Medes and their leaders assimilated into the
O-: Pax Medea/
Persae.
You are combining too much territory, time, and events here to
even be realistic. Have you ever traveled from Lydia to Medea? By your
scenario it would have to be Crimea to Caucasus to Urartu..to Phrygia..Sardis,
Magnesia, Ephesus on into Lydia..back to
Phrygia then Media..and somehow south to kill Sargon II as well as settled in
Cappadochia; all over a century or so. (That’s not very
ephemeral.)
There are three arch schools (in the east) on the Cimmerians,
I will summarize with some bias obvious :-):
The
Terronozkin: To the North of
the Black Sea existed a single definable ethnic group with clear borders
presenting a unitary recognizable arch culture which ceased evolution and
abruptly ended with Scythian incursion to the Dniester; unconditionally
equated by groups of archaeological
finds with the populations mentioned by Herodotus. (Supported also by many others in print as late
as 1994)
The Jessen: (Older) ca. 1953, : The
cultures (with regional or site names
applied) were contemporary and semi-homogenous over a wider time period
and area without
break (extending further east, past the Volga.)
containing more than two identifiable
horse nomad subcultures intermingled and no one
extinguishing the other. This emerged from the following observation:
"Both the Scythians and the Cimmerians known from Assyrian
sources have been identified with the bearers of the archaic Scythian culture."
(quote by Dorin
Sarbu, Romanian Archaeological
Professional Association
)
The Leskov: ( a mediated
Jessen; adopted by the former Soviet Archaeological School) This yielded a
simplified lumping of elements based on horses and horse technology alone into a
single state like map entry called Scythia from prehistory forward to Scythian
dispersal, from west of the Danube mouth to
well beyond the Volga, IE there was no Cimmeria and Thrace was
tiny. (This image has apparently influenced your view, except you want to
make Cimmeria the map entity name extending far to the east; and
charge Scythians with late entry north of the Caucasus, rather than just to the
Dniester.)
Neither is totally accurate. The chronology of
change is in doubt, but no one to my knowledge has tried to pin down Scythian
incursion to the Dniester without a (ca.) in front of an entire
century..the eighth. By the seventh; archaeology shows the change. There
are common horse fitting elements across the breadth of the area
disputed (Danube mouth to Volga)
earlier than the eighth (a hot
technology traveled well)..as well as some odd regional differences and river
valley leapfrogging and other irregularities. There are also cultural
differences evident in burial technology, grave goods, weapons, and
pottery that tend to show a difference actually by river basin eastward
(Danube mouth, Dniester, Dnieper, Bug, Don and Volga) ..but support a N.
Pontic center of a culture that had no clear borders and extended influence omni
directionally. There are also uniquely
Cimmerian elements (one example: a
specific bone tipped arrow technology widely different from the
Scythian) and there was an intrusion (we will call it Scythian). Also
evident is that these so called Cimmerian cultural elements were not
extinguished with the Scythian incursion when new elements were introduced..but
continued amidst the new or faded slowly. The latter reinforcing the contention
that nomadic peoples moving from this center would have been under Scythian
domination, but came from Cimmeria and included some autochthonous
Cimmerians..and probably were quite logically called "Cimmerian" on more than
one occasion. The area we are talking about is shown below, dots/boxes representing arch sites/finds used in
defining Cimmeria and/ or the chronology of change (In short; I give you
Cimmeria):
My conclusion: Cimmerians impacting in the West of Anatolia were refugees
from Scythian hegemony westward to the Dniester, crossing into
Anatolia from Thrace. References to either Scythians or
Cimmerians, however, in the east of
Anatolia (By Assyrians or others)
after this point were not the same force(s) but force(s) under
Scythian leadership, perhaps multiple
instances of intrusion through the Caucasus from Cimmeria < after
> the Scythian intrusion to
the Dniester and domination of all
locals remaining in the N. Pontic area. (That Scythian westward
movement originating from a previously established more easterly Steppe
position than depicted by dots/boxes above)(Followed by intrusion into the
east of Anatolia precisely from the depicted area.)