2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69 



the overflow from the adjoining countries of Europe. The southern 

 grassy plains became then a broad and important avenue for a long 

 series of movements of populations, directed principally from east to 

 west, and the territory was gradually covered with remnants of 

 these populations. This much is known, though the details of these 

 earlier ethnic movements in Russia are lost in the haze of antiquity, 

 or preserved merely in historical fragments. 



The first tribes occupying part of the territory which is now 

 Russia, with whose specific name we meet in ancient chronicles, are 

 the Cimmerians, the people whose name is perpetuated in that oi 

 Crimea ; and the Tauri, from whose name was derived that of 

 " Taurica," the other old name for the Crimean peninsula. Our 

 actual knowledge of these peoples is, however, very limited. Neither 

 reached great importance. The Cimmerians, who probably antedated 

 the Tauri, occupied a part of Crimea and the territory north and 

 northeastward, extending to and about the Palus Maeotis (Sea of 

 Azov) ; they eventually came into contact with the Thracians and 

 possibly other European groups ; but their affinities seem to have 

 been with the Caucasus and the Asiatic countries to the southward, 

 rather than with Europe. They are said to have eventually dis- 

 appeared into the regions south of Caucasus, being replaced, pos- 

 sibly before 1000 B. C, by the Scythians. The Tauri, probably 

 of the Turanian stock and reputedly very barbarous, occupied the 

 peninsula up to the time of the Greek colonization, after which their 

 name gradually disappears. 



This brings us to the more strictly protohistoric times of the 

 region under consideration, the period of the Greek voyages and 

 colonization along the shores of the Euxine (Black Sea). At this 

 time the whole vast territory had already been subdivided among 

 various tribes. 



These protohistoric populations first became better known as a 

 result of the famous march into their country of Darius Hystaspes — 

 the first Napoleon — about 512 B. C, and more especially through 

 the writings of Herodotus, about 450 B. C. Of those populations 

 that were mainly of Asiatic origin, by far the most prominent were 

 the " Scythians," whose territory embraced practically the whole 

 present southern Russia below about 50 of latitude. Peoples of 

 related origin covered the country from the Urals to Finland and 

 from the Volga to Esthonia. They were subdivided into numerous 

 tribes and differed somewhat in blood, but all belonged to the 

 Turkish, Tartaric, Finno-Ugrian, and Laplandic subdivisions of the 



