The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 29
towards the new wave of migrations that engulfed various parts of Asia and
brought several different tribal communities to Asian Sarmatia. Part of this
issue is the problem of the interaction between the newcomer population and
the bearers of the Middle Sarmatian culture, often linked to the Alans, who
were also migrants from Asia. Considered from this angle, the Sarmatian influ-
ence on the Bulgar culture does not support the theory of the local (European)
influence on the Bulgarian ethnogenesis, since the Sarmatian culture is a prod-
uct of constantly incoming from different parts of Asia tribes which were dif-
ferent in origin. In the period between the second century BC and the second
century AD alone, three significant changes occurred in the ethnic composi-
tion of the East European steppe population.48
There are several theories on the origin of the Alans, including a Scythian,
Aorsian, Massagetian, Altaian, Yuezhi-Tocharian and a Wusun one. It is assumed
that the Alans came to the steppes of Eastern Europe in the first century AD,
thus a direct connection is sought with the spread of the Middle Sarmatian
culture, the emergence of which can be dated roughly to the beginning of the
first millennium AD. At that point new elements emerged in the culture of the
Volga-Don steppe population that had parallels in a vast area, stretching from
Middle Asia to China in the east.49 Precisely during the first century AD, tam-
gas appeared in Eastern Europe, identical to the ones that were spread earlier
in Mongolia (third to first century BC) and later on in Middle Asia (second and
first century BC). According to A. Skripkin, “a whole cultural layer” shifted from
the east to the west under the pressure of the Huns. The Alans can be perceived
as the bearers of this new cultural wave in the Eastern European steppes.50
According to B. Vainberg, the spread of the so-called Tsagaan Gol tamgas
indicates the advance of an Iranian group of nomadic tribes from Mongolia
through Kazakhstan and Middle Asia toward Eastern Europe at the end of the
first millennium BC. Parts of them settled down in the oases of Middle Asia
and gave Khwarezm, Bukhara and Samarkand their ruling dynasties.51
48 Skripkin 2001.
49 Skripkin 2001, 1982, 50–51, and 2005; Sergatskov 2005.
50 Skripkin 1996, 163–165; see also Khazanov 1971, 84. The presence and influx of people
from Central and Middle Asia among the European Sarmatians is marked by the cultural
monuments for the period between the fourth and the second centuries BC. (Fedorov and
Fedorov 1978, 25–26).
51 Vainberg and Novgorodova 1976, 71–72; see also Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 56;
Poluboiarinova 1980. According to Vainberg 1990, 277, these tamgas “convincingly demon-
strate the Sarmatian (in the broad sense of the term) origin of the dynasties of Khwarezm,
Bukhara and Samarkand”. See also Georgiev 1997.