34 CHAPTER 1
Not surprisingly, B. Litvinskii perceives Kangju as the spreader of Sarmatian
influence over the Ferghana region.68 It could be argued that Dzhetyasar
stock-breeders migrated not only towards the Ural, but also towards the sum-
mer pastures in the area around the Irtysh River. One example of this is the
mutual use of pastures by the Kimeks and the Oghuz during the ninth and
tenth centuries.69
The conservativeness of the Dzhetyasar culture allows for the different
influences it experienced to be perceived not only as the result of a cultural
interaction, but also as an organic integration of foreign ethnic groups among
the Dzhetyasarians. On the other hand, areas that have fallen under the
Dzhetyasar influence are easier to distinguish, which usually also reveals infor-
mation about the migrations of this population. Several waves of migrations
occurred on the Dzhetyasar territory, all carried out by populations of different
origins and at different times. Thus, in the second century BC, Sakas settled
along the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, having come from Zhetysu, after
being ousted by the Wusuns. Around this time the Ugrian population under-
took several migrations from the forest-steppe areas of the Irtysh, Tobol and
the Ishim Rivers, including the Gorokhovo culture (fourth century BC–first-
second century AD) and the Sargat culture (fourth century BC–second-third
century AD), along with Ugrians from the Ural River region. Certain elements
in the pottery suggest the presence of a population from South Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan, related ethnically to the Yuezhi (Tocharians) and the Huns.
Until the second century AD, a population that came from the region of the
Middle Syr Darya (the Otrar-Karatau culture) also continued to settle there. A
mass migration of Huns to the Dzhetyasar region may be presumed only after
the first century AD. Their continuous presence there is also seen as plausible
from the second to the fourth century AD, which could explain the relations
between the Huns and the Iranians, Yuezhi and the Ugrians. During the fourth
century, a growth can even be presumed in the influence of tribes, connected
to the Huns. The continuous presence of foreign cultural elements, intro-
duced to the Dzhetyasar culture, shows the strength of the bonds between the
ancient times a kinship and cultural proximity occurred between the aboriginals from the
region along the Lower Volga Region and the population of the Pre-Caucasus steppes and
the people from the South Trans-Ural Region and Western Kazakhstan”.
68 Litvinskii 1976, 55.
69 Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 120.