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| Journey to the Past |
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| The Karantin Bay coast, where the city of Evpatoria is currently located carries the evidence of many cultures, which left their traces from as far as four to five thousand years back. |
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Here in Crimea, a lively international crossroads, the paths and fates of many tribes and peoples intertwined. In addition to the Taurian and the Cimmerian people, during ancient times the peninsula was inhabited in different periods by the Scythians and Sarmatians, ancient Greeks and Romans, Goths and Huns - and during the middle ages by southern Slavs, Armenians, Pechenegs, Polovets, Khazars, proto-Bulgarians, Venetians, Genoese, Tatars, Turks and Karaim Jews. And this is only small sample of what can be listed. The peninsula’s population has always been very diverse.
The original inhabitants of the peninsula were possibly the Taurian People (Tavrian), giving the peninsula its name: Tavrida. The Taurians inhabited Crimea’s southern part (Tavrika), from the ninth to the fourth centuries BC. They dealt in cattle breeding, hunting, fishing and knew weaving and bronze casting. The Taurian tribes lived in fortified settlements. They struggled against Hersonesses, the Bosporian state. From the first century AD, the mixed with neighboring peoples (Tauro-Scythians and others.).
Herotodus, the "Father of History" wrote about the Taurians inhabiting territory on the peninsula from the west to the Kerch peninsula. "The Taurians, wrote Herotodus, made offerings to the Virgin for shipwreck victims and all Helenes seized on the open sea...". Another interesting report on the Taurians by the historian Poliena (second century BC): "The Taurians, when launching a war always first dug roads at the rear, making them impenetrable, and then began the fighting; they did this so there would be no possibility to run – they must win or else die".
The Taurians disappeared in the first centuries AD as a result of dissolving into the conglomerate of peoples that appeared and disappeared over the peninsula.
Greek colonists came to Crimea more than 2,700 years ago. On the coast, they first built trading posts and later colony-city states (independent from the parent city-state). Greeks founded several of Crimea’s present cities. | |
