Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

Gryphons, One-Eyed Men, and Hadrian's Prized Horse

Robert asked an important question about the tales of Gryphons and One-Eyed Men-- "Should we take them seriously?"

The answer is "yes" for the case of Aristeas and "no" for subsequent poetic waxing and Greek art. It's very much like tales of Amazons cutting off their right breast, or even the reality (or fiction) of Amazons altogether. Every Greek and Roman statue of an Amazon shows a pair of healthy breasts. We even have illustrations of Arimaspic Amazons fighting Gryphons:
   

Poetic and artistic products of Aristeas' journey to the End of the Earth excited the imagination of ancient listeners and viewers, so exotic it was. Today, almost every historian believes in the trek of Aristeas, simply because there's a kernel of truth behind the fiction. He actually went to the Altai, if we dissect his description... which we can only read through Herodotus.

Greek emporia were established in Olbia, Feodosia, Panticapaeum, on eastward, by the Milesians by the end of the 8th Century B.C.... already a well-beaten path 100 years before Aristeas was born. Along the journey, he speaks of "bald-headed men," perhaps real people if we consider archaeological findings of a bald-headed priestess in Ukok, plus illustrations of three more bald-headed people (one Altaic Saka, a second from the Ordos, the third in the Bosphorus). Then Aristeas reaches the Urals where he meets "people with flat noses."

   

Traveling through the Ural Forest-Steppe Zone, our poet encountered local Samoyeds/Sami, definitely a "flat-faced clan." The geographic location of the Samoyeds coincides exactly with the Northern Trade Route followed by Aristeas. Here's a map of the last portion of the route, from the Ural River to the Altai:

   

It's fairly hard to create a journey into Nowhere if you haven't been there. The original poem "Arimaspea" then brought Aristeas to the land of the Issedones. If any historian is grounded in geography, and he or she can also read prose succinctly (evidently with the exception of Sir Barry Cunliffe), the journey's conclusion ends in the Altai (not Bactria-Margiana) where Aristeas meets the Issedones, shown here on the World Map according to Herodotus.
   

We've made it! After traveling through strange lands, we reach the easternmost location visited by Aristeas. At this point, the Issedones tell him about the Arimaspi and gold-guarding Gryphons. Perhaps an Issedonian chieftain proudly shows him a protoceratops skull, proof positive that Gryphons exist.

Aristeas never met the Arimaspi, only hearing about them. We don't even know if the Issedones told him Arimaspi had a single eye. That fiction arrives through Herodotus as related to him by the Crimean Scythians. Essentially, we are looking at a language problem. As an example, the Scythians couldn't fully understand the speech of the Sauromatae, the closest tribe (or culture) to them. Herodotus notes, "they [the Sauromatae] did not speak Scythian properly."

As we move eastward from the Scythians, just imagine further language barriers when we reach the Bald-Headed Men (who spoke Uralic), or the next group the Argippaei (perhaps the Sargatskya), and finally the Issedones. Consequently, the Scythians erroneously believed Arima-spi meant "one-eyed," even getting the inflection wrong. Here's another map, this time showing the huge lingual distance between the Scythians and the more eastern tribes:
 
   
Even though each language extends from the same language group-- Indo-Iranian-- we have difficulties, much like an Italian trying to understand a French menu. The Scythians spoke Northern Iranian while the Saka/Alans spoke Northeastern Iranian. Luckily, we have documented linguistic examples of the base syllable "asp" of the word Arimaspi. First we have Rasparagus/Asparagus, the Rhoxalani king who became a Friend of Rome, and presented the magnificent gelding Borysthenes to Emperor Hadrian. Asparagus was a horse breeder and his personal name included "asp"-- Saka/Alan for "horse." In the time of Emperor Leo, we find the consul Aspar (the "horseman"), an Alan who reached patrician level.

From the Saka/Alan language itself, asp meant horse, not "one-eyed." We have a linguistic link from the Arimaspi to Asparagus the Rhoxalanus, and to Aspar the Alan. The designation "Arimaspi" was borne by the bearers, not coined by the Greeks (like "Massagetae" was). Possibly even "Yuezhi" was the Chinese version of "Aspi." Anyway, we should forgive Herodotus who received an incorrect translation from Western Scythians. Mistakes happen. And naturally, they often bring fiction to a higher level... as Greek audiences visualized a horde of one-eyed men galloping into a den of sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus.