Editing Sarmatians (section)

=== Decline ===
{{See also|Alans|Ossetians}}
The hegemony of the Sarmatians in the steppes began to decline over the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, when the [[Huns]] conquered Sarmatian territory in the Caspian Steppe and the Ural region. The supremacy of the Sarmatians was finally destroyed when the [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] [[Goths]] migrating from the [[Baltic Sea]] region conquered the Pontic Steppe around 200 CE. In 375 CE, the Huns conquered most of the Alans living to the east of the Don river, massacred a significant number of them, and absorbed them into their tribal polity, while the Alans to the west of the Don remained free from Hunnish domination. As part of the Hunnic state, the Alans participated in the Huns' defeat and conquest of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths on the Pontic Steppe. Some free Alans fled into the mountains of the Caucasus, where they participated in the ethnogenesis of populations including the [[Ossetians]] and the [[Kabardians]], and other Alan groupings survived in Crimea. Others migrated into Central and then Western Europe, from where some of them went to [[Great Britain|Britannia]] and [[Hispania]], and some joined the Germanic [[Vandals]] into crossing the [[Strait of Gibraltar]] and creating the [[Vandal Kingdom]] in North Africa.{{sfn|Olbrycht|2000}}{{sfn|Melyukova|1990}}

The Sarmatians in the [[Bosporan Kingdom]] assimilated into the Greek civilization.<ref>{{cite book |quote= (...) "the Iranic Sarmatians, whose ability to assimilate into preceding Greek civilization created a brilliant new synthesis" |last1=Davies |first1=Norman |title=Europe: A History |date=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-820171-7 |page=105 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jrVW9W9eiYMC&pg=PA105 |language=en}}</ref> Others assimilated with the proto-[[Circassians|Circassian]] Meot people, and may have influenced the [[Circassian language]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Richmond |first1=Walter |title=The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, Future |date=11 June 2008 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-00249-8 |page=12 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E6Z5AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12 |language=en}} ""While the Sarmatians dominated the Meot lands, they were themselves assimilated and the language of the Meots, the predecessor of the modern Circassian dialects, survived."</ref> Some Sarmatians were absorbed by the [[Alans]] and [[Goths]].<ref>{{cite book |quote= "On the shores of the Black Sea the Alans absorbed two Sarmatian peoples, the Siraci and Aorsi ... Also, the Goths undoubtedly absorbed both Sarmatian and Slavic groups during their two centuries of rule over the steppe land"|last1=Eterovich |first1=Francis H. |last2=Spalatin |first2=Christopher |title=Croatia: Land, People, Culture Volume I |date=15 December 1964 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4875-9676-7 |page=112 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XO8_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT112 |language=en}}</ref> During the Early Middle Ages, the [[Proto-Slavs|Proto-Slavic]] population of [[Eastern Europe]] assimilated and absorbed Sarmatians during the political upheavals of that era.<ref>{{cite book |quote= "But the Slavic tribes survived the collapse of these empires, and gradually the remnants of the Avars, Sarmatians, and others were absorbed into the Slavic culture." |last1=Chodorow |first1=Stanley |title=The Mainstream of Civilization |date=1989 |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |isbn=978-0-15-551579-6 |page=368 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NP64BLqDQNIC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |quote=(..) For example, the ancient Scythians, Sarmatians (amongst others), and many other attested but now extinct peoples were assimilated in the course of history by Proto-Slavs.|title= Slovene Studies | publisher= Society for Slovene Studies | volume = 9-11 | date = 1987 |page= 36 }}</ref> However, a people related to the Sarmatians, known as the [[Alans]], survived in the [[North Caucasus]] into the Early [[Middle Ages]], ultimately giving rise to the modern [[Ossetians|Ossetic]] ethnic group.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Minahan |first1=James |chapter=Ossetians |title=One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NwvoM-ZFoAgC |series=Praeger security international |location=Westport, Connecticut |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |date=2000 |page=518 |isbn=9780313309847 |access-date=27 March 2020 |quote=The Ossetians, calling themselves Iristi and their homeland Iryston, are the most northerly of the Iranian peoples.&nbsp;[...] They are descended from a division of Sarmatians, the Alans, who were pushed out of the Terek River lowlands and into the Caucasus foothills by invading Huns in the fourth century A.D.
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