The Crimean Mountains and the small stretch of territory between them and the Black Sea were home to the ancient Taurians or Tauri Scythae or Tauroscythae or Scythotauri, who were based on the southern shore of the Crimean peninsula in the first millennium BC. Beginning towards the end of the third century BCE, Taurians intermingled with the Scythians and in the writings of the ancient Greeks, they are referred to as Tauroscythians and Scythotaurians. The evidences state that the Taurians were the first people to live on the Crimean peninsula and they never left its confines. They gave the peninsula their name; it had previously been called Taurica, Taurida and Tauris. In the second century BCE, the Pontic Kingdom ruled over the Taurians. Taurians underwent Romanization in the first century AD as a consequence of the Roman control. The Taurians persisted until the fourth century AD before being absorbed by the Alans and Goths. Herodotus mentions the Tauri as surviving through looting and warring in his Histories. They gained notoriety for their worship of a Virgin Deity, to whom they offered sacrifices by waylaying Greeks and stranded travellers. He emphasised that although they are not Scythians, they physically reside in Scythia. Strabo described the Tauri as a Scythian tribe in Geographica. Greeks associated Artemis Tauropolos or Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, with the Tauric deity. The Greek myths of Iphigeneia and Orestes, which are described in Iphigeneia in Tauris, were inspired by the Tauric practise of human sacrifices. Even though Greek and the later Roman colonies finally took over the Crimean coast, particularly the one at Chersonesos, the Tauri remained a serious challenge to Greek sovereignty in the area. They mounted raids from their stronghold at Symbolon and engaged in piracy against Black Sea shipping. They were allied with the Scythian king Scilurus by the second century BC. The evolution and habitation of the Kizil-Koban Culture (KKC) around the eighth–fourth century BC was also significantly influenced by Taurians. [Information and Image Credit : Tauri, Wikipedia] [Image: Map of the Roman Empire under Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 38 AD, highlighting the location of the homeland of the Tauri, Chersonnesos Taurike (Crimean peninsula)] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Author : - User:Andrein
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