Before the Great States. Caucasians from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age

Abstract

This article is devoted to the history of the Caucasus and Caucasians in the 5th-2nd millennium BC. The first noticeable phenomenon in the history of the South Caucasus was the Kuro-Araqs culture, which united a number of Caucasian peoples living in the South Caucasus, Anatolia, Northwestern Iran, and northern Mesopotamia. The Kuro-Araqs culture was an ancestral culture in relation to the ProtoKolkh, Trialet, Karmirberd, Kizylvank, and Uzerlin-Sevan cultures. In the North Caucasus, the Maikop and Dolmen cultures were striking phenomena of the Bronze Age. In the era of the existence of these cultures, a substrate was formed on which the Abkhaz-Adyghe peoples would form. An important stage was the existence of the North Caucasian culture-historical community within which a number of local groups developed. If we talk about the Kobans, who were in close contact with the steppe tribes of the Srubniks and Kartvelian Colchis. The Western version of the Koban culture, as well as the Kuban center of metallurgy, served as the basis for the formation of the Proto-Abkhazian-Adyghe community. As for the helmets and hatts, they are distantly related to the Abkhaz-Adygs. The ProtoColchis and Trialetian culture served as the basis for the formation of the Kartvelian peoples. The Hatts corresponded to the Central Anatolian culture, but very little is known about the Hatts themselves. Much better known is the history of the Hurrians themselves. The Hurrians were attracted to the Near East from the Armenian Highlands by the Akkadian trade. As early as the end of the 3 millennium BC they penetrate into southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. The formation of the kingdom of Mitanni was due to the need to resist the expansion of the Hittites. Prior to that, the Hurrians were on the periphery of the interests of the Akkadian kings, the kings of Ur, and the Babylonian rulers of the Gutian and Kassite dynasties. Mitanni felt the infiltration of the Indo-Europeans into its composition but remained fundamentally a Hurrian state. Mitanni existed until the middle of the 13^th century BC. After the fall of Mitanni, there were small Hurrian states that took part in the Assyrian-Urartian wars. The campaigns of the Assyrian kings of the time of the Middle Assyrian kingdom played a decisive role in the decline of Mitanni.