The Crimean peninsula has never been empty. During wars, invasions, epidemics or great exoduses, its population did not disappear completely. Up to the Tatar invasion of the Crimean lands settled the Greeks, Romans, Armenians, Goths, Sarmatians, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Genoese. One wave of settlers replaced the other, in varying degrees passing on a multi-ethnic code, which eventually found expression in the genotype of modern «Crimeans».
From the 6th century B.C. to the 1st century A.D. the full-fledged masters of the south-eastern coast of the Crimean Peninsula were the Taurians. Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria noted: «The Taurians live by robbery and war». Even earlier the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described the custom of the Taurians, in which they «sacrificed to the Virgin shipwrecked sailors and all Hellenes, whom they would capture in the open sea». How not to remember that many centuries later, robbery and war would become constant companions of the «Crimeans» (as the Crimean Tatars were called in the Russian Empire), and pagan sacrifices, according to the spirit of the time, would turn into slave trade.
In the XIX century Crimean researcher Peter Keppen suggested that «in the veins of all the inhabitants of the territories rich in dolmen finds» flows the blood of the Taurians. His hypothesis was that «the Taurians, being heavily overpopulated by Tatars in the Middle Ages, remained to live in the old places, but already under a different name and passing gradually to the Tatar language, borrowing the Muslim faith. Keppen paid attention to the fact that the Tatars of the South Coast are of Greek type, while the mountain Tatars are close to the Indo-European type.
At the beginning of our era the Taurians were assimilated by the Iranian-speaking tribes of the Scythians, who subjugated almost the whole peninsula. The latter, although they soon disappeared from the historical scene, could well leave their genetic trace in the later Crimean ethnos. An unnamed author of the XVI century, who knew well the Crimean population of his time, reports: «Although we consider the Tatars as barbarians and poor people, but they are proud of the temperance of their life and the antiquity of their Scythian origin».
Modern scientists allow the idea that the Taurians and Scythians were not completely destroyed by the Huns who invaded the Crimean peninsula, but concentrated in the mountains and had a noticeable influence on the later settlers.
Of the subsequent inhabitants of the Crimea, a special place is given to the Goths, who in the III century, passing crushing rampart on the north-western Crimea remained there for many centuries. Russian scientist Stanislav Sestrenevich-Bogush noted that even at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries, the Goths living near Mangup still retained their genotype, and their Tatar language was similar to South German. The scientist added that «they are all Muslim and Tatarized.»
Linguists note a number of Gothic words that have entered the fund of the Crimean Tatar language. They also confidently claim a Gothic contribution, albeit relatively small, to the Crimean Tatar gene pool. «Gothia died out, but its inhabitants dissolved without a trace in the mass of the emerging Tatar nation,» noted Russian ethnographer Alexei Kharuzin.
Aliens from Asia
In 1233 the Golden Horde established their viceroyalty in Sudak liberated from the Seljuks. This year became the universally recognized starting point of the ethnic history of the Crimean Tatars. In the second half of the XIII century, the Tatars became masters of the Genoese trading point Solkhata-Solkata (now Old Crimea) and in a short time subjugated almost the entire peninsula. However, this did not prevent the Horde from breeding with the local, primarily Italian-Greek population, and even adopting their language and culture.
The question to what extent modern Crimean Tatars can be considered heirs of the Horde conquerors, and to what extent they are of autochthonous or other origin, is still relevant. Thus, the St. Petersburg historian Valery Vozgrin, as well as some representatives of the «Mejlis» (parliament of Crimean Tatars) try to assert the opinion about the predominant autochthonousness of Tatars in Crimea, but most scholars do not agree with this.
Back in the Middle Ages, travelers and diplomats considered the Tatars as «aliens from the depths of Asia». In particular, the Russian centurion Andrei Lyzlov wrote in his «Scythian History» (1692) that the Tatars, who «all the countries near the Don, and the Sea of Meotian (Sea of Azov), and Tavrika Kherson (Crimea) around the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea) possessed and settled» were the people who came.
During the rise of the national liberation movement in 1917, the Tatar press urged to rely on «the state wisdom of the Mongol-Tatars, which is a red thread running through their history», and to honorably hold «the emblem of the Tatars — the blue banner of Genghis» («kok-bairak» — the national flag of the Tatars living in Crimea).
Speaking in 1993 in Simferopol at the «kurultai», Dzhezar-Girey, a distinguished descendant of the Girey khans, who arrived from London, stated that «we are the sons of the Golden Horde», emphasizing in every possible way the continuity of the Tatars «from the Great Father, Mr. Genghis Khan, through his grandson Batu and eldest son Juche».
However, such statements do not quite fit into the ethnic picture of Crimea, observed before the annexation of the peninsula to the Russian Empire in 1782. At that time, two sub-ethnoses were quite clearly distinguished among the «Crimeans»: narrow-eyed Tatars — a pronounced Mongoloid type of steppe villagers and mountain Tatars — characterized by Caucasoid body structure and facial features: tall, often blond-haired and blue-eyed people who spoke a language other than the steppe language.
What ethnography says
Before the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, ethnographers pointed out that this people, albeit to varying degrees, bore the stamp of many genotypes that had ever lived on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. Scientists distinguished three main ethnographic groups.
«Stepniaks» («Nogai», «Nogais») — descendants of nomadic tribes that were part of the Golden Horde. As early as in the XVII century, the Nogai people traveled the steppes of the Northern Black Sea coast from Moldavia to the North Caucasus, but later, mostly forcibly, they were resettled by Crimean khans to the steppe regions of the peninsula. Western Kipchaks (Polovtsians) played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Nogai. The racial belonging of the Nogai is Caucasoid with a touch of Mongoloidism.
The «South Coast Tatars» («Yalyboylu») are mostly natives of Asia Minor, formed on the basis of several migration waves from Central Anatolia. The ethnogenesis of this group was largely provided by Greeks, Goths, Asia Minor Turks and Circassians; Italian (Genoese) blood was traced in the inhabitants of the eastern part of the South Coast. Although most of the Yaliboylu were Muslims, some of them retained elements of Christian rituals for a long time.
«Mountaineers» («Tats») — lived in the mountains and foothills of the middle belt of Crimea (between the steppe and the South Coast). The ethnogenesis of the Tats is complex, not fully studied. According to the assumption of scientists in the formation of this sub-ethnos participated in the majority of the nationalities that inhabited the Crimea.
All three Crimean Tatar sub-ethnoses differed in their culture, economy, dialects, anthropology, but, nevertheless, always felt themselves to be a part of a single people.
A word to geneticists
Recently, scientists have decided to clarify a difficult question: Where to look for the genetic roots of the Crimean Tatar people? The study of the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was conducted under the aegis of the largest international project «Genographic».
One of the tasks of geneticists was to find evidence of the existence of an «extraterritorial» population group, which could determine the common origin of the Crimean, Volga and Siberian Tatars. The Y-chromosome, which is convenient because it is transmitted only through one line — from father to son — and is not «mixed» with genetic variants that came from other ancestors, became a research tool.
The genetic portraits of the three groups were not similar to each other, in other words, the search for common ancestors for all Tatars was not successful.
Thus, the Volga Tatars are dominated by haplogroups common in Eastern Europe and the Urals, while the Siberian Tatars are characterized by «pan-Eurasian» haplogroups.
DNA analysis of the Crimean Tatars shows a high proportion of southern — «Mediterranean» haplogroups and only a small admixture (about 10%) of «anterior Asian» lines. This means that the gene pool of the Crimean Tatars was first of all replenished by natives of Asia Minor and the Balkans, and to a much lesser extent by nomads of the Eurasian steppe.
The uneven distribution of the main markers in the gene pools of different sub-ethnoses of the Crimean Tatars was revealed: the maximum contribution of the «eastern» component was observed in the northernmost steppe group, while the «southern» genetic component was dominant in the other two groups (mountainous and southern coastal). Interestingly, the scientists did not find similarities between the gene pool of the Crimean peoples and their geographical neighbors — Russians and Ukrainians.