The Maeotian Culture

[Fried]

THE MAEOTIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CULTURE, an archeological culture of the Iron Age culture in the basin of the river Kuban (except for the upper reaches), foothills of the North-West Caucasus, on the Taman Peninsula and in the basin of the Lower Don (IX-VIII centuries BC - III-IV centuries AD). Separated in the 1930s by M. N. Pokrovsky and N. V. Anfimov. It was formed on the basis of the site of the monuments of the final Bronze Age. The majority of M.'s supervision and. k. correlates with the Meotians; connected for 4 periods. (an excerpt from the Great Russian Encyclopedia, my translation)


A bronze Maeotian sword.

Maeotian_Sword_Bronze.jpg


A detail of a necklace with a sculpted bull's head, the Karagodeuashkh burial mound, the Meotian culture.

Karagodeuashkh.jpg

[lei.talk]

Wikipedia The Maeotians were an ancient people dwelling along the Sea of Azov,
which was known in antiquity as the "Maeotian marshes" or "Lake Maeotis".
They are often considered to be the ancestors of the Circassians.

[Fried]

I think the Maeotians and especially the Sinds who lived in the Maeotian region were Thracians by origin because there was a tribe of the Sints among the Thracian tribes in the Balkans and these two names sound almost identically, besides these two tribes were relatively contemporary to each other and both lived near the Black sea -the Maeotian Sinds to the east and the Thracian Sints to the west.
The Hindu version of the Maeotian Sinds' origin IMHO is too exotic to be true.
And the main ancestors of the Circassians, as I think, were the Heniochi and Kerketian tribes who are indigenous in the West Caucasus, not the Sinds or Maeotians insofar as I consider them of the Thracian origin.