Historians suggest that inhabitants of the mountainous parts of Crimea lying to the central and southern parts (the Tats), and those of the Southern coast of Crimea (the Yalıboyu) were the direct descendants of the Pontic Greeks, Armenians, Scythians, Ostrogoths (Crimean Goths) and Kipchaks along with the Cumans while the latest inhabitants of the northern steppe represent the descendants of the Nogai Horde of the Black Sea nominally subjects of the Crimean Khan.[20][21] It is largely assumed that the Tatarization process that mostly took place in the 16th century brought a sense of cultural unity through the blending of the Greeks, Armenians, Italians and Ottoman Turks of the southern coast, Goths of the central mountains, and Turkic-speaking Kipchaks and Cumans of the steppe and forming of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group.[22] However, the Cuman language is considered the direct ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages like Crimean Gothic.[23][24][25][26]
Another theory suggests Crimean Tatars trace their origins to the waves of ancient people, Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Italians and Armenians.[27] When the Golden Horde invaded Crimea in the 1230s, they then mixed with populations which had settled in Eastern Europe, including Crimea since the seventh century: Tatars, but also Mongols and other Turkic groups (Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Kipchaks), as well as the ancient.[28]
The Mongol conquest of the Kipchaks led to a merged society with the Mongol ruling class over a Kipchak speaking population which came to be known as Tatar and which eventually absorbed other ethnicities on the Crimean peninsula like Armenians, Italians, Greeks, and Goths to form the modern day Crimean Tatar people- up to the Soviet deportation, the Crimean Tatars could still differentiate among themselves between Tatar Kipchak Nogays and the "Tat" descendants of Tatarized Goths and other Turkified peoples.[29]
Goths, Gypsies, and Greeks were assumed to be some of the ancestors of the Tatars on the coast of Crimea, while there were "mixed hill Tatars" and finally "Asiatic" steppe Tatars.[30] Italians and Greeks mixed with the coastal Crimean Tatars.[31]
Today, Crimean Tatars are often considered as the indigenous peoples of the Crimean peninsula.
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