Ancient Colchis and Intercultural Relations

Special interest of neighboring empires towards the countries or tribal alliances, existing in the Caucasus, was always determined by the geographical location of the region in question. At the beginning of the period of Greek colonization, an entity, consisting of several states with a rather high level of development, already existed in the southern part of the Caucasus. Among them, Colchis happened to be more advanced. The Colchian Kingdom existed in Colchis, i. e. the present-day Western Georgia and its adjacent territory washed by the Black Sea. In the Caucasian region the Kingdom of Colchis seems to be the most advanced state entity in the end of the 2 nd millennium-beginning of the 1 st millennium BC (Lordkipanidze, 1972). At the same time, however, it was the period, when two destructive powers appeared on the historical arena, causing disappearance of many eastern states, including the Kingdom of Colchis. These destructors were the Cimmerians and approximately half a century later – the Scythians. Ancient Greeks called the Cimmerians and the Scythians the peoples which occupied the territories adjacent the Caucasus from north, as well as southern plains of the present-day Russia. Under the name of the Cimmerians a heterogeneous ethnic entity is usually meant, including groups of people speaking the Iranian language as well. New groups of Iranian-speaking people began intensive influx from the east into the region under discussion, at the beginning of the 1 st millennium BC.