Many people think the Scythians were the only peoples of the Windswept Plains. More knowledgeable people know of the Sarmatians, the Roxolani, and the Huns who also lived upon the Ocean of Grass. Students of history and genealogy know of the Alans and the Iazyges, of the Aorsi and the Siraces. It is of the Alans we shall now discuss, those stout, blonde, and tanned warriors of the Ocean of Grass. The true scholars among us know that the Alans are descendants of the Sarmatae, who themselves descend from the ancient Scythians as well as the Amazons of fables and myths.

How can this be, one may ask. Yet the legends agree- three boatloads of Amazon prisoners were to be sold in the slave markets, yet the women overcame the crew and freed themselves. Alas, they were poor sailors, those Amazon warrioresses, and found themselves blown to the Scythian shore. There they agreed to take Scythian husbands, if the Scythian males vowed their new wives would not be forced to follow Scythian custom but their own, and that they move away from the local tribes. The men agreed, and their descendants soon founded the tribe of the Sauromatae beyond the Tanais River.

The Sauromatae became the Sarmatians, and moved into the collapsing Scythian kingdom to finish it off and absorb their people. They too became too large for a single tribe and subdivided as was the custom, becoming the Iazyges, the Aorsi, the Siraces, and the Alans. Thus were the Alans descendants of both the Amazons, the Scythians, and the Sarmatians.

The Alans remained upon the ruins of the Scythians until the coming of the Huns. The Hunnic hammer shattered the Alans, driving some bands west, others south, and smashing some into fine dust that coated the hooves of the horses. And others submitted to the Huns, to serve as the foot soldiers the Huns lacked. Those that fled east or submitted were lost to history, along with those crushed. Those that went west remain known to scholars.

One band, under Goar, crossed the Rhenus to join the Romans in 406 and were settled in Gaul. Another band, under Respendial, came to the aid of the Vandals in their battle against the Franks. Respendial became an ally to the Vandals that day, and traveled with his Vandals through Gaul to Spain, where the Vandals and Alans shared a kingdom. The Alanic king Attaces died in battle with no heir, so the Alans appealed to the Vandal King Gundoric to accept the Alan crown as well. He did, and the two kingdoms merged. This kingdom migrated to North Africa in 429, and the Alans migrated with it. It was finally destroyed by Belisarius in the mid 500’s

Goar and his Alans served the Romans loyally, and were present at the Catalaunian Plains under Aetius. For this they were granted homes and land in Armorica, Orleans, Valentia, and Brittany. Alas, these Alans were too few, and were absorbed into the local population, though some customs remained. Other Alan tribesmen tied themselves to the Suevi and ended up in Spain. And some returned to the high mountains of the Caucasus, where they would plague the Armenians, the emergent Georgians, and remnants of the Huns until the Mongols came and forced all to submit to them. They remain there to this day, those old Alans, though time has changed their name from Alan to Iron, and from iron to Osi. Today we know them as the people of North and South Ossetia.