Caucasia has long been an arena for Eurasian cross cultural encounters. Some investigators have situated the Garden of Eden in the area, a notion seemingly reinforced by the Judeo-Christian tradition that the ark of Noah came to rest on Mount Ararat in present day Turkey. Historically, Caucasia was affected by five of the great periods of Eurasian integration: the period when the ancient Silk Road flourished, the period of the Hellenistic civilization of Alexander of Macedon, the period of Islamic expansion, the period of the Mongol empire, and the period of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.
Caucasia and the Persian Sphere
For much of its early history Caucasia was the northern limit of Persian (Iranian) civilization. The Scythians, Sarmatians, and other nomads of ancient northern Caucasia were Persianized. The sedentary Georgian and Armenian peoples, too, were members of the expansive Persian commonwealth. Scholars have exposed many links between Caucasian and Persian civilizations, including linguistic parallels, the sharing of Persian proper names, Zoroastrianism, long-distance trade, conceptions of kingship (including farnah, or divine radiance), and legendary and historical traditions— particularly the Persian epic tradition crystallized in the eleventh-century CE Shahnameh by the Persian poet Firdawsi.
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