The Sarmatians were an Iranian people who roamed the steppes of southern Russia whose civilization flourished from around the third century B.C. until the Sarmatian tribes were wiped out or assimilated into the Hun horde which struck Europe in the sixth century A.D.

The most fascinating feature of Sarmatian culture is their women warriors. Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were said to be the offsprings of Scythians who had mated with Amazons and that their female descendants "have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient [Amazon] customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men" Moreover, said Herodotus, "No girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle."

Both Herodotus and Hippocrates accounts inform us the Sarmatians took interest in turning their women into strong-armed huntresses and fighters. Archaeological materials seem to confirm Sarmatian women's active role in military operation and social life. Burial of armed Sarmatian women comprise large percent of the military burial in the group occupy the central position and appear the be the richest. 
The Sarmatians were typical steppe nomads who personified their Gods in the form of sky, earth and fire. Burial sites indicate a very strong military tradition for both males and females, and there is much evidence to indicate that Sarmatian women were in fact the family heads rather than the other way around.

Hippocrates writes: "They [Sarmatian women] have no right breasts...for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm."

Sarmatians male and female became known as expert horse archers, and once they came into contact with Romans they became prized as mercenaries – but the Romans, who like the Greeks viewed women primarily as property, would hire only male Sarmatians to serve as horsemen for the legions.

The Sarmatians led a peaceful coexistence with their more warlike neighbors, the Scythians, for several centuries until the Alans, a powerful Sarmatian tribe, began a westward migration and eventually settled in the area just north of the Black Sea. At the beginning of the 1st century A.D., the Alans had occupied lands in the northeast Azov Sea area, along the Don. Based on the archaeological material they were one of the Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes began to enter the Sarmatian area between the middle of the 1st and the 2nd century A.D. The written sources suggest that from the second half of the 1st to 4th century A.D. the Alans had supremacy over the tribal union and created a powerful confederation of tribes. They continued to rule in the North Black Sea steppes until they were invaded by the Huns in the late 4th century A.D. 

Most of the Alans were absorbed by the Huns while a small number of them fled to the North Caucasus or went west and reached the shores of Gilbraltar. Other Sarmatians settled along the Vistula River in what is now Poland, and their descendants would later become the fabled Polish cavalry which dominated the region through the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.