Concerning early ethnogeny of the Adyghe people

The ethnogeny of the Adyghe people, one of the largest ethnos of the Northern Caucasus, is of great historiographical significance because there are many versions about the reference point of the history of Adyghe community. There are two main versions of the origin of the Adyghe (Circassians). The first one is autochthonous implying the kinship of the Adyghe and tribes of the most ancient archaeological cultures of the region - Maikop (3000 BC) and dolmen (3000-2000 BC). The main corroboration of this theory is almost full matching of the total area of both cultures with the territory of the modern Abkhazia and Circassia. The second theory is Huttian, which assumes that in the ethnogeny of the Adyghe took part the Huttian tribes of Kaskians, absorbed in 2000-1700 BC by the Hittites. Also, a number of scientists note the languages’ similarity of the peoples of the Western Asia and the modern Caucasus. However, such cultural and linguistic parallels can be explained by not an ethnic kinship, but as a result of long-standing relations (military, commercial, economic, and other). Also, there is a hypothesis about the participation in the Adyghe ethnogeny of the Maeotians who dwelled along the Azov-Black Sea coast (they are mentioned for the first time in the second half of the 1000 BC). However, Iran-like pronunciation of many ethnicons denoting various Maeotian tribes (“Maeotian" is a general term, as “Scythians" by Herodotus) suggests that not all the Maeotian tribes participated in the ethnogeny of the Adyghe. The role of Zigii in the formation of the Adyghe is quite recognizable due to the evidences showing the appearance of this tribe at the turn of our era on the Black Sea coast. It is known that later on the term “Zigii" was used as a general name for all the Adyghe.