Chersonese

Prehistoric Crimea was occupied by the Celtic Cimmerians from perhaps the 15th centuries BCE to the 7th century BCE, when the Sythians expelled them. A few found refuge in the mountains and southern coast. They were later known as the Tauri. This is the source of the name Taurica for the peninsula. The Scythian arrival was the first of many to the Crimea and other lands north of the Black Sea. Most of the waves of migrants came by land from the steppe lands to the east. But some have come by sea to settle on the coasts.

In the same century as the Sythian conquest, Greek city states established colonies in Crimea:

    - Heraclea at Chersonese in the SW on the Heraclian Peninsula, (western Sevastopol),

    - Ionians from Miletus at Theodosia and Panticapaeum (aka Bosporus or Kerch, at the eastern tip of Crimea),

Greek city states also planted colonies elsewhere on the coast of Crimea, at Feodosiya on the SE coast, and Kyrkynytyda at Yevpatoria on the west coast, and elsewhere on the north shore of the Black Sea.

In 438 BCE the archon (ruler) of Panticapaeum assumed the title of king of Bosporus. This kingdom was linked to Athens, to which it shipped wheat and other commodities. In 114 BCE the Bosphoran king - threatened by the Scythians - put himself under the protection of the king of Pontus. In 63 BCE, after the king of Pontus had died, the Roman general Pompey interfered in the arrangement and assigned the kingdom to the Bosphoran king's son as a reward the for his assistance to Rome. In 15 BCE Rome returned it to the king of Pontus, but as a Roman tributary state.

By the 1st century CE most the Greek colonies fell under the control of Rome. Several centuries later the Goths arrived from the north and conquered the Sythian kingdom (in 250 CE).

Disaster struck with the arrival of the Huns in 376 CE. They destroyed the settled population of the Crimea and devastated the neighboring lands north of the Black Sea. The Huns were followed by the Alans in the 5th-6th centuries. They destroyed the Greek city of Feodosiya on the SE coast.