*1) Kennemerland is a region in the Dutch province of North Holland that is bordered by West Friesland in the north, Waterland and Amstelland in the east, the Bollenstreek in the south and the North Sea in the west.
Nowadays, they are two cooperative regions (of 18 municipalities), namely Noord-Kennemerland and Zuid-Kennemerland. More than 600,000 inhabitants live in Kennemerland (City Region Haarlem).
*2) The Cimmerians are known from several Assyrian texts, which call them Ga-mir or Gi-mir-a-a. In the Assyrian language, the last name means something like “people traveling back and forth” and seems to be the less adequate of the two renderings of the Cimmerians’ Indo-European name, but it describes their way of life excellently, because they were nomads. The Cimmerians were closely related and are archaeologically almost identical to the Scythians, who may have expelled them from their home country.
Originally, the Cimmerians may have lived in southern Ukraine, where the Crimea is, according to some scholars, still called after the Cimmerians. Archaeologists have identified them with the Novocerkassk culture on the grass plains between the river Prut and the Lower Don (c.900-c.650 BCE). Cimmerian men were buried with bows, sword, and spear. Everything suggests that they fought as mounted archers. Their most precious possessions were their cows, and we must imagine them as roaming across the plains with their cattle.
In the eighth century, many Cimmerians moved to the southeast, to the region north of the Caucasus. Here, they threatened the kingdom of Urartu (an old name for Armenia). The Urartian king Rusa decided upon a preventive attack, but was defeated (c.720). Almost immediately, the Cimmerians invaded Urartu and looted the country as far south as Lake Urmia. (source: http://www.livius.org/articles/people/cimmerians/)
