Ellen Smith, age 16, of Jamestown, N.Y., for her question:

WHO WERE THE CIMMERIANS?

Cimmerians were nomads who invaded Asia minor as a large group in the 700s B.C. The Greek historian Herodotus says they were chased from Russia across the Caucasus Mountains and into Asia Minor by other nomads, called the Scythians.

The Cimmerians swept through Asia Minor, destroying the kingdom of Phrygia. They raided Lydia in the mid 600s B.C. and terrorized western and southern Asia Minor for about 150 years, until the Lydians scattered them. In the Bible, the Cimmerians are called Gomer.

Until the A.D. mid 1800s, scholars knew about the Cimmerians only through the writings of Herodotus and other ancient historians. Assyrian inscriptions discovered since then also mention the Cimmerians as invaders, but little else is known about them.

Phrygia was an ancient country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea in what is now central Turkey.