Caucasian

The Caucasian peoples live between the Black Sea and the Caspian: Armenians and Georgians in the south, Circassians, Abkhaz, Chechens and Avars in the north. Three language families, Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian and Northeast Caucasian, are native here, with Indo-European Armenian. The passes drew in Persians, Arabs and Mongols.

Georgia reached its height under David IV and Queen Tamar in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, but Mongol overlordship, the Black Death and Timur's invasions broke it, and by 1466 it had dissolved into rival realms. In 1555 the Peace of Amasya divided the region between the Ottomans and Safavid Persia, and Russia annexed eastern Georgia in 1801.