Most scientists believe that these were ancient Aryans, Indo-Aryans, that is, peoples of the Indo-European group of languages. The discovery of monuments of this type has sparked a debate about what these structures were. Some researchers believe that these are caravanserais – fortresses where caravans with copper ore from the rich Tash-Kazgan deposit were sheltered overnight. The arguments given in this regard are that they are located in two chains stretching from north to south at a distance of about 50 km from each other, that is, one day’s march. Others claim that these are religious centers in which several hundred people lived permanently: priests, artisans and guards, while the rest came here for religious festivities from the rural area. Still others call them cult temples of the ancient Aryans, similar to those described in the ancient Indian epic «Avesta». According to one hypothesis, the ancient Aryans made a gigantic migration from the South Ural steppes through Southern Ukraine, the Balkan Peninsula to Mycenae, and then to Iran and India. It is possible that they brought to Mycenae and Asia Minor the culture of horse breeding, previously unknown there, the art of making and using war chariots.
In the first millennium BC and the first centuries of our era, the tribes of Sarmatians and Scythians lived in the vast expanses of the Great Steppe. According to scientists, they were the descendants of the tribes of the Andronovo and Srubnaya cultures. The steppes of the Southern Urals, where the border of the spread of these cultures passed, contacts between them were a zone of active ethnic processes, as a result of which the Sarmatian world was formed. The terms «Sarmatians» and the earlier «Sauromatians» are collective, they denote a large group of related tribes of early nomads. In the descriptions of ancient authors, we find the names of some of these tribes: Aorsi, Alans, Roxolani, Siraki, Yazamats, Yaksamats and others. Almost the only monuments of the thousand-year stay of the Sarmatians are numerous burial mounds, sometimes reaching 5—7 meters in height. Sauromat and Sarmatian burial mounds are most often located in groups on high places, hilltops, syrts, from where a wide panorama of the vast steppes opens up.