The first of these nomadic migrations occurred in the late third millennium BCE, when Indo-Aryan speaking nomads, likely members of the Sintashta Culture, migrated from their homeland between the Ural and Volga Rivers into Transoxiana, then home to the agriculturalists of the Bactria-Margiane Archaeological Complex (also sometimes referred to as the Oxus Culture). These pastoralists brought the modern horse and light chariot that revolutionized warfare across Eurasia in the Late Bronze Age.
The Indo-Aryans, from ca. 1500 BCE, crossed the Hindu Kush into the Indus valley, known in cuneiform texts as Meluuha, and defined the cultural and religious foundations of Hindu India. Centuries later, their Iranian-speaking kinsman, Medes and Persians, followed the route of the later Silk Road across Iran to settle, respectively, in northwestern Iran around Ecbatana (today Hamadan), and in southwestern Iran, Persia (today Fars). Cyrus the Great (559–530 BCE) conquered a vast Persian Empire from the Aegean to the Hindu Kush. The Great Kings of Persia depended on Iranian horse archers, the invincible light cavalry of steppe nomads since the early Iron Age (ca. 1000–700 BCE). Cyrus’ heirs extended the empire from the Nile to the Indus, founding the greatest ancient empire prior to Rome. Iran has ever since been a premier political and cultural power in the Near East. The Iranians, conscious of their imperial heritage, still view themselves as the masters of the Near East.