The author, based on Assyrian and Urartian inscriptions, Iranian texts, works of ancient authors, archaeological materials and other sources, comes to a number of fundamentally new conclusions about the role of Iranian tribes in the stories of Asia Minor in the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC. c., justifies the provision on the penetration of these tribes through the Caucasus from the South Russian steppes, the processes of formation of a number of modern Iranian peoples (Persians, Kurds, etc.). A significant place in the work is given to the "Aryan problem," which is still sharply debated in science.