Szlachta historians and chroniclers. These involve a presumed descent from the ancient Iranian tribe known as Sarmatians, who in the Second century AD occupied land that is today's Ukraine, or from Japheth, one of Noah's sons - by contrast, the peasantry were said to be the offspring of another son of Noah, Ham — and hence subject to bondage under the Curse of Ham—and the Jews as the offspring of Shem). Other fanciful theories included its foundation by Julius Caesar, Alexander the Greator regional leaders who had not mixed their bloodlines with those of 'slaves, prisoners or aliens'. Another theory describes
Japheth ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, leading scholars to suppose that the history is a late composition, attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction to that book and to the Torah. Japheth (in Hebrew, Yaphet) is a transliteration of the Greek Iapetos, the ancestor of the Hellenic peoples. His sons and grandsons associate him with the geographic area of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia - Ionia/Javan, Rhodes/Rodanim, Cyprus/Kittim, and other points in the region of Greece and Asia Minor - approximating to one of the three kingdoms into which the generals of Alexander the Great divided his empire