thumb|350px|Countries described in Zhang Qian's report. Visited countries are highlighted in blue. Yancai ( A-sɑC < OC (125 BCE) *ʔɨam-sɑs, a.k.a. 闔蘇 Hésū < *ĥa̱p-sa̱ĥ; compare also Latin Abzoae) was the Chinese name of an ancient nomadic state centered near the Aral Sea during the Han dynasty period (206 BC—220 AD). They are generally considered to have been an Iranian people of the Sarmatian group. After becoming vassals of the Kangju in the 1st century BC, Yancai became known as Alan (). Yancai 奄蔡 is often connected to the Aorsi of Roman records, while 阿蘭 Alan has been connected to the late
thumb|350px|Countries described in Zhang Qian's report. Visited countries are highlighted in blue. Yancai ( A-sɑC < OC (125 BCE) *ʔɨam-sɑs, a.k.a. 闔蘇 Hésū < *ĥa̱p-sa̱ĥ; compare also Latin Abzoae) was the Chinese name of an ancient nomadic state centered near the Aral Sea during the Han dynasty period (206 BC—220 AD). They are generally considered to have been an Iranian people of the Sarmatian group. After becoming vassals of the Kangju in the 1st century BC, Yancai became known as Alan (). Yancai 奄蔡 is often connected to the Aorsi of Roman records, while 阿蘭 Alan has been connected to the later Alans.
==History== Yancai is first mentioned in Chapter 123 of the Shiji (whose author, Sima Qian, died c. 90 BC), based on the travels of 2nd century BC Chinese diplomat Zhang Qian:
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).