After the extinct dolmen builders "the land of Zyghes" had constantly been inhabited by one and the same set of tribes, judging by the descriptions of their way of life made by different authors between the 4th century B.C.
"Crafts and trades are almost absent in Circassia (the coast of Sochi). Their relations with Turkey concerned only poor barter trade up to now. Slaves had always been the principal base of these relations... All the Circassians' job was to find a way to get this kind of small change by fraying Russian and hostile tribes' territories, and also by piracy; this last way is the same as in Strabo's time nineteen centuries ago... I have noticed only one change: their galleys are of bigger size and usually accommodate more people; there can be up to 60-70 people on board. They use only oars on the galleys, and so they glide along the shore; the Mamay port (that is the stretch of the coast between Cape Utch-Dere and the River Sochi, the so-called Mamay's Bay), famous for its pirates in ancient times, is the central point for the Circassian corsairs till now" (Dubois de Montpereux, 1833).
After Procopius from Caesarea (the 6th century) had written the history of the Byzantine Empire basing on the reports of the military leaders to the emperor's court, some of the natives of the eastern coast of the Black Sea which was a part of the empire were called Sakhi (Sachi in Latin). On medieval maps there are Saneegi pointed in this place, but according to the opinion of the Swiss scientist Dubois de Montpereux, "Arrian and Pliny (whose works were used as the base for the maps) have some distortion of the text; one should read Sagueedy instead of Saneegi, as Procopius does, because it is an ancient Circassian tribe and is located now under the name Sachi in the place pointed by Arrian"
In the first half of the 19th century the Latin term "Sachi", pronounced in the English and in the French manners as "sachi" and "sashi" was used to name a community of the tribe of Ubychians. The river and the region were called Sache, Sashe and finally Sochi.
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