The whole culture of the Scythians revolved around their dependence on the horse: it was used for herding and prospecting fresh grazing grounds, and it was the warrior's chief ally. When a man died his horse was buried with him, not slaughtered like an ox but killed honorably either by strangulation or a single blow to the forehead. Horses have been found buried with the dead in kurgans from the Ukraine across the Caucasus to the Altai Mountains, sometimes in great number and often in full regalia. Even the most humble Scythian seems to have been buried with a horse, or at least its head or horse figurines.

The most elaborate Scythian kurgans contained many horses. In excavations of the kurgans of Pazyryk in Southern Siberia, and more recently of Kazakhstan's Bukhtarma Valley, horses have been found buried and frozen along with the “ice mummy” inhabitants - and in many cases almost perfectly preserved complete with their skin, hair, harnesses, saddles and even stomach contents intact as a result of the permanent ice that formed under the stone cairns. This means it has been possible to identify two distinct types of horses that the Scythians used.

The most perfectly preserved horse found at Pazyryk is a 12-15 year old thoroughbred-type dun mare of about 13 hands high, which would be about average height for Scythian horses. She was saddled with highly ornamented bone, wood, leather and felt tack, including a "stag mask" with large stylized antlers, and her tail was tied together into a single long strap. She appears to have had long-term arthritis in her near hind leg, which maybe suggests she had been a favorite, cared for despite her lameness until she could be buried with her owner.

Horse trappings from Pazyryk Kurgan 1, 5th-4th century BC

All the Scythian horses found in the permafrost graves have been dun, chestnut, brown, bay or jet black. So far there have been no greys, roans or skewbalds found. None had white patches, which are common on bay/brown horses in the present day - as light-colored hooves are more easily injured perhaps light-colored horses and those with white markings were avoided (apparently, it’s not until after the invention of the horseshoe that we start to see white patches or ‘socks’ appearing commonly on horses’ legs ….)