Welcome to Scythia - a vast geographical region that encompassed both the Pontic-Caspian grasslands and forest steppes (modern Ukraine, Crimea, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and southern Russia) and the northern Caucasus area, and at times stretched even as far north as Southern Siberia and east to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia.

The people of this land were mounted nomads, feared and restless warriors who posed a perpetual threat to contemporary settled neighbors by whom they were regarded as bloodthirsty barbarians. Yet they were also consummate gold-workers who created a vigorous and realistic style of art with naturalistic motifs based on animals to adorn both themselves and their horses.

History

According to Herodotus (Hist. 4.6), the Scythians called themselves Skolotoi. To the Greeks they were the Skythes, to the Assyrians Askuzai or Iskuzai, to the Persians the Saka, and to the Chinese they were the Sai. They left no written accounts of themselves, so most of what we know about their society and customs comes from the writings of the civilizations they threatened, particularly Classical Greek authors. Excavations of kurgan tombs have revealed not only weapons and magnificent Scythian-style goldwork, but also the burial of wagons, sacrificed horses, and in some places almost intact and elaborately tattooed bodies 'mummified' by permafrost.

The origins of the Scythians are obscure, but many scholars believe they arrived in several waves from the Volga-Ural steppes into the north Black Sea area, where they assimilated the local Cimmerians, between the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE and the end of the 7th century BCE. This is the point at which they first enter the historical record, as Assyria's allies against the Cimmerians. They participated in the conquest of Urartu and the Medes as allies of Assyria, and by 625 BCE they had overrun much of Northern Syria, Phoenicia, and Damascus. They were only turned back at the border of Egypt after the Pharaoh bought them off. In 612 BCE they allied themselves with the Medes in the siege of Assyria's capital Nineveh, but shortly afterwards the Medes drove them out of western Asia back to the Pontic Steppes. When the Persian king Darius tried to subdue the Scythians as a prelude to his planned invasion of Greece in 514 CE, he found himself defied and frustrated by the nomads, who having no cities or plunder to defend, simply let his army march across the entire country without an engagement and then harassed its retreat.

For four centuries, the Scythians effectively ruled the Eurasian steppes, but then abruptly vanished. Why this flourishing culture collapsed is still unclear. Some experts suspect that prolonged drought or overgrazing of the grasslands weakened their power, others believe they had become increasingly sedentary and abandoned their nomadic way of life. Waves of neighboring Sarmatians moved in from the east and by the 2nd century BCE had gradually driven the Scythians back to the coastal areas and the Crimea, where a late Scythian culture continued based around the city of Neapolis Scythica until it was vanquished by Mithradates the Great, King of Pontus in 106 BCE. Thereafter the Scythians vanished, and successive waves of Mongols and Huns replaced them as masters of the steppes.

Society

The Scythians were among the earliest, if not the first of the Central Asian people to learn to ride horses, and they were formidable horsemen in battle. It was their mastery of the technique of riding that gave them much of their success in war as well as the nomadic lifestyle they developed.

The tribal customs of the Scythians were regarded as bloody and bizarre by the Classical authors, who depict them as a turbulent and exuberant people. Though their favored drink was kumiss (fermented mare's milk), the Greeks were scandalized by the Scythians partiality to unwatered wine - sometimes drunk from leather-bound cups made from their enemies' skulls. Thanks to a description by Herodotus and the discovery of burnt hemp seeds in burial offerings, we know they used hemp as a narcotic. The discovery of frozen human bodies and horses recovered in 1947 from Pazyryk kurgans reveals the Scythians liked to cover themselves with elaborate tattoos and their horses with opulent trappings. They built no temples or altars and made no religious images, but probably practiced Shamanism as many of the northern nomadic tribes did, and the death of every Scythian tribesman was followed by extraordinarily effusive and prolonged grieving, purification and sacrificial rites.

References

Rolle, Renate, The world of the Scythians, London and New York (1989).
Trippett, Frank, The First Horsemen,1974
Herodotus, Histories, Book IV - translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, 1954

*Last updated on October 9,2006 by Samdzimari Scyles