The Scythians were not one people but a group of nomadic tribes who lived on the plains of central Asia. By 650 BCE they had moved to the territory that came to be known as Scythia, land lying between the Danube River in the west and the Don River in the east. The northern border of Scythia ran along the boundary between the grass steppes (plains) of the Ukraine and the thick forests of northern Russia. The southern boundary was the curving northern rim of the Black Sea.
The Scythians spoke an Indo-Iranian language but had no system of writing. Knowledge of them comes from Assyrian royal inscriptions and Persian records, in which they are named the Saka; from Greek writers, who named them Skythai; and from recent archaeological work in the region of their homeland.
Herodotus described the different tribes that lived in Scythia. The Alizones and Neuri, for example, were farming people who grew crops such as grain and millet. Greeks from the shores of the Black Sea traded and even intermarried with these settled tribes. Farther east the Scythian tribes were more warlike and probably enslaved the native populations to grow their food. The most powerful group were the proud and aristocratic Royal Scythians, who lived in the southern Crimea.
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SCYTHIAN HORSEMANSHIP |
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The Scythians were among the first peoples to ride horses in battle. Scythians rode without stirrups; their legs gripped the animal low on its belly. They trained their horses to kneel so that men could remount quickly. Scythian archers cut their horses’ manes short so the manes would not get tangled in their bowstrings. They left only a few long tufts around the shoulder bones, which the riders used as grips to direct the horse. The Scythian habit of eating and sleeping on horseback may have led to the Greek legend of the half-horse, half-human Centaur. The Scythians favored chestnut-colored horses, which they believed had harder hooves than horses with white markings. Horse designs often appear on Scythian drinking vessels and bowls. Horse meat was eaten at funeral feasts, and archaeologists have found horse skeletons in many Scythian graves. One grave, found at Aul Ul in the Caucasus, held the skeletons of 360 slaughtered horses laid out carefully in rows and circles.
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The fast-raiding Scythians were a constant threat to the more settled peoples around them. They invaded Mesopotamia and Syria in the seventh century BCE, reaching as far south as the kingdom of Judah. The great Persian king Cyrus the Great died in 530 BCE fighting the Scythian tribe of Massagetes on his northern frontier. Darius launched a major invasion of Scythia in 512 BCE, but the tribes retreated at the sight of his vast army. Alexander the Great also tried to conquer the Scythians, but their horse archers destroyed the experienced Macedonian army in 325 BCE.
The Scythians were finally overcome by the Celts and Sarmatians, peoples who shared their nomadic lifestyle. Around 130 BCE the Scythians were mostly absorbed into new groups of tribes and vanished from history.
Scythian Customs
Scythian men often took more than one wife. Unlike Sarmatian women, who fought alongside their menfolk, Scythian women busied themselves with domestic tasks and child rearing. They traveled with their families in wagons as the tribe followed its herds. The most important constituent of the Scythians’ diet was koumiss (fermented mare’s milk). They used trained dogs to hunt game and caught quantities of a large spineless fish called antakaeos, which they pickled with salt collected at the mouths of the rivers along the Black Sea coast.
The Greeks and Persians were horrified by some of the more brutal Scythian customs. Scythian warriors scalped the enemies that they killed in battle. The scalps were cleaned and worn on their belts as a sign of bravery. Sometimes the scalps were sewn together to form a cloak. Human skin was also used to make quivers for their arrows and a covering for their possessions in their wagons. Prisoners were sacrificed to the Scythian god of war. Their skulls were cleaned and lined with leather so they could be used as goblets. Rich Scythians sometimes lined these skulls with gold and used them in banquets or when offering wine to honored guests.
Scythian kings were mummified when they died. The belly of the royal corpse was slit open, cleaned out, and filled with sweet-smelling herbs and preserving waxes. The body was then taken by wagon around the tribal homelands so that all could pay their respects to the dead king. Finally the body was lowered into a great pit. The king’s favorite servants were strangled and laid by his side. The grave was then covered in a tumulus, a high earthen burial mound.
In recent years Russian and Ukrainian archaeologists have found rich treasures in royal Scythian graves, known as kurgans, along the coast of the Black Sea.
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THE GREEK WRITER HERODOTUS DESCRIBES THE LANDS OF THE SCYTHIANS: Scythia has few remarkable features except for its rivers which are more numerous and bigger than anywhere else in the world. There is only one interesting thing apart from the rivers and the vast extent of the plains. That is a footprint left by the hero Herakles. The Scythians show this footprint to visitors. It is on a rock near the river Tyras and is like a man’s footprint except that it is three feet long. HERODOTUS, THE HISTORIES, BOOK IV
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