Scythian

The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, where they remained established from the 7th century BC until the 3rd century BC.

Skilled in mounted warfare, the Scythians replaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BC. In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and frequently raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians.

After being expelled from West Asia by the Medes, the Scythians retreated back into the Pontic Steppe in the 6th century BC, and were later conquered by the Sarmatians in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC. By the 3rd century AD, last remnants of the Scythians were overwhelmed by the Goths, and by the early Middle Ages, the Scythians were assimilated and absorbed by the various successive populations who had moved into the Pontic Steppe.

After the Scythians' disappearance, authors of the ancient, mediaeval, and early modern periods used their name to refer to various populations of the steppes unrelated to them.

Names

Etymology

The name is derived from the Scythian endonym , meaning which was derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ', itself meaning . This name was semantically similar to the endonym of the Sauromatians, , meaning "armed with throwing darts and arrows."

From this earlier term was derived:
*the Akkadian designation of the Scythians:
** ();
** ();
** ();
**or ().
* the Ancient Greek name (), from which was derived the Latin name , which in turn gave the English name .

The Urartian name for the Scythians might have been ().

Due to a sound change from /δ/ () to commonly attested in East Iranic language family to which Scythian belonged, the name evolved into , which was recorded in ancient Greek as (), in which the Greek plural-forming suffix was added to the name.

The name of the 5th century BC king Scyles () represented this later form, .

Modern terminology

Scythians proper

The name "Scythians" was initially used by ancient authors to designate specifically the Iranic people who lived in the Pontic Steppe between the Danube and the Don rivers.

In modern archaeology, the term "Scythians" is used in its original narrow sense as a name strictly for the Iranic people who lived in the Pontic and Crimean Steppes, between the Danube and Don rivers, from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC.

Broader designations

By the Hellenistic period, authors such as Hecataeus of Miletus however sometimes extended the designation "Scythians" indiscriminately to all steppe nomads and forest steppe populations living in Europe and Asia, and used it to also designate the Saka of Central Asia.

Early modern scholars tended to follow the lead of the Hellenistic authors in extending the name "Scythians" into a general catch-all term for the various equestrian warrior-nomadic cultures of the Iron Age-period Eurasian Steppe following the discovery in the 1930s in the eastern parts of the Eurasian steppe of items forming the "Scythian triad," consisting of distinctive weapons, horse harnesses, and objects decorated in the "Animal Style" art, which had until then been considered to be markers of the Scythians proper.

This broad use of the term "Scythian" has however been criticised for lumping together various heterogeneous populations belonging to different cultures, and therefore leading to several errors in the coverage of the various warrior-nomadic cultures of the Iron Age-period Eurasian Steppe. Therefore, the narrow use of the term "Scythian" as denoting specifically the people who dominated the Pontic Steppe between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC is preferred by Scythologists such as Askold Ivantchik.

Within this broad use, the Scythians proper who lived in the Pontic Steppes are sometimes referred to as .

Modern-day anthropologists instead prefer using the term "Scytho-Siberians" to denote this larger cultural grouping of nomadic peoples living in the Eurasian steppe and forest steppe extending from Central Europe to the limits of the Chinese Zhou Empire, and of which the Pontic Scythians proper were only one section. These various peoples shared the use of the "Scythian triad," that is of distinctive weapons, horse harnesses and the "Animal Style" art.

The term "Scytho-Siberian" has itself in turn also been criticised since it is sometimes used broadly to include all Iron Age equestrian nomads, including those who were not part of any Scythian or Saka. The scholars Nicola Di Cosmo and Andrzej Rozwadowski instead prefer the use of the term "Early Nomadic" for the broad designation of the Iron Age horse-riding nomads.

Saka

While the ancient Persians used the name Saka to designate all the steppe nomads and specifically referred to the Pontic Scythians as (; ), the name "Saka" is used in modern scholarship to designate the Iranic pastoralist nomads who lived in the steppes of Central Asia and East Turkestan in the 1st millennium BC.

Cimmerians

The Late Babylonian scribes of the Achaemenid Empire used the name "Cimmerians" to designate all the nomad peoples of the steppe, including the Scythians and Saka.

However, while the Cimmerians were an Iranic people sharing a common language, origins and culture with the Scythians and are archaeologically indistinguishable from the Scythians, all sources contemporary to their activities clearly distinguished the Cimmerians and the Scythians as being two separate political entities.

History

There are two main sources of information on the historical Scythians: Akkadian cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia which deal with early Scythian history from the 7th century BC; and Graeco-Roman sources which cover all of Scythian history, most prominently those written by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which are less reliable because the information they contain is mixed with folk tales and learnt constructs of historians.

Proto-Scythian period

The arrival of the Scythians in Europe was part of the larger process of westwards movement of Central Asian Iranic nomads towards Southeast and Central Europe which lasted from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD, and to which also participated other Iranic nomads such as the Cimmerians, Sauromatians, and Sarmatians.

Like the nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, the Scythians originated, along with the Early Sakas, in Central Asia and Siberia in the steppes corresponding to either present-day eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region. The Scythians were already acquainted with quality goldsmithing and sophisticated bronze-casting at this time, as attested by gold pieces found in the 8th century BC Aržan-1 kurgan.

Migration out of Central Asia

The second wave of migration of Iranic nomads corresponded to the early Scythians' arrival from Central Asia into the Caucasian Steppe, which begun in the 9th century BC, when a significant movement of the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian Steppe started after the early Scythians were expelled out of Central Asia by either the Massagetae, who were a powerful nomadic Iranic tribe from Central Asia closely related to them, or by another Central Asian people called the Issedones, forcing the early Scythians to the west, across the Araxes river and into the Caspian and Ciscaucasian Steppes.

This western migration of the early Scythians lasted through the middle 8th century BC, and archaeologically corresponded to the westward movement of a population originating from Tuva in southern Siberia in the late 9th century BC, and arriving in the 8th to 7th centuries BC into Europe, especially into Ciscaucasia, which it reached some time between and , thus following the same migration general path as the first wave of Iranic nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.

= Displacement of the Cimmerians

=
The Scythians' westward migration brought them to the Caspian Steppe, in the lands of the Cimmerians, who had themselves originated in the first westward wave of proto-Scythian migrations of nomadic populations who had arrived from Central Asia into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe regions during the 10th century BC.

The Cimmerians at this time were leaving their homelands in the Caspian Steppe to move into West Asia: the Cimmerians might have migrated under the pressure from the Scythians, although sources are lacking for any such pressure on the Cimmerians by the Scythians or of any conflict between these two peoples at this early period. Moreover, the arrival of the Scythians in West Asia about 40 years after the Cimmerians did so suggests there is no available evidence to the later Graeco-Roman account that it was under pressure from Scythians migrating into their territories that the Cimmerians crossed the Caucasus and moved south into West Asia.

The remnants of the Cimmerians in the Caspian Steppe were assimilated by the Scythians, with this absorption of the Cimmerians by the Scythians being facilitated by their similar ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles, thus transferring the dominance of this region from the Cimmerians to the Scythians who were assimilating them, after which the Scythians settled in the Ciscaucasian Steppe where were located the their kingdom's headquarters, between the Araxes river to the east, the Caucasus Mountains to the south, and the Maeotian Sea to the west.

The arrival of the Scythians and their establishment in this region in the 7th century BC corresponded to a disturbance of the development of the Cimmerian peoples' Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, which was thus replaced through a continuous process over the course of to in southern Europe by the early Scythian culture which nevertheless still showed links to the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex. Some aspects of the Scythian culture, such as elements of funerary rituals, ceramics, horse gear, and some weapon types, also showed links to the older Timber Grave culture which had existed in the north Pontic region in the Bronze Age.

Early (or Archaic) Scythian period

Ciscaucasian kingdom

After their initial westwards migrations, and beginning around , the Scythians settled in the Ciscaucasian Steppe between the Araxes river to the east, the Caucasus mountains to the south, and the Maeotian Sea to the west, and were especially concentrated in the valley of the Kuban river, where would be located their kingdom's headquarters until the end of the 7th century BC: the Scythians who first arrived into Ciscaucasia did not consist of large numbers of people and they lived in a small area. During these early phases of Scythian history, Ciscaucasia was where the nomadic state and the culture of the Scythians developed, and it would remain the centre of the Scythian kingdom until around .

Since the Scythians needed agricultural and craft products from the native populations, they conquered these peoples and established interdependence systems: the Scythians obtained surplus through collecting tribute from the populations of the native Koban and Maeotian cultures of Ciscaucasia, who provided various goods to the Scythians, such as agricultural products and crafted goods like clay and bronze vessels, various weapons, bridles, and horse harness equipment; the Maeotian craftsmen especially made large wide-necked pots, jugs, mugs, and small basins for Scythian customers.

These interactions between the Scythians and Maeotians deepened through the 8th to 7th centuries BC so that it led to the creation of a mixed culture, and some of the local tribes were assimilated into the Scythians and therefore contributed to the growth of the Scythian population. This earliest phase of Scythian culture formed in the Ciscaucasian Steppe between and .

West Asia

During the second half of the 8th century BC and the 7th century BC, the equestrian steppe nomads from Ciscaucasia expanded to the south into West Asia, beginning with the Cimmerians. The involvement of the steppe nomads in West Asia happened in the context of the growth of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had expanded from its core region of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys to dominate a large territory in West Asia. Surrounding the Neo-Assyrian Empire were several smaller polities: Phrygia and Lydia in Anatolia; Babylon and Elam in the south; Egypt in the southwest; Urartu in the north; the weaker states of Ellipi and Mannai in the east; and the city-states of the Medes. Local border rulers negotiated for their own interests by vacillating between these various rival great powers.

This state of permanent social disruption caused by the rivalries of the great powers of West Asia proved to be an attractive source of opportunities for the steppe nomads; and so their aristocrats led their followers southwards across the Caucasus Mountains. Thus, the Scythians and Cimmerians became active in West Asia in the 7th century BC, where they would vacillate between supporting either the Neo-Assyrian Empire or other local powers, and serve these as mercenaries, depending on what they considered to be in their interests. Some small groups of steppe nomads from Ciscaucasia might have acted since the 9th century BC in West Asia, which laid the ground for the later large scale movement of the Cimmerians and Scythians there. There appears to have been very little direct connection between the migrations of the Cimmerians and the Scythians. The Scythians became active in West Asia after arriving in Transcaucasia around . These nonetheless never lost contact with the core Scythian kingdom located in the Ciscaucasian Steppe.

Once they had finally crossed into West Asia, the Scythians settled in eastern Transcaucasia and the northwest Iranian plateau, in the steppes of what is presently Azerbaijan, which became their centre operations until , and this part of Transcaucasia settled by the Scythians consequently became known in the Akkadian sources from Mesopotamia as the "land of the Scythians" (, ) after them. Unlike the Cimmerians, the Scythians in West Asia remained organised into a single polity. Once the Scythians had expanded into Transcaucasia, craftsmen from this region also became their suppliers.

= Initial activities in West Asia

=
The Scythian and Cimmerian movements into Anatolia and the Iranian Plateau would act as catalysts for the adoption of Eurasian nomadic military and equestrian equipments by various West Asian states: it was during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE that "Scythian-type" socketed arrowheads and sigmoid bows ideal for use by mounted warriors were adopted throughout West Asia.

The Mannaean king Aḫšeri () welcomed the Cimmerians and the Scythians as useful allies against the Neo-Assyrian Empire. During the period corresponding to the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon (), the Scythians were active in association with Mannai and Media, with their first ever recorded mention from the Neo-Assyrian records of . Around this time, Aḫšēri was hindering operations by the Neo-Assyrian Empire between its own territory and Mannai. During these attacks, the Scythians were able to reach and attack distant Neo-Assyrian provinces, and on one occasion core territories.

These forces were defeated some time between and by Esarhaddon, who carried out a retaliatory campaign which reached deep into Median territory. Išpakāya, the Scythians' first knowwn king, was killed during this campaign, and he was succeeded by Bartatua, with whom Esarhaddon might have immediately initiated negotiations. By 672 BC, Bartatua had asked for the hand of the eldest daughter of Esarhaddon, the Neo-Assyrian princess Šērūʾa-ēṭirat, and promised to form an alliance treaty with the Neo-Assyrian Empire in an act of careful diplomacy. Bartatua's marriage to Šērūʾa-ēṭirat required that he would pledge allegiance to Assyria as a vassal, which made the Scythian presence in West Asia a nominal extension of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Henceforth, the Scythian kingdom remained a Neo-Assyrian ally.

The eastern Cimmerians soon left the Iranian Plateau and retreated westwards into Anatolia. Although Mannai had been powerful under Aḫšeri, this power had depended on his alliance with the Cimmerians and Scythians. Their absence allowed Esarhaddon's successor Ashurbanipal () to carry out a campaign against Mannai between 660 and 659 BC. Bartatua, acting as an intermediary, annexed Mannai into the Scythian kingdom. Following this, the centre of Scythian power in West Asia shifted to Sakez near Lake Urmia, where fertile pastures allowed the Scythians to rea large herds of horses.

= West Asian influences on the Scythians

=
The marital alliance, as well as the proximity of the Scythians to Assyrian-influenced states, placed the Scythians under the strong influence of Assyrian culture. Scythian culture and art absorbed various West Asian elements; Scythian dress and armour from this time, including in Cirscaucasia, reflect heavy influences from West Asia and the Iranian Plateau on Scythian culture during this period.

Scythian rulers began emulating West Asian kings by using luxury goods as status markers. the spoils acquired by the Scythians as diplomatic presents or as plunder was used to enhance their status back in the Ciscaucasian Steppe. In addition, artistic concepts also enhanced the range of the craftsmen serving the Scythian aristocracy: the Scythians had absorbed West Asian tastes and customs such as the concept of the divine origin of royal power, and as their material culture was absorbing West Asian elements, so was their art absorbing West Asian artistic modes of representing these.

Even West Asian horses were imported to Ciscaucasia. It was also only when the Scythians expanded into West Asia that they became acquainted with iron smelting and forging, before which they were still a Bronze Age society until the late 8th century BC. The Scythians also borrowed the use of the war chariots and of scale armour from West Asians, and Scythian warriors themselves obtained iron weapons and military experience during their stay in West Asia. Within the Scythian religion, the goddess Artimpasa and the Snake-Legged Goddess were significantly influenced by the Mesopotamian and Syro-Canaanite religions.

= Reign of Madyes

=

Bartatua was succeeded by his son with Šērūʾa-ēṭirat, Madyes. In 652 BC, Ashurbanipal's eldest brother Šamaš-šuma-ukin, the king of Babylon, rebelled against him. although Ashurbanipal was able to suppress the Babylonian rebellion by 648 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was worn out by this crisis. Madyes helped Ashurbanipal repress the revolt by imposing Scythian hegemony on Media, which marked the beginning of a nearly 30-year long period of Scythian hegemony in West Asia.

During the 7th century BC, the bulk of the Cimmerians were operating in Anatolia. The disturbances they caused led to many of the rulers of this region to break away from Neo-Assyrian overlordship, by the time of Ashurbanipal. In 644 BC, the Cimmerians and their allies the Treres defeated the Lydians and captured their capital city of Sardis. Despite this and other setbacks, the Lydian kingdom was able to grow in power. Around , and with Neo-Assyrian approval, the Scythians under Madyes conquered Urartu, entered Central Anatolia and defeated the Cimmerians alongside the Lydians.

Scythian power in West Asia thus reached its peak under Madyes, with the territories ruled by the Scythian kingdom extending from the Halys river in Anatolia in the west to the Caspian Sea and the eastern borders of Media in the east, and from Transcaucasia in the north to the northern borders of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the south. Meanwhile, the new Lydian Empire became the dominant power of Anatolia.

= Decline in West Asia

=

The Neo-Assyrian Empire began unravelling after the death of Ashurbanipal because of civil wars under his successors Aššur-etil-ilāni () and Sîn-šar-iškun (). In 625 BC, the Median king Cyaxares invited the Scythian leaders to a feast, where he assassinated them all, thus overthrowing the Assyro-Scythian yoke over the Medes. Cyaxares was able to combine Scythian and Neo-Assyrian military practices to transform Media into the dominant power of the Iranian Plateau. Other vassals of the Neo-Assyrian Empire started breaking away.

The Scythians nevertheless took advantage of the temporary power vacuum to raid into the Levant some time between and . It is unknown whether this raid damaged the hold of the Neo-Assyrian Empire on its western provinces. The raid reached as far south as Palestine, but it did not affect the kingdom of Judah. It reached the borders of the Saite Egyptian kingdom, after which the pharaoh Psamtik I met them and convinced them to turn back by offering them gifts. The Scythians sacked several cities in Palestine while retreating. After this, Scythian activities became limited to the eastern borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the importation of West Asian goods into the Ciscaucasian steppe.

By 615, the Scythian kingdom was operating as an ally of Cyaxares in his war against the Neo-Assyrian Empire, possibly out of necessity. The Scythian kingdom supported the Medo-Babylonian conquests of Aššur in 614 BC, of Nineveh in 612 BC, and of the last Neo-Assyrian remnants at Ḫarran in 610 BC, which permanently destroyed the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

By the , the ascending Median Empire of Cyaxares annexed Urartu, after having already annexed Mannai in 616 BC. This rise of Median power forced the Scythian kingdom to leave West Asia and retreat northward into the Ciscaucasian Steppe. Complex relations nevertheless continued to exist between the Median and Scythian kingdoms located.

Some splinter Scythian groups remained in eastern Transcaucasia and did not retreat to the north. The area where they lived was called () by the Medes; this name was later recorded as () by Ptolemy. Later Graeco-Roman sources claimed that these Scythians left the Median kingdom and fled into the Lydian Empire, beginning a conflict between Lydia and Media: These Scythians who had remained in West Asia had been completely assimilated into Median society and state by the mid-6th century BC.

Initial Greek interactions

The ancient Greeks had first been making expeditions in the Black Sea in the 8th century BC, and encounters with friendly native populations led to the formation of trading settlements. Around , the Scythians in the Pontic Steppe came into contact with Greek settlers from Miletus who were starting to found their first colonies in the areas under Scythian rule on the northern coast of the Black Sea. The first wave of Greek colonisation of the north coast of the Black Sea consisted of attempts to develop trade with its native populations, and therefore involved the formation of trading enclaves (; ) this mutually beneficial process was largely peaceful. The earliest of the north Black Sea were built at Histria, Tyras, and especially on the island of Borysthenēs.

From the Greek settlements on the Black Sea coast, the Scythian aristocracy bought luxury goods which they used as status markers: wine and the various Greek vessels used to mix and drink it were especially imported in large quantities and were even used as grave goods, while craftsmen in the Greek colonies manufactured items made of gold or electrum for Scythian patrons. Once Scythian activities begun to decline in West Asia in the and ties between the Scythians and the Greek colonies started developing, the Scythians started buying Greek pottery imported from the Aegean islands. Greek influences on the Scythians replaced West Asian ones from the beginning of the 6th century BC.

Pontic Steppe

The Scythians during the 8th to 7th centuries BC conquered the Pontic and Crimean Steppes. The initial Scythian population who settled in the Pontic Steppe was nevertheless small compared to the remainder in the Ciscaucasian Steppe. Only after their expulsion from West Asia was the Pontic Steppe occupied by the Scythians on a large scale. This was motivated by the presence of the threatening Median Empire to the south of Ciscaucasia, and by the wealthy Greek colonies on the shores of the Black Sea. The Scythian kingdom mediated trade between the Greek colonies to their south and the forest steppe to their north, which was carried out via the large rivers of the steppe.

The arriving Scythian conquerors established themselves as the ruling elite, or "Royal Scythians", over the local population and assimilated them into a single tribal identity while allowing them to continue their various lifestyles and economic organisations. Many of the ethnically non-Scythian populations of the Pontic Steppe thus became designated by the term "", after whom the Pontic Steppe also became known as .

Influence and campaigns from the Pontic Steppe

The westward migration of the Scythians was accompanied by the introduction into the north Pontic region of articles originating in the Siberian Karasuk culture, such as distinctive swords and daggers, and which were characteristic of Early Scythian archaeological culture, consisting of cast bronze cauldrons, daggers, swords, and horse harnesses, which had themselves been influenced by Chinese art, with, for example, the "cruciform tubes" used to fix strap-crossings being of types which had initially been modelled by Shang artisans. The metallurgical workshops which produced the weapons and horse harnesses of the Scythians were located in the forest steppe.

It was at this time that the Scythians brought the knowledge of working iron which they had acquired in West Asia with them and introduced it into the Pontic Steppe, whose peoples were still Bronze Age societies until then. The Scythian establishment in the Pontic Steppe was especially facilitated by the iron weapons and the military experience they had obtained in West Asia. Introduced into the Pontic Steppe during this period by the Scythians was the use of scale armour, which the Royal Scythian aristocracy had themselves borrowed from the West Asian peoples.

Once the centre of Scythian power had shifted into the Pontic Steppe, from around the Scythians often raided into the adjacent regions such as Central and Southeast Europe. Attacks by the Scythians were directed not only at Transylvania, Podolia and the Pannonian Steppe, but also southern Germania, where they attacked the Lusatian culture and caused its destruction, and from there, until as far as Gaul, and possibly even the Iberian peninsula: these Scythian incursions were not unlike those of the Huns and the Avars during the Migration Period, and of the Mongols in the mediaeval era, and were recorded in Etruscan bronze figurines depicting mounted Scythian archers.

Multiple settlements of the Lusatian culture were destroyed by Scythian attacks during this period, and Scythian arrowheads have been found at several sites located in what are present-day Poland and Slovakia, such as at Witaszkowo, , Strzegom, , and . The Scythians also attacked, sacked and destroyed many of the wealthy and important Iron Age settlements located to the north and south of the Moravian Gate and belonging to the eastern group of the Hallstatt culture, including that of Smolenice-Molpír, where Scythian-type arrows were found at this fortified hillfort's access points at the gate and the south-west side of the acropolis

Beginning in the 7th century BC, the Scythians also initiated numerous campaigns against the forest steppe tribes in the East European forest steppe to the north, who built large numbers of fortified settlements to repel these attacks.

= Foreign pressures

=
Meanwhile, in West Asia, the Median, Lydian, and Neo-Babylonian empires had been replaced over the period of to by the Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus II, the king of the Persians, who were a West Asian Iranic people distantly related to the Scythians. The formation of the Achaemenid Empire constituted a further pressure from the south which forced the Scythians to remain to the north of the Caucasus.

The establishment of the Pontic Scythian kingdom was a catalyst for the development of extensive trade connections, and it was only after the bulk of the Scythians had moved into the Pontic Steppe that more permanent Greek colonies were founded in this region: the second wave of Greek colonisation of the north coast of the Black Sea, which started soon after , involved the formation of settlements possessing agricultural lands () for migrants from Miletus, Corinth, Phocaea and Megara seeking to establishing themselves to farm () in these regions where the land was fertile and the sea was plentiful. The contacts between the Scythians and the Greeks led to the formation of a mixed Graeco-Scythian culture, such as among the "Hellenised Scythian" tribe of the Callipidae, the Histrians, the Geloni to the north of Scythia, and the Hellenised populations in and around Crimea.

In , Cyrus II had conquered the Lydian Empire and brought Anatolia under the rule of his newly founded Persian Achaemenid Empire, consequently setting in march a large outflow of Greek refugees fleeing the Persian conquest, starting a third wave of Greek colonisation of the Black Sea, lasting from around until . The importance of the Greek colonies of the north Black Sea coast drastically increased following the Persian Achaemenid Empire's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC, which deprived the states of Greece proper of the Egyptian grain that they depended on.

The then dominant Greek power of Athens therefore established very well defended new colonies on the north Black Sea coast near the already existing settlements, including Nymphaion near Pantikapaion, Athēnaion near Theodosia, and Stratokleia near Phanagoreia, where grain of very good quality was produced. The various Greek city-states of the Aegean Sea also imported fish, furs and slaves from Scythia during this period, and in the mid-6th century BC the Greeks started employing Scythian mercenaries in the form of detachments of mounted archers to support their own hoplite armies.

To the east of the Scythian kingdom lived the Sauromatians, who maintained good relations with the Scythian kingdom throughout its existence, from the 6th to 4th centuries BC. Scythian art exhibited influences from the Sauromatian culture and. However, in the period from to , the various Sauromatian communities living from the region stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Caspian Steppe came pressure from the Massagetae of Central Asia as a result of the campaigns of Cyrus II against this latter people. Due to these pressures, the Sauromatians took over the control of Ciscaucasia from the Scythian kingdom. By the 5th century BC, the Scythians had completely retreated from Ciscaucasia.

This process resulted in a wave of Sauromatian nomads immigrating near the Royal Scythians, and intermarrying with the local nomad inhabitants. The arrival of this wave of Sauromatian immigration might possibly have caused the replacement of the older Scythian ruling dynasty of Spargapeithes by a new one, founded by Ariapeithes. Sauromatian immigration also introduced new social norms into Scythia thanks to which women were now allowed to become warriors.

The Scythian sage Anacharsis, the brother of the then reigning king Sauaios, lived in the 6th century BC. Anacharsis left Scythia to travel to Greece, where he became respected enough as a skilled philosopher that he was granted Athenian citizenship. Although much regarding the historicity of Anacharsis is uncertain, he later became popular in ancient Greek literature, in which he appeared as a sort of "man of Nature" and "noble savage" incarnating "Barbarian wisdom," after which he especially a favourite figure of the Cynics.

= The Persian invasion

=

In the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persian Empire started expanding into Europe, beginning with the Persian annexation of all of Thrace, after which the Achaemenid king of kings Darius I crossed the Istros river in 513 BC and attacked the Scythian kingdom with an army of 700,000 to 800,000 soldiers, possibly with the goal of annexing it.

The results of this campaign are unclear, with Darius I himself claiming that he had conquered the (), that is the Pontic Scythians, while the ancient Greek literary tradition, following the account of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, claimed that the Persian campaign had been defeated by the Scythians, due to which the Greeks started perceiving the Scythians as being invincible thanks to their nomadic lifestyle.

Herodotus's narrative is itself considered dubious by modern historians, and his account of the failure of Darius appears to have been extremely exaggerated. Some form of Achaemenid authority might have been established in Pontic Scythia as a result of this campaign without it having been annexed.

Middle (or Classical) period

The retreat of the Scythians from Ciscaucasia and the arrival of the Sauromatian incomers into the Pontic Steppe in the late 6th century BC gave rise to the Middle or Classical Scythian period, a hybrid culture originating from a combination of Ciscaucasian Scythian and Sauromatian elements. Among the changes in Scythia in this period was a significant increase in the number of monumental burials.

Due to the need to resist Persian encroachment, the Scythian kingdom underwent political consolidation in the early 5th century BC, during which it completed its evolution from a tribal confederation into an early state polity capable of dealing with the polities threatening or trading with it in an effective way; during this period, the Scythian kings increased their power and wealth by concentrating economic power under their authority. It was also during this period that the control of the Scythians over the western part of their kingdom became tighter.
At some point between and , Ariapeithes was succeeded as king by his son Scyles.

Expansionism

A consequence of this consolidation of the Scythian kingdom was an increase in its expansionism and militarism. To the southeast, the Scythians came into conflict with their splinter tribe of the Sindi, whom they fought by crossing the frozen Cimmerian Bosporus during the winter. In the west, nearby Thrace became a target following the Achaemenid retreat from Europe, with the Scythians gaining free access to the Wallachian and Moldavian Steppes and to the south of the Istros river]. In 496 BC, the Scythians launched a raid until as far south as the Dardanelles, Hellespont. The Scythians' inroads in Thrace were however soon stopped by the emergence of the Odrysian kingdom in this region, following which the Scythian and Odrysian kingdoms mutually established the Istros as their common border around : from then on, the Scythians and Thracians borrowed from the other's art and lifestyle; marriage between the Scythian and Odrysian aristocracies and royal families were also concluded.

A second direction where the Scythian kingdom expanded was in the north and north-west: the Scythian kingdom had continued its attempts to impose its rule on the forest steppe peoples and by the 5th century BC, it was finally able to complete the process after destroying their fortified settlements. Their cultures later fused with that of the Scythians. During the 5th century BC, Scythian rule over the forest steppe people became increadingly dominating and coercive, leading to a decline of their sedentary agrarian lifestyle. This in turn resulted in a reduction in the importation of Greek goods by the peoples of the forest steppe in the 5th century BC.

The peaceful relations which had until then prevailed between the Scythian kingdom and the Greek colonies of the northern Pontic region came to an end during the period of expansionism in the early 5th century BC, when the Scythian kings for the first time started trying to impose their rule over the Greek colonies. The Greek cities erected defensive installations while losing their agricultural production base. At the same time, because the Scythian kingdom still needed to trade with the Greeks in the lower Tanais region, in the early 5th century BC it replaced the destroyed Greek colony of Krēmnoi with a Scythian settlement. The hold of the Scythian kingdom on this region became firmer under Scyles, who was successfully able to impose Scythian rule on the Greek colonies such as Nikōnion, Tyras, Pontic Olbia, and Kerkinitis. Scyles' control over Nikōnion was at the time it was a member of the Delian League, putting it under the simultaneous hegemony of both the Scythian kingdom and Athens. This allowed the Scythian kingdom to engage in relations with Athens when it was at the height of its power. In consequence, a community of Scythians also lived in Athens at this time, as attested by Scythian graves in the Kerameikos cemetery.

The Scythian kingdom was however less successful at conquering other Greek colonies, around 30 of which, including Myrmēkion, Tyritakē, and Porthmeus, banded together into an alliance and successfully defended their independence. After this, they united into the Bosporan kingdom. The Bosporan kingdom soon became a centre of production for Scythian customers living in the steppes and contributed to the development of Scythian art and style. Despite the conflicts between the Scythian kingdom and the Greek cities, mutually beneficial exchanges between the Scythians, Maeotians and Greeks continued. There was consequently a considerable migration of Scythians into Pontic Olbia at this time. The Greek colonies of the Black Sea coast continued adhering to their Hellenic culture while their population was very mixed. During this period Greek influences also became more significant among the Scythians, especially among the aristocracy.

Commercial activities

As result of these expansionist ventures, the Scythian kingdom implemented an economic policy through a division of labour according to which: the settled populations of the forest steppe produced grain, which they were now obliged to offer to the Scythian aristocracy as tribute, and which was then shipped through the Borysthenēs and Hypanis rivers to Pontic Olbia, Tyras, and Nikōnion, where these Greek cities traded the grain at a profit for themselves. The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in Greece proper in 431 BC further increased the importance of the Pontic Steppe in supplying grain to Greece. The Scythians also sold cattle and animal products to the Greeks.

The Greek cities in the Aegean Sea had started to import slaves from Scythia immediately after the end of the Persian invasions of Greece. The Greek cities acted as slave trade hubs but did not themselves capture slaves, and instead depended on the Scythian rulers to acquire slaves for them: the Scythian aristocrats nonetheless still found it profitable to acquire slaves from their subordinate tribes or through military raids in the forest steppe. One group of slaves was bought by the city of Athens, where they constituted an organisation of public slaves employed by the city as an urban police force.

= Greek influence

=
The Greek colonies were the main suppliers of luxury goods and art to the Scythians. Trade with the Greeks especially created a thriving demand for wine in Scythia: In exchange for slaves, the Greeks sold various consumer goods to the Scythians, the most prominent among these being wine. The island of Chios in the Aegean Sea, especially, produced wine to be sold to the Scythians, in exchange of which slaves from Scythia were sold in the island's very prominent slave market. Other commodities sold by the Greeks to the Scythians included fabrics, vessels, decorations made of precious metals, bronze items, and black burnished pottery.

Under these conditions, the grain and slave trade continued, and Pontic Olbia experienced economic prosperity. The Scythian aristocracy also derived immense revenue from these commercial activities with the Greeks, most especially from the grain trade, with Scythian coins struck in Greek cities bearing the images of ears of grain. This prosperity of the Scythian aristocracy is attested by how the lavish aristocratic burials progressively included more relatives, retainers, and were richly furnished with grave goods, especially imported ones, consisting of gold jewellery, silver and gold objects, including fine Greek-made toreutics, vessels and jewellery, and gold-plated weapons. Scythian commoners however did not obtain any benefits from this trade, with luxury goods being absent from their tombs.

A consequence of the Scythians' close contacts with Greeks was a progressive Hellenisation of the Scythian aristocracy. The Greek supply of luxury goods also influenced Scythian art. Greek influence also shaped the evolution of Scythian weapons and horse harnesses: the Scythian composite armour, for example, was fitted with Greek-type shoulder guards in the 5th century BC.

Early sedentarisation

Around this time the steppe climate also became warmer and wetter, which allowed the nomads to rear their large herds of animals in abundance; combined with Greek influence, this acted as a catalyst for the process of sedentarisation of many nomadic Scythians which started during the Middle Scythian period in the late 5th century BC. especially in areas where the terrain was propitious for agriculture. Archaeological evidence suggests that the population of the agriculture-focused Tauric Chersonese increased by 600%, especially in the Trachean Chersonese.

This process led to the foundation in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC of several new city-sites including important sites located on major routes which provided access to the major rivers of Scythia. For example, the city of Kamianka had become the economic, political and commercial capital of the Scythian kingdom in the late 5th century BC. Until the 3rd century BC, the majority of Scythians nevertheless still remained composed of nomads.

Instabilities

Some time around , Scyles was overthrown and executed by his half-brother Octamasadas. As a result of the Scythian kingdom's prosperity during this period, neighbouring populations borrowed elements of Scythian culture: for example, Scythian-type arrowheads were found in Central and Western Europe. The Thracian Getae of the Carpathian and Balkan regions imported large amounts of Scythian-manufactured weapons and horse equipment. Thanks to the close family connections of Octamasadas to the Thracian Odrysian dynasty, contacts between the Scythian kingdom and Odrysian-ruled Thrace intensified during the period from to . Significant Thracian influence consequently appeared in Scythian grave goods.

A Thracian aristocrat named Spartocus seized leadership of the Bosporan kingdom in . He was possibly connected to the accession of the pro-Odrysian Octamasadas. These changes in the Bosporan Kingdom also led to cultural changes within it in the late 5th century BC, so that the Greek customs which had until then been normative there gave way to more Scythian ones. Under the Spartocid dynasty, the Bosporan kingdom thrived and maintained stable relations with the Scythian kingdom which allowed it to expand its rule conquer several non-Greek territories on the Asian side of the Cimmerian Bosporus. This process transformed the Bosporan kingdom into a cosmopolitan realm.

It was then that Pontic Olbia started declining, partly due to the instability within the Scythian steppe to its north, but also because most of the trade, including the grain exports of the Scythian kingdom, passing through Oblia until then shifted to transiting through the cities of the Cimmerian Bosporus constiting the Bosporan Kingdom at this time. The Scythians instead started importing luxury goods made in Bosporan Greek workshops, whose products thus replaced Olbian ones. Around that same time, Athenian commercial influence in the Bosporan Kingdom started declining, and it had fully come to an end by 404 BC.

Pressured by groups of the Massagetae, sometime between and , a second wave of migration of Sauromatians entered Scythia, where these newcomers intermarried with the Scythian tribes already present there after which they may possibly have established themselves as the new ruling aristocracy of the Scythian kingdom. The sedendary communities of the forest steppe also came under pressure from this new wave of nomadic incomers. This, as well as internal conflicts among the Scythians, caused a temporary destabilisation of the Scythian kingdom which caused it to lose control of the Greek cities on the north shores of the Black Sea. The Greek colonies of Pontic Olbia, Nikōnion, and Tyras started to not only rebuild their , but even expanded them during the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC. Meanwhile Nymphaion was annexed by the Bosporan kingdom.

Golden Age

The period of instability ended soon, and Scythian culture experienced a period of prosperity during the 4th century BC. Most Scythian monuments and the richest Scythian royal burials dating from this period, as exemplified by the lavish . This height of Scythian power corresponded to a time of unprecedented prosperity for the Greek colonies of the northern Black Sea: there was high demand for the Greek cities' trade goods. Consequently, Scythian culture, especially that of the aristocracy, experienced rapidly-occurring extensive Hellenisation.

The rule of the Spartocid dynasty in the Bosporan Kingdom under the kings Leukon I, Spartocus II and Pairisadēs I was also favourable for the Scythian kingdom because they provided stability. Leukon employed Scythians in his army, and he was able to capture Theodosia with the help of Scythian horse cavalry, which he claimed to trust more than his own army. Extensive contacts existed between the Scythian and Bosporan nobilities, possibly including dynastic marriages between the Scythian and Bosporan royalty; the rich burial of Kul-Oba belonged to one such Scythian noble who chose to be buried in a Greek-style tomb.

During this time, and with the support of the Scythian kings, the sedentarised Scythian farmers sold up to 16,000 tonnes to Pantikapaion, who in turn sold this grain to Athens in mainland Greece. The dealings between mainland Greece and the northern Pontic region were significant enough that the Athenian Dēmosthenēs had significant commercial endeavours in the Bosporan kingdom, from where he received a 1000 of wheat per year, and he had the statues of the Bosporan rulers Pairisadēs I, Satyros I and Gorgippos insalled in the Athenian market. Dēmosthenēs himself had had a Scythian maternal grandmother, and his political opponents Dinarchus and Aeschines went so far as to launch racist attacks against Dēmosthenēs by referring to his Scythian ancestry to attempt discrediting him.

The Scythian kingdom experienced an early wave of immigration by a related Iranic nomadic people, the Sarmatians, during the 4th century BC, to the Pontic steppe. This slow flow of Sarmatian immigration continued during the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, but these small and isolated groups did not negatively affect its hegemony.

= The reign of Ateas

=

Between and 339 BC, the Scythians were ruled by their most famous king, Ateas, whose reign coincided with the growth of the kingdom of Macedonia under its king Philip II. The main activities of Ateas were directed towards expanding Scythian hegemony to the lands south of the Istros. Ateas also successfully battled the Thracian Triballi and the Dacian Histriani, as well as threatened to conquer the city of Byzantion, where he may also have struck his coins.

Since both Ateas and Philip had been interested in the region to the immediate south of the Istros, the two kings formed an alliance against the Histriani. However, this alliance soon fell apart and war broke out between the Scythian and Macedonian kingdoms, ending in 339 BC in a battle at the estuary of the Istros where Ateas was killed. The Scythian kingdom had lost its new territories in Thrace due to this defeat. The power of Scythian kingdom was not immediately harmed by the death of Ateas, and it did not experience any weakening or disintegration as a result of it: the Kamianka city continued to prosper and the Scythian burials from this time continued to be lavishly-furnished.

Decline and fall of Pontic Scythia

The defeat against Philip II was followed by a series of military defeats which led to a significant decline during the late 4th century BC. Although the experience of Philip II's military dealings with the Scythians led his son Alexander the Great to choose to avoid attacking them, his conquests harmed trade networks Pontic Olbia depended on. In 331 or 330 BC, Alexander III's general Zopyrion campaigned against the Scythian kingdom. Although Zōpyriōn's army was defeated by the Scythians, his attack initiated the final decline of Olbia, and various tribes from the West such as the Celts started moving into its territories.

In 309 BC, the Scythian king Agaros participated in the Bosporan Civil War on the side of Satyros II against his half-brother Eumēlos. Agaros provided Satyros with 20,000 infantrymen and 10,000 cavalrymen, and after Satyros was defeated and killed, his son fled to Agaros's realm for refuge. In the early 3rd century BC, the Scythian kingdom started declining economically as a result of competition from Egypt, which under the Ptolemaic dynasty had again become a supplier of grain to Greece.

In the early 3rd century BC, the Scythian kingdom faced a number of interlocking unfavourable conditions, such as climatic changes in the steppes and economic crises from overgrazed pastures and a series of military setbacks, as well as the intensifiation of the arrival from the east of the Sarmatians, who captured Scythian pastures. With the loss of its most important resource, the Scythian kingdom suddenly collapsed, and the Scythian capital of Kamianka was abandoned. The Sarmatian tribe responsible for most of the destruction were the Roxolani.

As a consequence, the material culture of the Scythians also disappeared in the early 3rd century BC. The peoples of the forest steppe also became independent again, returning to their sedentary lifestyle while all Scythian elements disappeared from their culture. Grain exports from the northern Pontic region declined drastically, while Greek inscriptions stopped mentioning names of Scythian slaves. Following the invasion, the Sarmatian tribes became the new dominant force of the Pontic Steppe, resulting in the name "" () replacing "" as the name of the Pontic Steppe.

Sarmatian pressure against the Scythians continued in the 3rd century BC, so that the Sarmatians had reached as far as the city of Chersonesus in the Tauric Chersonese by 280 BC, and most native and Greek settlements on the north shore of the Black Sea were destroyed by the Sarmatians over the course of the to , Celts, the Thracian Getae, and the Germanic Bastarnae from the west, also put the Scythians under pressure by seizing their lands. By the early 2nd century BC, the Bastarnae had grown powerful enough that they were able to stop the southward advance of the Sarmatians along the line of the Istros river.

Late period

With the Sarmatian invasion and the collapse of the Pontic Scythian kingdom, the Scythians were pushed to the fringes of the northern Pontic region where urban life was still possible, and they retreated to a series of fortified settlements along the major rivers and fled to the two regions both known as "Little Scythia," which remained the only places where the Scythians could still be found in by the 2nd century BC were:
* the first Little Scythia, whose capital was Scythian Neapolis, was composed of the territories of the Tauric Chersonese and the lower reaches of the Borysthenēs and Hypanis rivers;
* the second Little Scythia was located in the northeast of Thrace immediately to the south of the mouth of the Istros river and the west of the Black Sea, in the territory corresponding to present-day Dobruja.

By this time, although the Scythians living in the Tauric Chersonese had managed to retain some of their nomadic lifestyle, the limited area of their polity forced them to become more and more sedentary and to primarily engage in stockbreeding in far away pastures, as well as in agriculture, and they also acted as trading intermediaries between the Graeco-Roman world and the peoples of the steppes.

With sedentarisation, both fortified and unfortified settlements replaced the older nomadic camps in the basin of the lower Borysthenēs river, which prevented the remaining Scythians from continuing to maintain a steppe economy. Therefore, the number of fortified settlements in the Tauric Chersonese increased with the retreat into this territory and away from the steppe of the Scythian aristocracy, who was then rapidly embracing a Hellenistic lifestyle. By the 1st century BC, these Scythians living in the Tauric Chersonese had fully become sedentary farmers.

These later Scythians slowly intermarried with the native Tauri and the infiltrating Sarmatians, and their culture had little to do with the earlier classical Scythian culture, instead consisting of a combination of those with the traditions of the Tauroi from the mountains of the Tauric Chersonese and of the Greeks of the coasts, and exhibiting Sarmatian and La Tène Celtic influences.

In the 1st century BC, both Little Scythias were destroyed and their territories annexed by the king Mithridates VI Eupator of the kingdom of Pontus despite the Scythians' alliance with their former enemies, the Roxolani, against him.

End

The Scythian populations in both Little Scythias continued to exist after the end of Mithridates's empire, although they had become fully sedentary by then and were increasingly intermarrying with the native Tauri, hence why Roman sources often referred to them as "Tauro-Scythians" (; ).

These late Scythians were slowly assimilated by the Sarmatians over the course of to AD, although they continued to exist as an independent people throughout the 2nd century AD until around AD: in the settled regions of the lower Borysthenēs, lower Hypanis, and the Tauric Chersonese, an urbanised and Hellenised Scythian society continued to develop which also exhibited Thracian and Celtic influences.

The Scytho-Sarmatian Iranic nomads' dominance of the Pontic Steppe finally ended with the invasion of the Goths and other Germanic tribes around , which was when the Scythian settlements in Crimea and the lower Borysthenēs were permanently destroyed.

The Scythians nevertheless continued to exist until the invasion of the Huns in the 4th century AD, and they finally ceased to exist as an independent group after being fully assimilated by the other populations who moved into the Pontic Steppe at the height of the Migration Period in the 5th century AD.

Legacy

The Graeco-Roman peoples were profoundly fascinated by the Scythians. This fascination endured in Europe even after both the disappearance of the Scythians and the end of Graeco-Roman culture, and continued throughout Classical and Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, lasting till the 18th century in the Modern Period.

Antiquity

The inroads of the Cimmerians and the Scythians into West Asia over the course of the 8th to 7th centuries BC, which were early precursors of the later invasions of West Asia by steppe nomads such as the Huns, various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire, Mongols, in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Mediaeval Period, had destabilised the political balance which had prevailed in the region between the dominant great powers of Assyria, Urartu, and Phrygia, thus irreversibly changing the geopolitical situation of West Asia. These Cimmerians and Scythians also influenced the developments in West Asia through the spread of the steppe nomad military technology brought by them into this region.

The first mention of the Scythians in ancient Greek literature is in Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, , which refers to them as the "mare-milking Scythians" () and as the "milk-drinkers who have wagons for houses" () Hesiod also referred to the Scythians along with the Ethiopians and Libyans as peoples "whose mind is over their tongue," that is who approve of prudent reserve.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote a legendary account of the arrival of the Scythians. Herodotus's narrative also contracted the events of the Scythians' arrival into West Asia by portraying Madyes as the king led them from the steppes into West Asia. Herodotus also exaggerated the power of the Scythians in West Asia by claiming that they dominated all of it. Herodotus's narrative depicted Scythia as an opposite of Africa, especially Egypt, which was a theme continued by other ancient Greek authors, such as Pseudo-Hippocrates, who represented Greece as being the mean situated between these two extremes.

By the 5th century BC, the image of the Scythians in Athens had become the quintessential stereotype used for barbarians, (non-Greeks). They increasingly associated the Scythians with drunkenness. Ancient Greek authors considered the Scythians and Persians, not as related Iranic peoples, but in opposition to each other. The Scythians represented "savagery" and were linked to the Thracians, while the Persians represented "refined civilisation" and were connected to the Assyrians and Babylonians.

The 4th century BC Greek historian, Ephorus, Ephorus of Cyme, described the Scythians as one of the "four great barbarian peoples" of the known world, along with the Celts, Persians, and Libyans. Ephorus used the perception of Anacharsis as a personification of "Barbarian wisdom" to create an idealised image of the Scythians being as an "invincible" people, which became a tradition of Greek literature. Ephorus created a fictitious account of a legendary Scythian king, named Idanthyrsos or Iandysos, who became the ruler of all Asia.

The Ancient Greeks included the Scythians in their mythology, with Herodorus making a mythical Scythian named Teutarus into a herdsman who served Amphitryon and taught archery to Heracles. Herodorus also portrayed the Titan Prometheus as a Scythian king, and, by extension, described Prometheus's son Deucalion as a Scythian as well. The Romans confused the peoples whom they perceived as archetypical "Barbarians," namely the Scythians and the Celts, into a single grouping whom they called the "Celto-Scythians" () and supposedly living from Gaul in the west to the Pontic steppe in the east.

Strabo of Amasia idealised the Scythians as leading a nomadic life founded on simplicity. According to Strabo's narrative, the Scythians became "corrupted" and lost their simple and honest life because of the influence of the Greeks' "love of luxury and sensual pleasures." Following Strabo, the Scythians continued to be represented as an idealised freedom-loving and truthful people. Later Graeco-Roman tradition transformed the Scythian prince Anacharsis into a legendary figure as a kind of "noble savage" who represented "Barbarian wisdom," due to which the ancient Greeks included him as one of the Seven Sages of Greece and he became a popular figure in Greek literature.

The richness of Scythian burials was already well known in Antiquity, and, by the 3rd century BC, the robbing of Scythian graves had begun, initially carried out by Scythians themselves. During Late Antiquity itself, another wave of grave robbery of Scythian burials occurred at the time of the Sarmatian and Huns, Hunnish domination of the Pontic Steppe, when these peoples reused older Scythian kurgans to bury their own dead.

Mediaeval period

Although the Scythians themselves had disappeared by the Middle Ages, the complex relations between their nomadic groupings and the settled populations of Southeast and Central Europe were continued by the Hungarians, the Bulgars, Rus and Poles. Mediaeval authors followed the use of the name of the Scythians as an archaising term for steppe nomads to designate the Mongols.

Various cultures of North Europe started claiming ancestry from the "Scythians" and adopted the Graeco-Roman vision of the "barbarity" of ancient peoples of Europe as legitimate records of their own ancient cultures. In this context, the similarity of the name with the Latin name of the Irish, , led to the flourishing of speculations of a Scythian ancestry of the Irish. Drawing on the confusion of the with both and the , as well as on the conceptualisation of Scythia as a typical "barbarian land", Bede invented a Scythian origin for the Picts in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, .

The Irish mythological text titled the Lebor Gabála Érenn, repeated this legend, and claimed that these supposed Scythian ancestors of the Irish had been invited to Egypt because the Pharaohs in the Bible#In the Book of Exodus, pharaoh admired how Nel, the son of Fénius, was knowledgeable on the world's many languages, with Nel marrying the pharaoh's daughter Scota. According to the , the Scythians fled from Egypt when pharaoh drowned after Moses Crossing the Red Sea, parted the Red Sea during the flight of the Israelites, and went back to Scythia, and from there to Ireland via Africa and Iberian peninsula, Spain while Nel's and Scota's son, Goídel Glas, became the eponym the Gaels, Gaelic people.

Modern period

Drawing on the Biblical narrative and the Graeco-Roman conflation of the Scythians and Celts, Early modern period, early modern European scholars believed that the Celts were Scythians. It therefore became popular among Pseudohistory, pseudohistorians of the 15th and 16th centuries to claim that the Irish people were the "truest" inheritors of Scythian culture so as both to distinguish and denigrate Irish culture. While these claims in much of Europe were abandoned during the Reformation and Renaissance, British works on Ireland continued to emphasise the alleged Scythian ancestry of the Irish, until it was discredited by early 19th century advances in philology. During the early modern period itself, Hungarian scholars identified the Hungarians with the Huns, and claimed that they descended from Scythians. Therefore, the image of the Scythians among Hungarians was shaped into one of "noble savages" who were valorous and honest, uncouth and hostile to "Western refinement," but at the same time defended "Christianity in Europe, Christian civilisation" from aggression from the East.

Large scale robbery of Scythian tombs started when the Russian Empire started occupying the Pontic steppe in the 18th century: in 1718 the Russian Tsar#Russia, Tsar Peter the Great, Peter I issued decrees overseeing the collection of "right old and rare" objects to Saint Petersburg in exchange for compensation, and the material thus obtained became the basis of the Saint Petersburg Hermitage Museum, State Hermitage Museum's collection of Scythian gold. This resulted in significant grave robbery of Scythian burials, due to which most of the Scythian tombs of the Russian Empire had been sacked by 1764. In the 19th century, Scythian kurgans in Ukraine, Kuban, and Crimea had been looted, so that by the 20th century, more than 85% of Scythian kurgans excavated by archaeologists had already been pillaged. The grave robbers of the 18th and 19th centuries were experienced enough that they almost always found the burial chambers of the tombs and stole the treasures contained within them.

In the later 19th century, a cultural movement called () emerged in Russia whose members unreservedly referred to themselves and to Russians as a whole as (). Closely affiliated to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the were a movement of Russian nationalism, Russian nationalist religious mysticists who saw Russia as a sort of Messiah-like figure who would usher in a new historical era of the world, and their identification with the ancient Scythians was a positive acceptance of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky's view that Europe had always seen Russians as being Asiatic. The culmination of was the famous poem written in 1918 by Aleksandr Blok, titled (), in which he depicted Russia as a barrier between the "warring races" of Europe and Asia, and he made use of the racist Yellow Peril ideology by threatening that Russia was capable of stopping its "protection" of Europe and allow East Asians to overrun it.

The scholar Adrienne Mayor hypothesised that the legend of the griffin originated among the Scythians, who came across fossilised skeletons of the dinosaur Protoceratops, . This hypothesis was contested by the palaeontologist Mark P. Witton, who argued that the imagery of the griffin originated in early Bronze Age West Asia. The imagery of griffins in Scythian art itself was borrowed from the artistic traditions of West Asia and ancient Greece. The scholar David W. Anthony, David Anthony has also hypothesised that the martial role of women among Scytho-Sarmatians had given rise to the Greek myths about Amazons. However, according to the Scythologist Askold Ivantchik, the imagery of the Amazons was already known to Homer and was originally unrelated to the Scythians, with the link between Scythians and Amazons in Greek literature beginning only later in the 5th century BC.

Culture and society

The Scythians were a member of the broader cultures of nomadic Iranic peoples living throughout the Eurasian steppe and possessed significant commonalities with them, such as similar weapons, horse harnesses and "Animal Style" art. The Scythians were a people from the Eurasian steppe, whose conditions required them to be pastoralists, which required mobility to find natural pastures, which in turn shaped every aspect of the Scythian nomads' lives, ranging from the structure of their habitations and the style of their clothing to how they cooked. This nomadic culture depended on a self-sufficient economy whose own resources could provide for its sustainance, and whose central component was the horse, which could be used peacefully to barter for commodities and services or belligerently in a form of warfare which provided nomadic fighters superiority until the creation of firearms. Since the Scythians did not have a written language, their non-material culture can only be pieced together through writings by non-Scythian authors, parallels found among other Iranic peoples, and archaeological evidence.

Language

The Scythians as well as the Saka of Central Asia spoke a Scythian languages, group of languages belonging to the eastern branch of the Iranic language family. A specific feature of the language was the transformation of the sound /δ/ () into . The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum: "Scytho-Sarmatian" in the west and "Scytho-Khotanese" or Saka language, Saka in the east. The Scythian languages were mostly marginalised and assimilated as a consequence of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages Slavic migrations to the Balkans, Slavic and Turkic expansion, Turkic expansions. The western (Sarmatian) group of ancient Scythian survived as the medieval language of the Alans and eventually gave rise to the modern Ossetian language.

Social organisation

Scythian society constited of kinship structures where clan groups formed the basis of the community and of political organisation. Clan elders wielded considerable power and were able to depose kings. As an extension of clan-based relations, a custom of blood brotherhood existed among the Scythians.

Scythian society was stratified along class lines. By the 5th to 4th centuries BC, the Scythian population was stratified into five different class groups: the aristocracy, very wealthy commoners, moderately wealthy commoners, the peasantry, who were the producer class and formed the mass of the populace, and the poor. The Scythian aristocracy were an elite class dominating all aspects of Scythian life consisting of property owners who possessed Landed property, landed estates large enough that it sometimes took a whole day to ride around them. These freeborn Scythian rulers used the whip as their symbol. Their burials were the largest ones, normally including between 3 and 11 human sacrifices, and showcasing luxury grave goods. The elite classes rewarded their dependants' loyalty through presents consisting of metal products whose manufacture was overseen by the elites themselves in the industrial centre located in the Scythian capital city at Kamianka.

The commoners were free but still depended to some extent on the aristocracy. They were allowed to own some property, usually a pair of oxen needed to pull a cart, hence why they were called () in Greek. By the 4th century BC, the economic exploitation of these free commoners became the main economic policy of Scythia. The burials of these commoners were largely simple, and contained simpler furnishings and fewer grave goods. Serfdom, Serfs belonged to the poorest sections of the native populations of Scythia and were not free and did not own cattle or wagons. Stablemen and farmers were recruited from the serf class. Although Scythian society was not dependent on slavery, the Scythian ruling class nevertheless still used a large number of slaves to till the land and tend to the cattle. Slaves were also assigned to the production of dairy products.

The Scythian society was patriarchal; while women from the upper classes were free to ride horses, women from the lower classes may have not been free to do so and may have spent most of their time indoors. Among the more nomadic tribes, the women and children spent most of their time indoors in the wagons. With increased Sauromatian immigration in the late 6th century BC, among whom women held high social status, the standing of women improved enough that they were allowed to become warriors from the Middle Scythian period. Within Scythian priesthood there existed a group of transgender soothsayers, called the Enaree, (), who were born and lived their early lives as men, and later in their lives assumed the mannerisms and social roles role of women. Polygamy was practised among the Scythian upper classes, and kings had harems in which both local women and woman who had been bought lived. Some of these women were the kings' legal wives and others were their concubines. After the deaths of Scythian men, their main wives or concubines would be killed and buried alongside them. The wives and concubines could also be passed down as inheritance.

Administrative structure

The Scythians were organised into a tribal nomadic state with its own territorial boundaries, and comprising both pastoralist and urban elements. Such nomadic states were managed by institutions of authority presided over by the rulers of the tribes, the warrior aristocracy, and ruling dynasty. The Scythians were monarchical, and the king of all the Scythians was the main tribal chief, who was from the dominant tribe of the Royal Scythians. The historian and anthropologist Anatoly Khazanov has suggested that the Scythians had been ruled by the same dynasty from the time of their stay in West Asia until the end of their kingdom in the Pontic Steppe, while the Scythologist Askold Ivantchik has instead proposed that the Scythians had been ruled by at least three dynasties, including that of Bartatua, that of Spargapeithes, and that of Ariapeithes.

The Scythians were ruled by a triple monarchy, with a high king who ruled all of the Scythian kingdom, and two younger kings who ruled in sub-regions. The kingdom composed of three kingdoms which were in turn made of ''nomes'' headed by local lords. Ceremonies were held in each nome on a yearly basis. Such structures were also present among the ancient Xiongnu and the late nomadic Huns.

The Scythians were organised into popular and warrior assemblies that limited the power of the kings. Although the kings' powers were limited by these assemblies, royal power itself was held among the Scythians to be divinely ordained: this conception of royal power was initially foreign to Scythian culture and originated in West Asia. The Scythian kings were later able to further increase their position through the concentration of economic power in their hands because of their dominance of the grain trade with the Greeks. By the 4th century BC, the Scythian kingdom had developed into a rudimentary state after the king Ateas had united all the Scythian tribes under his personal authority.

Scythian kings chose members of the royal entourage from the tribes under his authority, who were to be killed and buried along with him after his death to serve him in the afterlife. Warriors belonging to the entourage of Scythian rulers were also buried in smaller and less magnificent tombs surrounding the tombs of the rulers.

Economy

The dominant tribe of the Royal Scythians originally led a transhumant warrior-pastoralist nomadic way of life by spending the summer northwards in the steppes and moving southwards towards the coasts in the winter. With the integration of Scythia with the Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea, the Scythians also soon became involved in activities such as cultivating grain, fishing, trading and craftsmanship. Although the Scythians adopted the use of coinage as a method of payment for trade with the Greeks, they never used it for their own domestic market.

Pastoralism and agriculture

The Scythians practised animal husbandry, and their society was highly based on nomadic pastoralism, which was practised by both the sedendary and nomadic Scythian tribes, with their herds being made up of about 40% horses, 40% cattle, and 18% sheep, but no pigs, which the Scythians refused to keep in their lands. Horse rearing was especially an important part of Scythian life, not only because the Scythians rode them, but also because horses were a source of food. During the 1st millennium BC, the wet and damp climate prevailing in the Pontic Steppe constituted a propitious environment which caused grass to grow in abundance, in turn allowing the Scythians to rear large herds of horse and cattle.

Scythian pastoralism followed seasonal rhythm, moving closer to the shores of the Maeotian Sea in winter and back to the steppe in summer. The Scythians appear to have not stored food for their animals, who therefore likely foraged under the snow during winter. The strong reliance on pastoralism itself ensured self-sufficiency, the importance of which is visible in Scythian petroglyphic art. Hunting among the Scythians was primarily done for sport and entartainment rather than for procuring meat, although it was occasionally also carried out for food.

The settlements in the valley of the Borysthenēs river especially grew wheat, millet, and barley, which grew abundantly thanks to the fertile black soil of the steppe. This allowed the Scythians to, in addition of being principally reliant on domesticated animals, also complement their source of food with agriculture, and the Scythian upper classes owned large estates in which large numbers of slaves and members of the tribes subordinate to the Royal Scythians were used to till the land and rear cattle.

Metalworking

The populations of Scythia practised both metal casting and blacksmithing, with the same craftsmen usually both casting copper and bronze and forging iron. The ores from which copper and tin were smelted were likely mined in the region of the Donets Ridge, and metal might also have been imported from the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus. Iron was meanwhile smelted out of bog iron ores obtained from the swampy regions on the lower Dnipro. The Scythians had practised goldsmithing from before their migration out of Central Asia. This tradition of goldsmithing continued until the times of the Pontic Scythian kingdom.

The metallurgical workshops which produced the weapons and horse harnesses of the Scythians during the Early Scythian period were located in the forest steppe. By the Middle Scythian period, its principal centre was at a site corresponding to present-day Kamianka-Dniprovska, Kamianka, where the whole process of manufacturing bog iron was carried out. Other metals, such as copper, lead, and zinc were also smelted at Kamianka, while gold- and silversmiths also worked there. This large-scale industrial operation consumed large amounts of timber which was obtained from the river valleys of Scythia, and metalworking might have developed at Kamianka because timber was available nearby.

Trade

The Scythians exported iron, grain and slaves to the Greek colonies, and animal products, grain, Fish as food, fish, honey, wax, forest products, Fur clothing, furs, Hide (skin), skins, Lumber, wood, horses, cattle, sheep, and slaves to mainland Greece on both sides of the Aegean Sea. Also sold to the Greeks by the Scythians were beavers and beaver-skins, and rare Fur clothing, furs that the Scythians had themselves bought from the populations living to their north and east such as the Thyssagetae and Iurcae of the Ural Mountains who hunted rare animals and sewed their skins into clothing. Other Scythian exports to Greece included the metallurgical production of Kamianka, Scythian horses, and Scythian mercenary mounted archers.

The most important export was grain, especially wheat, The importance of the Black Sea coast increased in the later 6th century BC following the Persian Empire's conquest of Egypt, which deprived the states of Greece proper of the Egyptian grain that they depended on. The relations between the Scythians and the Greek colonies became more hostile in the early 5th century BC, with the Scythians destroying the Greek cities' and rural settlements, and therefore their grain-producing hinterlands. The resulting system saw the Greek colonies adjusting from agricultural production to trade of grain produced elsewhere. The Scythian monopoly over the trade of grain imported from the forest steppe to the Greek cities came to an end sometime between 435 and 400 BC, after which the Greek cities regained their independence and rebuilt their .

Beginning in the 5th century BC, the grain trade with Greece was carried out through the intermediary of the Bosporan kingdom. As a consequence of the Peloponnesian War, the Bosporan Kingdom became the main supplier of grain to Greece in the 4th century BC, which resulted in an increase of the trade of grain between the Scythians and the Bosporans. The Scythian aristocracy became the main intermediary in providing grain to the Bosporan Kingdom. Inscriptions from the Greek cities on the northern Black Sea coast also show that upper class Greek families also derived wealth from this trade.

The Scythians also sold slaves acquired from neighbouring or subordinate tribes to the Greeks. The Greek colonies on the northern Black Sea coast were hubs of slave trafficking.

Beginning in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, the Scythians had been importing craft goods and luxuries such as vessels, decorations made from previous metals, bronze items, personal ornaments, gold and silver vases, black burnished pottery, Hardstone carving, carved semi-precious and gem stones, wines, fabrics, oil, and offensive and defensive weapons made in the workshops of Pontic Olbia or in mainland Greece, as well as pottery made by the Greeks of the Aegean islands.

The Scythians bought various Greek products, especially amphora, of wine, and the pottery such as oenochoe, and kylix, . The island of Chios in the Aegean Sea produced wine to be sold to the Scythians, in exchange of which slaves from Scythia were sold in the island's very prominent slave market. The Scythians also bought olive oil, perfumes, ointments, and other luxury goods from the Greeks, such as Scythian-style objects crafted by Greek artisans.

An important trade gold trade route ran through Pontic Scythia, starting from Pontic Olbia and reaching the Altai Mountains in the far east. Gold was traded from eastern Eurasia until Pontic Olbia through this route. The conquest of the north Pontic region and their imposition of a "" created the conditions of safety for traders which enabled the establishment of this route. Olbian-made goods have been found on this route until the Ural Mountains. This trade route was another significant source of revenue for the Scythian rulers.

Lifestyle

Nomads and pastoralists

The peoples of Scythia consisted of a mix of sedentary farmer populations and nomads. with the tribes living in the steppes remaining primarily nomadic and having lifestyles and customs inextricably linked to their nomadic way of life. During these early periods, the nomadic Scythians did not build settlements, but instead lived in wagons and temporary tents while leading a mobile pastoral life with their herds and wagon trains. With the integration of Scythia with the Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea, some of the nomadic Scythians started to settle down, so that they had already started becoming semi-nomads and sedentary farmers by the 5th century BC during the Middle period, and they had largely become settled farmers by the 3rd century BC.

The more nomadic Scythians lived in habitations suited for nomadic lifestyles, such as tents similar to the of the Turkic peoples and the of the Mongolic peoples that could easily be assembled and disassembled, as well as covered wagons that functioned as tents on up to six wheels. The walls and floors of these portable habitations were made of felt and the tents themselves were bound together using ropes made from horse hair.

Beginning in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the Scythians started building fortified sedentary settlements, of which the most important ones were located on major routes which provided access to the major rivers of Scythia. The largest and most important of these was the settlement of Kamianka, built in the late 5th century BC and protected by ramparts and steep banks of the Borysthenēs river. The Kamianka site was the location of the seasonal royal headquarters and the aristocrats and royalty residing in the city's acropolis, which contained stone houses and buildings built over stone foundations. It was also the residence of a farmer population and of metalsmiths. The houses of these farmers and metalsmiths were single-storeyed, with gable-rooves, ranged from 40 to 150 metres square in size and could include multiple rooms, and had clay-painted and felt-fabric adorned walls made of beams buried vertically in the ground; Kamianka also contained square pit houses made of pole constructions with recessed surfaces.

Smaller Scythian settlements also existed, where were cultivated large amounts of crops such as wheat, millet, and barley.

Diet

The Scythians ate the meat from the horses, cattle, and sheep they reared. Milk, especially that of mares, was also an important part of the Scythians' diet, and it was both consumed and used to make cheese and an alcoholic drink made from milk similar to the kumis, still widely consumed by Eurasian steppe nomads. The Scythians also consumed wheat and millet in the form of a porridge. The Scythians also supplemented, to varying extents depending on the regions where they lived, their diets by hunting deer, Saiga antelope, steppe antelopes, beavers, and other wild animals, as well as by fishing from the large rivers flowing through Scythia. Cooking was mainly done in cauldrons and over fires using dried dung as fuel.

In addition to these, the Scythians consumed large amounts of wine, which they bought from the Greeks. Unlike the Greeks, who diluted wine with water before drinking it, the Scythians drank it undiluted. During the earlier phase of the Scythian Pontic kingdom, wine was primarily consumed by the aristocracy, and its consumption became more prevalent among the wealthier members of the populace only after the 5th century BC.

Clothing and medicine

Scythian garments were sewn together from several pieces of cloth, and generally did not require the use of Fibula (brooch), fibulae to be held in place, unlike the clothing of other ancient European peoples. Scythian dress consisted of combination of various leathers and furs designed for efficiency and comfort on horseback, and was expensively and richly decorated with brightly coloured embroidery and applique work as well as facings of pearl and gold. The Scythians wore clothing typical of the steppe nomads, which tended to be soft, warm, and close-fitting, made from wool and leather and fur and felts, and decorated with d and golden ornaments. Scythians wore jewellery usually made of gold, but sometimes also of bronze.

Scythian men grew their hair long and their beards to significant sizes. Nothing is known about the hairstyles of Scythian women. The Scythians were acquainted with the use of soap, which they used to wash their heads. Scythian women cleaned themselves using a paste made from the wood of cypress and Cedrus, cedar, ground together with frankincense, and water on a stone until it acquired a thick consistency. The women then applied this paste over themselves and removed it after a day, leaving their skin clean, glossy, and sweet-smelling. Scythian women also used cosmetics such as scented water and various ointments. These cleaning practices were especially performed after funerals. Scythian men and women both used mirrors, and bronze mirrors made in Pontic Olbia and whose handles were decorated with animal figures such as those of stags, panthers, and rams, were popular during the early Scythian periods.

A group of Scythian shaman-priests called the (, ) was knowledgeable in the use of snake venom for medicinal purposes. Ingredients they used included cannabis, as a way to relieve pain, the analgesic oil of wild cabbage to stimulate circulation and to repel insects, and the cleansing paste used by Scythian women, which had various medicinal properties. In addition to human medicine, the Scythians were adept at veterinary medicine, especially for their horses, although they also domesticated dogs.

Art

The Scythians may have had bards who composed and recited oral poetry.

The physical art of the Scythians comprised part of the "Animal Style", where a specific range of animals were depicted in limited poses. The style descended from the artwork of Central Asia and Siberia during the 9th century BC. The "Animal Style" emerged in the 7th century BC, during their occupation of Media, due to which the art of the Scythians absorbed West Asian themes. Scythian art was then influenced by the Sauromatians, Thracian art, Greek, and Achaemenid Persian art. The "Animal Style" later spread to the west and eventually influenced Celtic art. It also introduced Shang dynasty, Shang Chinese metalwork, such as "cruciform tubes" used in harnesses, to the Hallstatt culture.

Scythian art stopped existing after the early 3rd century BC, and the art of the later Scythians of Crimea and Dobruja was completely Hellenised.

Religion

The Scythian religion, religion of the Scythians was a variant of the Ancient Iranian religion, Pre-Zoroastrian Iranic religion which belonged to a more archaic stage of Indo-Iranians#Religion, Indo-Iranic religious development than the Zoroastrian and Hinduism, Hindu systems. Unlike the Persians and the Medes, the Scythians and the Sarmatians were not affected by the Zoroastrian reforms. The use of cannabis (drug), cannabis to induce trance and divination by soothsayers was a characteristic of the Scythian belief system.

Warfare

The Scythians were a people with a strong warrior culture, and fighting was one of the main occupations of Scythian men, so that war constituted a sort of national industry for the Scythians. Scythian men were all trained in war exercises and in archery from a young age. The Aroteres were an especially war-like Scythian tribe. However, the small number of depictions of warfare compared to the number of representations of peaceful pastoralist activities in Scythian art suggests that their war-like tendencies of the Scythians might have been exaggerated.

Strategy and tactics

As Equestrianism, equestrian nomads, the Scythians excelled at horsemanship, and their horses were the most high quality in Europe. Mounted archery was the main form of Scythian warfare. The saddle was invented by the Scythians in the 7th century BC. Scythian saddles had four raised bolsters at each corner, which, before the invention of the stirrup, allowed the riders to raise themselves without being encumbered by their horses' bouncing, thus allowing Scythian mounted archers to operate at very high performance levels. Scythian saddles were dyed in various colours; they were also wholly decorated with wool, leather, felt, wooden carvings, and gold leaf.
The high king had the supreme authority over the armies; the local lords were in charge of the army of a nome; the heads of clans were in charge of war bands. The nomes of the Scythian kingdom were in charge of spreading information about the war. The Scythians fought in mass formations of mounted archers and were adept at using feigned retreat, feigned flight tactics. Serfs and slaves were subordinate to the warriors and accompanied them unarmed, and would be armed with spears only in extremely severe situations.

The Scythians had several war-related customs meant to transfer the power of defeated enemies to Scythian warriors. For example, every Scythian warrior would drink the blood of the first enemy they would kill. They Headhunting, collected the severed heads of their enemies and bring them to their king, where they were Scalping, scalped. The scalps themselves were tanned and used as decorative handkerchiefs or towels, or fashioned Skull cup, into leather-covered drinking bowls. Meanwhile, enemy corpses were flayed, and the skin was made into saddles, while the skin and fingernails from the enemies' right hands was used to make Gorytos, .

Archery

Their typical weapon was the very recurve bow, recurved or reflex Composite bow, composite bow that was easy to use for mounted warriors. Scythian bows were the most complex composite bows in both their recurved profiles and their cross-sections, highly engineered and made from wood, horn, sinew, and sturgeon fish glue through laborious craftsmanship, and were capable of delivering military draw weights. Although the shape of Scythian arrows changed with time, they maintained a basic structure. Scythian arrows had shafts made of reed or birch wood, with arrowheads mostly of bronze, and more rarely iron and bone. The shape of Scythian bows and the shape of their bronze arrowheads made them the most powerful firing weapon of their time, due to which they were adopted by West Asian armies in the 7nd century BC.

When not used, Scythian bows and arrows were kept in a combined quiver-bowcase called a Gorytos, . Scythian hung from belts at the left hip, with the arrows usually taken using the bow hand and drawn on the bowstring using the right hand, although the Scythians were skilled at ambidextrous archery. Scythian bows and arrows might have required the use of Thumb ring#Archery, thumb rings to be drawn, although none have been found yet, possibly because they might have been made of perishable materials.

The Scythians coated their arrows with a potent poison referred to in Greek as (). To prepare this poison, the Scythians mixed decomposing adders with putefried human blood and dung. This combined snake venom and infections such as tetanus or gangrene from the dung, which thrived in the blood. Thus, the caused such lasting harm that even minor wounds from arrows coated were likely lethal. The was not used for hunting since the meat would not have been consumable. The rotting stench of the also functioned as chemical weapons, aided by the ancient belief that foul miasmas caused disease. Another poison used by the Scythians to coat their arrows was Conium maculatum, hemlock.

Other weapons and armour

In addition to the bow and arrow, the Scythians also used weapons such as iron spears, long swords, short swords borrowed from Georgian Bronze Age weaponry, bimetallic pickaxes, called sagaris, , war axes, lances, Dart (missile), darts, lassoes, and Sling (weapon), slings. The Scythians used locally-made small hide or wicker or wooden shields reinforced with iron strips, often decorated with central plaques.

Some Scythian warriors wore rich protective armour and belts made of metal plates. Commoner warriors used leather or hide armour. Aristocrats used scale armour made of scales of bone, bronze, and iron sewn onto leather along the top edge. This style, also used to protext horses, had been borrowed from West Asia. Helmets were in various types: cast bronze helmets with an opening for the face, called "Kuban type," were made by the Peoples of the Caucasus, Caucasian peoples; these were replaced by Greek-made Attic helmet, Attic, Corinthian helmet, Corinthian, Chalcidian helmet, Chalcidic, and Phrygian helmet, Thracian helmets in the 6th century BC; and composite scale helmets made of iron or bronze plates started being used in the later 6th century BC. Greek-made greaves were imported from the 5th century BC.

Physical appearance

The Scythians looked similar to the populations of Europe, and depictions of Scythian men in Persian sculptures and on Scythian gold objects show them as stocky and powerfully built, with strong facial features and long and thick wavy hair.

Upper class Scythians were particularly tall with the men usually being over 1.80 metres tall, sometimes reaching 1.90 metres, and on some rarer occasions being even more than 2 metres tall.

The difference in height between these upper class Scythians and the Scythian commoners was of around 10 to 15 centimetres, with the height difference being a symbol of status among the upper-class men. Analysis of skeletons shows that Scythians had longer arm and leg bones and stronger bone formation than present-day people living in their former territories.

Due to his unfamiliarity with Scythian dress, Pseudo-Hippocrates inaccurately claimed that the Scythians suffered from Hypermobility (joints), hypermobility of the joints.

In ''Histories (Herodotus), Histories'', the 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus describes the Budini of Scythia as red hair, red-haired and grey-eyed. In the 5th century BC, Greek physician Hippocrates argued that the Scythians were light skinned. In the 3rd century BC, the Greek poet Callimachus described the Arismapes (Arimaspi) of Scythia as fair-haired. The 2nd-century BC Han China, Han Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described the Sai (Saka), an eastern people closely related to the Scythians, as having yellow (probably meaning hazel or green) and blue eyes. In the late 2nd century AD, the Christian theology, Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria says that the Scythians and the Celts have long auburn hair. The 2nd-century Greek philosopher Polemon of Laodicea, Polemon includes the Scythians among the northern peoples characterised by red hair and blue-grey eyes. In the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, the Greek physician Galen writes that Scythians, Sarmatians, Illyrians, Germanic peoples and other northern peoples have reddish hair. The fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the Scythians were fair skinned and blond haired. The 5th-century physician Adamantius (physician), Adamantius, who often followed Polemon, describes the Scythians as fair-haired.

Archaeology

Scythian archaeology can be divided into three stages:
* Early Scythian – from the mid-8th or the late 7th century BC to
* Classical Scythian or Mid-Scythian – from to
* Late Scythian – from to the mid-3rd century AD, in the Crimea and the Lower Dnipro, by which time the population was settled.

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include barrow grave tombs called "kurgans, kurgans" (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art), gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices.

Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of cities and fortifications.

Genetics

The Scythians (specifically Western or Pontic Scythians, as in differentiation from Eastern Scythian Saka) primarily emerged from the Bronze Age, Bronze and Iron Age population of the Pontic-Caspian and Central Asian Steppe (Western Steppe Herders or "Steppe_MLBA") associated with the Andronovo culture. Western Scythians carried diverse West Eurasian and East Eurasian maternal lineages. Initially, the Western Scythians carried only West Eurasian mtDNA haplogroup, maternal haplogroups, however the frequency of East Eurasian haplogroups rises to 26% in samples dated from the 6th-2nd centuries BCE. The East Eurasian maternal lineages were likely brought by individuals sharing affinities with modern-day Nganasan people, Nganasan people, as well as the ancient Okunevo culture.

List of rulers

The relationships of the various Scythian kings with each other are not known for certain, although the historian and anthropologist Anatoly Khazanov suggests that the Scythians had been ruled by the same dynasty from the time of their stay in West Asia until the end of their kingdom in the Pontic steppe, and that Madyes and the later Scythian kings Spargapeithes (Scythian king), Spargapeithes and Ariapeithes belonged to the same dynasty, and Ellis Minns suggested in 1913 that Idanthyrsus was probably the father of Ariapeithes.

Meanwhile, the scholar Askold Ivantchik instead considers Madyes, Spargapeithes, and Ariapeithes to have each belonged to a different dynasty.

Kings of Early Scythians

* Išpakāya (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Bartatua (Scythian languages, Scythian: or ),
* Madyes (Median language, Median: ),

Kings of Pontic Scythians

* Spargapeithes (Scythian king), Spargapeithes (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Lykos (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Gnouros,
* Sauaios or Saulios,
* Idanthyrsus (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
:Sub-kings:
:*Scopasis,
:*Taxacis (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Argotas ?,
* Ariapeithes (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Scyles (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Octamasadas (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* Eminakes ? (Scythian languages, Scythian: ), ?
* Ateas or Ataias (Scythian languages, Scythian: ),
* king with unrecorded name,
* Agaros,

See also

* Early Slavs
* Eurasian nomads
* Nomadic empire

References

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{{Authority control

Scythians,
1st millennium BC
Ancient history of the Caucasus
Ancient peoples of Ukraine
Ancient peoples of Russia
Classical antiquity
Historical Iranian peoples
Iranian nomads
Near East in classical antiquity
Tribes described primarily by Herodotus
States and territories disestablished in the 3rd century BC