Scythians
Based on Wikipedia: Scythians
Imagine a people so skilled on horseback that the Greeks wondered if they were half-horse themselves. A civilization that left no cities, no temples, no written records—yet their golden artifacts rival anything produced by the ancient world. A nation of warriors who defeated the mighty Persian Empire not through pitched battle, but by simply refusing to fight, retreating endlessly into the vast grasslands until their enemies starved or gave up in frustration.
These were the Scythians.
The Archers Who Named Themselves
The Scythians called themselves something like "Skuda," a word that meant, quite simply, "archers." This wasn't mere boasting—it was a statement of identity. Their entire way of life centered on the bow, wielded from horseback with deadly accuracy. The name passed through Akkadian scribes in ancient Mesopotamia, Hebrew scholars, and Greek historians before arriving in English as "Scythians."
Interestingly, their neighbors the Sauromatians had a similar idea. Their name meant "armed with throwing darts and arrows." In the ancient steppe, you were what you shot.
The Scythians emerged from the vast grasslands of Central Asia—either present-day eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan mountain region of Siberia—sometime in the ninth and eighth centuries before the common era. They were part of a larger family of Iranian-speaking nomadic peoples, cousins to the Saka who roamed Central Asia and the Sarmatians who would eventually replace them.
A Migration That Changed Everything
Around 750 BCE, something forced the Scythians to move. Ancient sources blame the Massagetae, a powerful related tribe, or perhaps a people called the Issedones. Whatever the cause, the Scythians began a westward journey that would reshape the political landscape of the ancient world.
They didn't travel light. Archaeological finds from the Aržan-1 burial mound, dating to the eighth century BCE, reveal that these migrants already possessed sophisticated goldsmithing skills and advanced bronze-casting techniques. They brought their art with them.
The migration route took them across the Araxes River and into the Caspian and Ciscaucasian Steppes—the grasslands north of the Caucasus Mountains. There they encountered the Cimmerians, another Iranian nomadic people who had dominated these lands for centuries.
What happened next remains somewhat mysterious. The Cimmerians departed, crossing the Caucasus into West Asia. Did the Scythians push them out? The timing suggests pressure—the Scythians arrived about forty years before the Cimmerians showed up in Assyrian records—but ancient sources mention no great battle between them. Perhaps the Cimmerians simply saw which way the wind was blowing and left before conflict became inevitable.
Those Cimmerians who remained were absorbed into Scythian society. This was relatively easy because the two peoples shared language, culture, and lifestyle. Within a generation or two, the distinction probably meant little.
Building an Empire Without Cities
By around 700 BCE, the Scythians had established their center in the valley of the Kuban River, in what is now southern Russia. This would remain their heartland for about a century.
Their "kingdom" looked nothing like the urban civilizations to their south. There were no palaces, no temples, no permanent settlements of any kind. The Scythians lived in wagons and tents, moving their herds of horses, cattle, and sheep across the grasslands in seasonal patterns their ancestors had followed for millennia.
Yet this was no loose confederation of wandering families. The Scythians maintained a hierarchical society with kings, nobles, and commoners. They extracted tribute from the settled peoples they encountered—the Koban culture in the mountains and the Maeotians near the Sea of Azov. These subjects provided agricultural goods, pottery, bronze weapons, and horse equipment. The Maeotians specialized in distinctive wide-necked pots, jugs, and mugs that became integrated into Scythian material culture.
This mixing of nomadic and settled traditions created something new. Scythian culture wasn't purely steppe tradition—it absorbed and transformed elements from every people the Scythians encountered.
The Scythians Go South
In the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE, the Scythians did something remarkable: they crossed the Caucasus Mountains and entered the civilized world of West Asia.
The timing was not accidental. The Neo-Assyrian Empire—the superpower of the age, based in what is now Iraq—was expanding aggressively, destabilizing the entire region. Smaller kingdoms desperately sought allies. The Scythians, with their cavalry and archery skills, were exactly what many were looking for.
The geopolitical situation was complex. Phrygia and Lydia controlled Anatolia, the peninsula that is modern Turkey. Babylon and Elam lay to the south. Egypt lurked in the southwest. The kingdom of Urartu, centered on Lake Van, dominated the northern frontier. Smaller states like Ellipi and Mannai tried to survive in between. And scattered across the Iranian Plateau were the city-states of the Medes, an Iranian people distantly related to the Scythians themselves.
Into this world of competing empires, the Scythians inserted themselves as mercenaries, allies of convenience, and sometimes conquerors. They settled in eastern Transcaucasia and the northwest Iranian Plateau—roughly modern Azerbaijan—establishing what Akkadian scribes called the "land of the Scythians."
Playing the Great Powers
The Scythians proved adept at the deadly game of ancient Near Eastern politics. The king of Mannai, a man named Aḫšeri, welcomed them as useful allies against Assyria. Around 680 BCE, the Scythians appear in Assyrian records for the first time, mentioned as threats acting in concert with Mannai and the Medes.
The Scythians were aggressive. They attacked distant Assyrian provinces and on at least one occasion struck at the Assyrian heartland itself. Their first known king, Išpakāya, died in these conflicts—killed sometime between 680 and 677 BCE during an Assyrian counter-campaign.
His successor, Bartatua, made a calculation that would define Scythian foreign policy for decades. Rather than continue fighting Assyria, he sought alliance with it. By 672 BCE, Bartatua had requested the hand of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon's eldest daughter in marriage.
This was a masterstroke. The marriage made Scythia a nominal vassal of Assyria, but in practice it meant Assyrian recognition of Scythian power. The Scythians gained legitimacy and access to Assyrian resources; the Assyrians gained a buffer against the Medes and other northern threats.
The arrangement worked. When Mannai, now isolated without its Scythian and Cimmerian allies, was attacked by Esarhaddon's successor Ashurbanipal around 660 BCE, it was Bartatua who negotiated the settlement—and annexed Mannai into the Scythian realm. The center of Scythian power in West Asia shifted to Sakez, near Lake Urmia, where rich pastures could support the large horse herds the Scythians required.
Cultural Exchange at the Crossroads
The decades in West Asia transformed Scythian culture. Living among and fighting alongside the most sophisticated civilizations of the ancient world, the Scythians absorbed influences they would carry back to the steppes.
Their dress and armor changed, incorporating West Asian and Iranian Plateau styles. Their art evolved, gaining new motifs and techniques. Most significantly, Scythian rulers began behaving like West Asian kings, using luxury goods as status symbols. The gold and silver they acquired—whether as diplomatic gifts, tribute, or plunder—enhanced their prestige back home in Ciscaucasia.
The influence flowed both ways. West Asian states adopted Scythian military technology, particularly their distinctive socketed arrowheads and the sigmoid composite bow, a curved weapon ideal for mounted warriors. Within a century, "Scythian-type" equipment had spread throughout West Asia.
What We Know and How We Know It
Reconstructing Scythian history presents unique challenges. These were illiterate nomads who left no written records of their own. Everything we know comes from outsiders.
Two main sources survive. Akkadian cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia provide contemporary accounts of Scythian activities in the seventh century BCE—diplomatic correspondence, military reports, the kind of administrative records empires generate. These are reliable but limited in scope.
The Greek and Roman sources, particularly the fifth-century BCE historian Herodotus, offer much more detail but require careful handling. Herodotus visited the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast and collected stories about the Scythians from traders and travelers. Some of his information is clearly accurate; other parts mix genuine tradition with folk tales and Greek literary conventions. Separating fact from elaboration is a perpetual challenge.
Archaeology fills many gaps. Scythian burial mounds, called kurgans, preserve remarkable artifacts—gold jewelry, bronze weapons, horse equipment, even frozen human bodies in the permafrost regions. The so-called "Scythian triad" of distinctive weapons, horse harnesses, and art in the "Animal Style" allows archaeologists to trace Scythian presence across the steppe.
The Problem of Names
Scholars argue endlessly about who counts as "Scythian." The ancient Greeks used the term loosely, eventually applying it to almost any mounted nomad from the steppes. This created confusion that persists to the present day.
Modern archaeologists found "Scythian triad" items across the entire Eurasian steppe, from Central Europe to the borders of China. Did this mean "Scythians" lived everywhere? The broad use of the term "Scythian" has been criticized for lumping together peoples who spoke different languages, followed different customs, and had no political connection to the actual Scythians of the Pontic Steppe.
Current scholarship distinguishes between the Scythians proper—the Iranian-speaking nomads who dominated the steppes north of the Black Sea from the seventh to third centuries BCE—and the larger cultural sphere sometimes called "Scytho-Siberian." The latter term describes peoples who shared certain material culture traits with the Scythians without necessarily being related to them.
Some scholars prefer the neutral term "Early Nomadic" for this broader category, avoiding the implication that everyone who rode horses and made animal-style art was somehow Scythian.
The ancient Persians had their own terminology. They called all steppe nomads "Saka" and referred to the Pontic Scythians specifically as "the Saka who dwell beyond the Black Sea." The Babylonians, confusingly, used "Cimmerians" as a catch-all term for steppe peoples, including peoples who were definitely not Cimmerians.
Relatives and Rivals
The Scythians were part of a larger world of Iranian-speaking nomads. The Cimmerians, whom they replaced in the Pontic Steppe, spoke a related language and followed similar customs. Archaeologically, the two peoples are nearly indistinguishable. Only historical sources, which clearly treat them as separate political entities, allow us to tell them apart.
The Sauromatians lived east of the Scythians, beyond the Don River. Later ancient sources would call them Sarmatians, and these relatives-turned-rivals would eventually conquer the Scythians in the third and second centuries BCE.
Far to the east, the Saka dominated the steppes of Central Asia. They too spoke Iranian languages and shared the horse-archer lifestyle. The ancient Persians considered Scythians and Saka to be branches of the same people, which wasn't far from the truth.
The Long Decline
The Scythian presence in West Asia ended around 600 BCE. The Medes, who had been consolidating power for decades, finally expelled them. The Scythians retreated north through the Caucasus passes, back to the Pontic Steppe.
There they would flourish for another three centuries, building the culture that Herodotus would later describe—the royal burials, the gold artwork, the legendary hospitality and equally legendary ferocity. But their days of Mediterranean-world power politics were over.
The end came gradually. In the third and second centuries BCE, the Sarmatians, their eastern cousins, pushed westward. The Scythians lost territory steadily, eventually holding only Crimea and a shrinking zone along the lower Dnieper River.
By the third century of the common era, even this remnant was gone. The Goths, Germanic peoples migrating from the north, overwhelmed the last Scythians. Those who survived were absorbed into the new populations flooding into the steppe—Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs, and eventually Turks and Mongols.
Yet the Scythian name lived on. Medieval and early modern writers used "Scythian" to describe any steppe nomad, whether Tatar, Cossack, or Mongol. The word had become a literary convention rather than an ethnic label—a reminder of the first mounted warriors to terrify the civilized world.
The Ukrainian Connection
Today, the lands where the Scythians once rode—the Pontic Steppe, Crimea, the valleys of the Dnieper and Don—are part of Ukraine and southern Russia. Ukrainian scholars have taken particular interest in Scythian history, seeing it as part of the deep past of their territory.
The Scythians, of course, were not Ukrainians. They spoke an Iranian language unrelated to Slavic. Their descendants, to the extent they can be traced, scattered in many directions. But the connection to place is real. The same grasslands that supported Scythian herds now grow Ukrainian wheat. The same Black Sea ports where Greeks traded with Scythian kings now ship Ukrainian grain to the world.
Understanding the Scythians means understanding that Ukraine's history stretches back far beyond the Slavic migrations, beyond the Goths and Huns, to a time when Iranian-speaking archers ruled the steppe and the great empires of the south treated them as equals—or feared them as enemies.
In the end, the Scythians left no monuments because they needed none. Their monument was the steppe itself, and the memory of a people who mastered it so completely that their name became synonymous with the horse-warrior way of life for millennia after they vanished.