Scythians
The Scythians or Scyths, also known as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who 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 until the 3rd century BC.
Skilled in mounted warfare, the Scythians displaced 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 often raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians.
In the 6th century BC, they were expelled from West Asia by the Medes, and retreated back into the Pontic Steppe, 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, medieval, 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 skewd-, itself meaning. This name was semantically similar to the endonym of the Sauromatians,, meaning "armed with throwing darts and arrows."From this earlier term were derived:
- the Akkadian designation of the Scythians:
- *,
- *,
- *,
- *and ;
- the Hebrew name , which through a scribal error was corrupted to Ashkenaz| ;
- and the Ancient Greek name , from which was derived the Latin name Scythae, which in turn gave the English name.
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 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.
File:Herodotos Met 91.8.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|The 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus is the most important literary source on the origins of the Scythians
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
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 from 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 path as the first wave of Iranic nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
Displacement of the Cimmerians
The Scythians' westward migration brought them in the 7th century BC to the Caspian Steppe, occupied by the Cimmerians since the 10th century BC as part of the first westward wave of proto-Scythian migrations. Around this time, the Cimmerians left the steppe and crossed the Caucasus into West Asia. This may have been due to pressure from the Scythians, but they arrived in West Asia about 40 years before the Scythians and evidence is lacking of pressure or conflict between them in later Graeco-Roman accounts.Thus dominance in the Caspian Steppe transferred from Cimmerians to Scythians. Remaining Cimmerians were assimilated by the Scythians, which was facilitated by their similar ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles. Later, the Scythians settled the Ciscaucasian Steppe where they established their capital, between the Araxes river to the east, the Caucasus Mountains to the south, and the Maeotian Sea to the west.
The arrival and establishment of the Scythians corresponds to a disturbance of the development and a replacement of the Cimmerian peoples' Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex during to in southern Europe. Nevertheless, early Scythian culture had links to the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex. Also, Scythian culture shows links to the older Bronze Age Timber Grave culture in the north Pontic region, including elements of funerary rituals, ceramics, horse gear, and some weapon types.
Early period
Ciscaucasian kingdom
After their initial westwards migrations, and from 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. They concentrated in the valley of the Kuban river, where they established their capital until the end of the 7th century BC. Initially, they were few and occupied a small area of Ciscaucasia. This would remain the centre of the Scythian kingdom and culture until around.The Scythians extracted tribute from the native Koban and Maeotian populations of Ciscaucasia, such as agricultural, clay and bronze goods, weapons and horse equipment. Maeotians provided large wide-necked pots, jugs, mugs, and small basins. Through the 8th and 7th centuries BC, these interactions and assymilaton led to a mixed culture.