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The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe
MP3 CD Format The Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.
Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different—both communities benefiting from trading with each other. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, where all the organic material is amazingly well preserved.
Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence—both archaeological and textual—in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.
Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different—both communities benefiting from trading with each other. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, where all the organic material is amazingly well preserved.
Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence—both archaeological and textual—in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.
352 pages, ebook
First published December 1, 2019
116 people are currently reading
1770 people want to read
About the author
Barry Cunliffe
174 books159 followersSir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage.
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May 1, 2022A long time ago, on the vast Central Asian steppe...
▫️THE SCYTHIANS: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe by Barry Cunliffe, 2019.
Imagine a future archaeologist. Uncovering a few random objects of material culture... A plastic cup. An old cellphone. A hammer. A Lego man. Your mother's heirloom necklace.
Now imagine that (somehow) this is all that is known about you and your culture. How can anything *really* be known about who YOU were?
.
.
.
Spanning from the geographic "Pontic steppe" on the northern shore of the Black Sea to the Caspian, across the Caucasus mountains to the mountains (Pamir and Tien Shan) in modern Kyrgyzstan, and into Siberia to modern China, this huge land mass was the literal "stomping grounds" of the ancient Scythians for centuries, likely from the 8th century BCE through 2nd century CE.
Cunliffe's history of the Scythian tribes of Eurasia relies heavily on Russian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, Kyrgyz archaeological expeditions and discoveries in "kurgans", mounds of habitation that can include dwellings, industrial/commerce sites, and burial remains.
Along with the archaeology, Cunliffe liberally uses the accounts of Herodotus, the famous Greek historian who traveled and encountered the Scythians around the Black Sea region in the 5th century BCE, describing in detail their rituals, culture, and their nomadic life that centered around domestication (and veneration) of their horses, and their stunning craftsmanship and artistry with gold and other precious metals.
With no written evidence produced by the Scythians themselves (only by a Greek onlooker who didn't have the context of culture) and only material culture found in the kurgans, well, there is so much that is not known about the Scythians. But Cunliffe makes a valiant effort to present what we do know and what we can piece together.
In many ways, this is an exercise in speculation - as so much is in material culture re-creation. Going back to that future archaeologist analogy: Would they think that your cup was a hat? That your Lego man was your god? That your hammer was an eating device?
Some (ancient) food for thought...
▫️THE SCYTHIANS: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe by Barry Cunliffe, 2019.
Imagine a future archaeologist. Uncovering a few random objects of material culture... A plastic cup. An old cellphone. A hammer. A Lego man. Your mother's heirloom necklace.
Now imagine that (somehow) this is all that is known about you and your culture. How can anything *really* be known about who YOU were?
.
.
.
Spanning from the geographic "Pontic steppe" on the northern shore of the Black Sea to the Caspian, across the Caucasus mountains to the mountains (Pamir and Tien Shan) in modern Kyrgyzstan, and into Siberia to modern China, this huge land mass was the literal "stomping grounds" of the ancient Scythians for centuries, likely from the 8th century BCE through 2nd century CE.
Cunliffe's history of the Scythian tribes of Eurasia relies heavily on Russian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, Kyrgyz archaeological expeditions and discoveries in "kurgans", mounds of habitation that can include dwellings, industrial/commerce sites, and burial remains.
Along with the archaeology, Cunliffe liberally uses the accounts of Herodotus, the famous Greek historian who traveled and encountered the Scythians around the Black Sea region in the 5th century BCE, describing in detail their rituals, culture, and their nomadic life that centered around domestication (and veneration) of their horses, and their stunning craftsmanship and artistry with gold and other precious metals.
With no written evidence produced by the Scythians themselves (only by a Greek onlooker who didn't have the context of culture) and only material culture found in the kurgans, well, there is so much that is not known about the Scythians. But Cunliffe makes a valiant effort to present what we do know and what we can piece together.
In many ways, this is an exercise in speculation - as so much is in material culture re-creation. Going back to that future archaeologist analogy: Would they think that your cup was a hat? That your Lego man was your god? That your hammer was an eating device?
Some (ancient) food for thought...
May 11, 2020
An extremely thorough overview of the peoples known as the Scythians to the ancient Greeks, and similar neighbouring cultures. Cunliffe is well known in the archaeological community for his thorough research and interest in the so-called ‘barbaric’ peoples that thrived on the fringe of better-known classical societies, and The Scythians is just as much of a tour-de-force as his previous work on the Celts. Everything from climate conditions to clothing worn to evidence of migration to burial practises comes up, with intensive examination of archaeological sites – naturally, as aside from what was written about them by outsiders, artefacts in the ground are one step closer to these fascinating people who appear to have left no writing of their own. The casual reader should beware that this is a fairly weighty tome that can get dry at times, but other than that I have no hesitation about recommending it.
August 26, 2025
Cunliffe opens the book with a regaling chronology of how the Scythians were discovered through archaeology leading up to the present day, detailing the multitude of findings and sites and burial chambers and tombs within kurgans - their large burial mounds. Details of archaeological discoveries recur throughout the book. This is a treasure of history and archaeology writing. Cunliffe’s enthusiasm and expertise are presented in what seems an effortless style, with a comprehensive scope and deep exploration all at once. Color photographs and maps are included throughout, artfully selected and instructively placed to aid the text in creating a full immersion into Scythian history as we know it.
He then observes the movements of Kimmerians and Scythians across the Caucasus region in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, during conflicts between the Assyrian and Urartu kingdoms. As the Assyrian empire fragments due to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, the Scythians are able to raid the lands largely unimpeded. Assyria falls as the Babylonians and Medes sack Nineveh, and the Persian empire quickly grows during the rule of Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC. Known as Sakā to the Persians, Scythians have many encounters with the empire, particularly as Darius attempts to spread west toward Greece.
The desert steppe nomads were having increasing interactions with the Persians, and the Pontic steppe nomads began having increased interactions with the Greeks. Here were two sedentary peoples seeing heightened contact with a strange, moving horseback people they did not understand. Climate and geography impacted the lifestyles and migration of the steppe peoples, at least as far back as 4000 BC, affecting their movements for thousands of years. The cold, dry air of the east sent many migrating along similar latitudes west, toward warmer, humid climates. Again and again we are treated to careful exposition about the waves of nomad warriors coming from the east, compelled by reasons we cannot know for sure, but that we can gain some confidence in by stitching together the data.
During the late Bronze age, from about 1800 to 1200 BC a cultural continuum develops across the steppe, with the nomad cultures becoming less distinct, fueled primarily by horse riding or horse trading, and copper metallurgy. Horses provided greater mobility, and demand for bronze tools and weapons allowed mining and trade to form a network with invested parties and cultures. Broadly, two distinct groups can be recognized: the Srubnaya in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Andronovo continuum in Central Asia.
As further climate changes occurred in the period from 1200 - 850 BC, aridity leads to the deaths of forests, and the settlements begin moving, along with livestock, to more remote pastures and expanding their territory — possibly leading to conflict. Settlements disappeared and a more nomadic lifestyle emerged.
The steppe provided these migrating nomads with shelter and food for their many horses, as well as being a relatively flat stretch of earth that made movement easy, especially on horseback. In the Yenisei valley, in the Altai-Sayan region, just north of Mongolia, named here as the likely place of origin of the Scythians, the predatory nomads who would arrive on the Pontic steppe sometime in the second half of the seventh century BC, and would occupy the north Caucasus for a century before that, culture developed undisturbed by outside influences for over a millennium. This is exemplified by elite burials, the use of bow and arrow from horseback, unique animal-themed art forms, like deer stones or small sculptures, and bronze and bone tools. This culture eventually grew due to climatic changes enabling larger populations and a more mobile form of pastoralism leading to a hierarchical society. As Cunliffe puts it, “humans had learned from their horses how to become herd animals.” The Scythian hordes see their genesis here.
People of the Pontic steppe are eventually influenced culturally by the arrival of the Altai-Sayan warrior nomads from the east during the eighth and ninth centuries BC. Classical sources call these earlier inhabitants of the steppe Kimmerians. As Cunliffe tells it, those we know as the Kimmerians were probably one of the many warrior bands moving westward. Those who came next were to be known as the Scythians. There seems to have been a periodicity to these waves: Kimmerians in the ninth century, Scythians in the seventh, Sauromatae in the fifth, and Roxolani in the second. It is unknown what caused these migrations, but climate, population pressures, economic imperatives were likely contributing factors. Toward the very end, Cunliffe takes us further and briefly examines in influx of the Sauromatae, the Alans, and the Huns from the east — following a pattern of westward continental migration and, in some cases, invasion, for hundreds of years. The Mongolians would eventually be a part of this pattern.
Early Scythians held onto cultural influences they brought from Asia Minor, but by the sixth century BC Scythians were moving more and more into the forest steppe, interacting with native people, and establishing dominance. They spread westward through the Carpathian Mountains into the Great Hungarian Plain, and by the fifth century were interacting with the Greek cities of the north Pontic coast. This is when the Scythians of the steppe became more sedentary, developing settlements, crop growing, and trading sites.
The Hallstatt culture of Central Europe took up some of the burial customs of the Scythians, and as another way to signal elite status, would have purchased the new breed of horses brought by the Scythians to Europe. As the Celts migrated east from Central Europe in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, many arrived in the Carpathian Basin and must have encountered steppe people. Art styles and new cultural values may have blended here, as evidenced by many of the Celtic pieces found that suggest steppe influence, particularly in the familiar motifs of animals in sculpture. As Cunliffe says: “what we are seeing … is not a simple borrowing of artistic styles but a continuity of ideas expressed in similar ways across different cultures briefly interacting in the center of Europe in the fourth and third centuries.”
Cunliffe details the warrior ethos of the Scythians, or at least what little is known of them from writers like Herodotus. We know the Scythians did battle against the Persians and other tribes, and we know they served as mercenaries and as recruits in many armies, Persian and Greek. Their weaponry and fighting styles are known from these records, as well as some of their brutal customs, like scalping their enemies, or collecting the heads or skulls of their slain opponents. In some cases the skull of a despised enemy might be turned into a goblet to drink from, or the blood of an enemy would be consumed. All of this, in the Scythian view, granted them control over the spirit of their enemy.
The Scythians had myths about their origins and rituals conducted by a priest class, but what little we know of them comes from Greek authors. The Scythians recorded nothing of their beliefs other than countless pieces of art, some of gods, and many representing nature, man’s relation to it, and the viciousness that Scythians must have witnessed. Due to the nature of orally shared tales, these stories changed shape over geography and time. Greek writers had to frame Scythian beliefs in terms of their own, so what we know of their deities and their origin myths are couched in Greek familiarity. In one tale, Targitaos, a son of Zeus, sired three sons who would go on to represent the three kings that Scythians followed, with one at the top to rule the others. Hercules factors into these beliefs, also in a myth resulting in three sons, as the product of Hercules’ sleeping with a snake-tailed woman. Variations on this theme appear throughout Scythian beliefs, it seems, as do others. Human and animal sacrifice, ornamental ceremonial dressings, beautiful artwork and themes transcending geography and time and showing a long lasting link between peoples, all these are presented in a striking chapter of informed speculation and archaeological connections to ancient historical writings.
An endlessly enjoyable book that immerses and captivates with highly visual and intricate detail. Even after the immense history is told, Cunliffe takes us into the artifacts and shows us what they can tell us. It is a dynamic history and presentation of archaeology for a reader like myself, a non-expert in either.
He then observes the movements of Kimmerians and Scythians across the Caucasus region in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, during conflicts between the Assyrian and Urartu kingdoms. As the Assyrian empire fragments due to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, the Scythians are able to raid the lands largely unimpeded. Assyria falls as the Babylonians and Medes sack Nineveh, and the Persian empire quickly grows during the rule of Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC. Known as Sakā to the Persians, Scythians have many encounters with the empire, particularly as Darius attempts to spread west toward Greece.
The desert steppe nomads were having increasing interactions with the Persians, and the Pontic steppe nomads began having increased interactions with the Greeks. Here were two sedentary peoples seeing heightened contact with a strange, moving horseback people they did not understand. Climate and geography impacted the lifestyles and migration of the steppe peoples, at least as far back as 4000 BC, affecting their movements for thousands of years. The cold, dry air of the east sent many migrating along similar latitudes west, toward warmer, humid climates. Again and again we are treated to careful exposition about the waves of nomad warriors coming from the east, compelled by reasons we cannot know for sure, but that we can gain some confidence in by stitching together the data.
During the late Bronze age, from about 1800 to 1200 BC a cultural continuum develops across the steppe, with the nomad cultures becoming less distinct, fueled primarily by horse riding or horse trading, and copper metallurgy. Horses provided greater mobility, and demand for bronze tools and weapons allowed mining and trade to form a network with invested parties and cultures. Broadly, two distinct groups can be recognized: the Srubnaya in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Andronovo continuum in Central Asia.
As further climate changes occurred in the period from 1200 - 850 BC, aridity leads to the deaths of forests, and the settlements begin moving, along with livestock, to more remote pastures and expanding their territory — possibly leading to conflict. Settlements disappeared and a more nomadic lifestyle emerged.
The steppe provided these migrating nomads with shelter and food for their many horses, as well as being a relatively flat stretch of earth that made movement easy, especially on horseback. In the Yenisei valley, in the Altai-Sayan region, just north of Mongolia, named here as the likely place of origin of the Scythians, the predatory nomads who would arrive on the Pontic steppe sometime in the second half of the seventh century BC, and would occupy the north Caucasus for a century before that, culture developed undisturbed by outside influences for over a millennium. This is exemplified by elite burials, the use of bow and arrow from horseback, unique animal-themed art forms, like deer stones or small sculptures, and bronze and bone tools. This culture eventually grew due to climatic changes enabling larger populations and a more mobile form of pastoralism leading to a hierarchical society. As Cunliffe puts it, “humans had learned from their horses how to become herd animals.” The Scythian hordes see their genesis here.
People of the Pontic steppe are eventually influenced culturally by the arrival of the Altai-Sayan warrior nomads from the east during the eighth and ninth centuries BC. Classical sources call these earlier inhabitants of the steppe Kimmerians. As Cunliffe tells it, those we know as the Kimmerians were probably one of the many warrior bands moving westward. Those who came next were to be known as the Scythians. There seems to have been a periodicity to these waves: Kimmerians in the ninth century, Scythians in the seventh, Sauromatae in the fifth, and Roxolani in the second. It is unknown what caused these migrations, but climate, population pressures, economic imperatives were likely contributing factors. Toward the very end, Cunliffe takes us further and briefly examines in influx of the Sauromatae, the Alans, and the Huns from the east — following a pattern of westward continental migration and, in some cases, invasion, for hundreds of years. The Mongolians would eventually be a part of this pattern.
Early Scythians held onto cultural influences they brought from Asia Minor, but by the sixth century BC Scythians were moving more and more into the forest steppe, interacting with native people, and establishing dominance. They spread westward through the Carpathian Mountains into the Great Hungarian Plain, and by the fifth century were interacting with the Greek cities of the north Pontic coast. This is when the Scythians of the steppe became more sedentary, developing settlements, crop growing, and trading sites.
The Hallstatt culture of Central Europe took up some of the burial customs of the Scythians, and as another way to signal elite status, would have purchased the new breed of horses brought by the Scythians to Europe. As the Celts migrated east from Central Europe in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, many arrived in the Carpathian Basin and must have encountered steppe people. Art styles and new cultural values may have blended here, as evidenced by many of the Celtic pieces found that suggest steppe influence, particularly in the familiar motifs of animals in sculpture. As Cunliffe says: “what we are seeing … is not a simple borrowing of artistic styles but a continuity of ideas expressed in similar ways across different cultures briefly interacting in the center of Europe in the fourth and third centuries.”
Cunliffe details the warrior ethos of the Scythians, or at least what little is known of them from writers like Herodotus. We know the Scythians did battle against the Persians and other tribes, and we know they served as mercenaries and as recruits in many armies, Persian and Greek. Their weaponry and fighting styles are known from these records, as well as some of their brutal customs, like scalping their enemies, or collecting the heads or skulls of their slain opponents. In some cases the skull of a despised enemy might be turned into a goblet to drink from, or the blood of an enemy would be consumed. All of this, in the Scythian view, granted them control over the spirit of their enemy.
The Scythians had myths about their origins and rituals conducted by a priest class, but what little we know of them comes from Greek authors. The Scythians recorded nothing of their beliefs other than countless pieces of art, some of gods, and many representing nature, man’s relation to it, and the viciousness that Scythians must have witnessed. Due to the nature of orally shared tales, these stories changed shape over geography and time. Greek writers had to frame Scythian beliefs in terms of their own, so what we know of their deities and their origin myths are couched in Greek familiarity. In one tale, Targitaos, a son of Zeus, sired three sons who would go on to represent the three kings that Scythians followed, with one at the top to rule the others. Hercules factors into these beliefs, also in a myth resulting in three sons, as the product of Hercules’ sleeping with a snake-tailed woman. Variations on this theme appear throughout Scythian beliefs, it seems, as do others. Human and animal sacrifice, ornamental ceremonial dressings, beautiful artwork and themes transcending geography and time and showing a long lasting link between peoples, all these are presented in a striking chapter of informed speculation and archaeological connections to ancient historical writings.
An endlessly enjoyable book that immerses and captivates with highly visual and intricate detail. Even after the immense history is told, Cunliffe takes us into the artifacts and shows us what they can tell us. It is a dynamic history and presentation of archaeology for a reader like myself, a non-expert in either.
May 7, 2025
Thorough work of history; impressively dependent on archeology. Pleasurable read.
August 18, 2021
This was a great read. The only reason that I gave it 4-star rating instead of five was because I read it on a B&W Kindle which did not do justice to the maps and photos. So, one should get the printed book for a thoroughly satisfying read.
This is a well researched, authoritative work on enigmatic, fascinating nomadic peoples of the steppe, Scythians, who roamed a huge area from the Central-Asian Altai’s to the Eurasian steppes in the 9th to 2nd centuries BC but left no written records except the burial sites (Kurgans) and archeological artifacts. The author makes frequent references to the writings of the Greek historians (mainly Herodotus) who have been in contact with the Scythians (referred to as “Barbarians”).
The horse-mounted cavalry of Scythian archers was a force to be reckoned with, and greatly influenced and often dominated the political landscape of the areas where they migrated. The author touches briefly on the equine dominated, bow and arrow wielding nomadically similar cultures preceding the Scythians and what followed in the subsequent centuries (Huns, etc.).
This is a well researched, authoritative work on enigmatic, fascinating nomadic peoples of the steppe, Scythians, who roamed a huge area from the Central-Asian Altai’s to the Eurasian steppes in the 9th to 2nd centuries BC but left no written records except the burial sites (Kurgans) and archeological artifacts. The author makes frequent references to the writings of the Greek historians (mainly Herodotus) who have been in contact with the Scythians (referred to as “Barbarians”).
The horse-mounted cavalry of Scythian archers was a force to be reckoned with, and greatly influenced and often dominated the political landscape of the areas where they migrated. The author touches briefly on the equine dominated, bow and arrow wielding nomadically similar cultures preceding the Scythians and what followed in the subsequent centuries (Huns, etc.).
January 11, 2023
I never want to hear about kurgans again
December 8, 2021
Considering the lack of many sources outside of archeology, this is a heroic effort to put all the archeology for the readers view and just go from there.
June 21, 2021
Pre-Review Warning
If you haven't read history books on the more ancient peoples before its worth knowing that archaeological discussions are central to them. Accordingly depending on how much that does/doesnt interest you will really be the difference between this being a 5/5 vs a 2/5.
Review
Though its hard to imagine it today given the poor state they find themselves in, for a large part of history nomadic peoples weren't just not marginalised they were very powerful and influential forces on the world scale. Indeed it was a regular feature of European and Middle Eastern history for over well over 1000 years whereby one steppe nomadic group moving eastward would force other groups to move west all of which would occasionally snowball into massive empire shattering invasions.
The Scythian's are interesting not just for their impressive gold art and tattoos – and really look up some high resolution images its very impressive- but because it breaths life into a people who played such an interesting role in early European and Middle Eastern History. Its one one thing to read about their place in Athens or their role in shattering the Assyrian Empire or slaying Cyrus the Great and something else to read about these events where they aren't just vague horse riding “other”. Likewise through them you learn about the dynamic and complicated world they inhabited.
As for the book its very comprehensive, so while you will get a lot of fascinating information at times it is comprehensive to the point where focus is lost. For instance rather than just discuss their likely origins and their end as a distinctive people you get a history of all the groups which could be considered proto or post Scythian which end ups with the author essentially listing of Russian & Ukrainian towns/regions.
Finally it also does another great job: Proving that Herodotus actually did get a surprising amount of things correct.
If you haven't read history books on the more ancient peoples before its worth knowing that archaeological discussions are central to them. Accordingly depending on how much that does/doesnt interest you will really be the difference between this being a 5/5 vs a 2/5.
Review
Though its hard to imagine it today given the poor state they find themselves in, for a large part of history nomadic peoples weren't just not marginalised they were very powerful and influential forces on the world scale. Indeed it was a regular feature of European and Middle Eastern history for over well over 1000 years whereby one steppe nomadic group moving eastward would force other groups to move west all of which would occasionally snowball into massive empire shattering invasions.
The Scythian's are interesting not just for their impressive gold art and tattoos – and really look up some high resolution images its very impressive- but because it breaths life into a people who played such an interesting role in early European and Middle Eastern History. Its one one thing to read about their place in Athens or their role in shattering the Assyrian Empire or slaying Cyrus the Great and something else to read about these events where they aren't just vague horse riding “other”. Likewise through them you learn about the dynamic and complicated world they inhabited.
As for the book its very comprehensive, so while you will get a lot of fascinating information at times it is comprehensive to the point where focus is lost. For instance rather than just discuss their likely origins and their end as a distinctive people you get a history of all the groups which could be considered proto or post Scythian which end ups with the author essentially listing of Russian & Ukrainian towns/regions.
Finally it also does another great job: Proving that Herodotus actually did get a surprising amount of things correct.
January 6, 2021
Great survey of Scythian history and culture. Thorough and well organized. Cunliffe does a great job comparing the written record with the archeological. There isn't any sort of narrative or drama here, which may cause it to bore some people, but for me this is right in the sweet spot of a book that gives an academically serious overview of the subject for a non-scholarly reader.
September 10, 2025
Concise but largely complete primer on the Scythians!
February 21, 2021
Buy.
There is no more comprehensive work out there on the Scythians and it is difficult to imagine this being surpassed. This book has everything you need to know.
There is no more comprehensive work out there on the Scythians and it is difficult to imagine this being surpassed. This book has everything you need to know.
June 18, 2022
Solid book and very well researched but occasionally I found myself feeling like the analysis was unable to break from a Greek bias, which makes sense considering most if not all the written sources are Greek, but it did feel a little out of place in certain spots (the religion sticks out the most). I've read books on Scythia where the author did attempt to create that disconnect so it was noticeable.
Even so, it's a great survey on the Pontic Steppe Scythians and how they interacted with the world around them. The archeological research was solid and fascinating.
Even so, it's a great survey on the Pontic Steppe Scythians and how they interacted with the world around them. The archeological research was solid and fascinating.
March 15, 2024
I've read several books by this author. He writes clearly and concisely and I especially enjoy the inclusion of maps, photos and other illustrations. It's certainly helped me understand more about the geography of the region as well as the archeology.
February 6, 2024
I've been fascinated for a while about the role of the Assyrians in world history and wondered what sort of interactions they had with the peoples to their north.Hence my interest in this book on the Scythians. Actually, there doesn't seem to be much written about the Scythians and Cunliffe, more or less, explains why. Yes Herodotus gave us quite a detailed description of the Scythians who lived around the western zone of the steppes but he was pretty much ignorant of those groups far to the east and as Cunliffe explains: An archaeologist, viewing the wealth of evidence deriving largely from burials, cannot fail to be impressed by the broad cultural similarities stretching across the steppe from the Sayan Mountains of Siberia to the Lower Danube valley. It is possible to glimpse sudden transcontinental movements and far-flung connectivities counterbalanced by distinct regional developments and to contain the whole within a broad chronological framework. This great continuum of mobile horse-riding communities dominating the steppe from the ninth to the third century may share a Scythian-Siberian culture, but to fully appreciate its nuances one must remember that it was made up of many different groups with different names, only some of which, like Sakã and Scythian, are recorded in the historical sources. Fascinating and valuable though Herodotus' description of the Scythians and related nomads is, it is, at best, a snapshot, blurred in part, of a moment in time. He was observing people in a period of rapid change as the original nomad influx of the Archaic period gave way to more settled societies coming to terms with the Greek presence around the northern Pontic coast.
The steppe corridor is a remarkable phenomenon. It is the largest expanse of temperate grassland in the world, stretching in an almost continuous swathe from Manchuria in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the west a distance of 8,000 km. It mostly lies between the latitudes of 40° and 50°N. The temperature range within the zone is warm enough to allow grass and shrubs to grow but is too dry to favour tree growth....... The steppe gradient: as one travels from the east to the west the climate changes from cold and dry to warm and damp. It was a reality well understood by those who inhabited these regions and provided an ever-present incentive to migrate. A community living in the cold high steppe of Mongolia subjected to cycles of intense cold had three options to improve its life: to move south into China, to move south-west into India, or to move due west towards Europe. All three options were taken at different times throughout history but the first and second meant crossing into different ecological zones. By choosing to move westwards along the steppe corridor the migrants had the great advantage of staying within an environment with which they were familiar, and one that facilitated fast movement. It was for this reason that the history of Eurasia was dominated by constant flows of people from east to west along the steppe and why so many of them, from the Yamnaya culture of the early third millennium BC to the Mongols of the thirteenth century AD, ended their travels at the most westerly extremity of the steppe zone: the Great Hungarian Plain.
I was especially interested in the reported incursions of the Scythians into the Levant and reaching as far as Egypt but unfortunately, Cunliffe has very little to say about this, merely the following: "Throughout the middle decades of the seventh century, while Assyria was still strong, it is likely that the Scythians maintained peaceful relations with their horse-riding neighbours, the Medes and Mannaeans, and with the Assyrians, but the situation was inherently unstable. With the founding of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty in 626 and the rapid rise of Babylonian power, the Assyrian empire began to fragment. This provided the opportunity for the Scythians, sometimes working in concert with the Medes, to raid widely throughout the old Assyrian domain, feeding off the carcass of the decaying empire. There is some evidence that they were "bought off" by Egypt. Herodotus' version of events, drawn from tales that would have been circulating for nearly two centuries before he encountered them, has a ring of truth to it. The break-up of the Assyrian empire provided the opportunity for young Scythians to leave their homeland somewhere around Lake Urmia, between the Zagros Mountains and the Caspian Sea, and to range widely across the remnants of empire, some bands returning home several years later to a less than friendly reception".
In terms of history, Cunliffe recounts a recurring theme: Comparatively minor changes of climate in an ecozone like the steppe, bringing about only slight or short-term changes, can have a disproportionate effect on the lives of pastoral nomads...... An example of an event which affected Europe and much of the western steppe was the Piora Oscillation, a period of extremely cold winters which began about 4200 BC and lasted until about
3800 BC. One of the effects of this climatic downturn was to bring to an end the system of sedentary agriculture which generated tells.
The brief period of two centuries, from the mid ninth to the mid seventh century, saw a dramatic transformation of the steppe society. At the beginning a patchwork of different communities, culturally rooted in their traditional territories, characterized the vast steppe corridor..... By the end of the period the archaeological evidence suggests that bands of predatory horsemen were ranging widely over considerable areas.
The simplest explanation for these new traditions is that bands of nomadic horsemen from eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region spread westwards across the steppe during the ninth and eighth centuries, some of them arriving on the Pontic steppe and establishing their authority over the local population........ If this scenario is correct, it means that during the ninth and eighth century movements of warrior nomads from the mountain region of eastern Central Asia to the west took place episodically. The driving forces were, no doubt, varied: population growth, the lure of better pastures in the west, and the ambition of these aspiring to power would all have contributed.
The arrival of the nomadic horse riders on the Pontic steppe in the ninth-eighth century and their eventual penetration of the Great Hungarian Plain is part of an age-old story. It had happened before in the twenty-eighth century bc with the westerly movement of the Yamnaya culture (above, pp. 67-9) and it was soon to happen again in the seventh and sixth centuries when the Scythians from Central Asia burst into the Pontic steppe ousting the Kimmerians (if we are to accept the simple narrative provided by Herodotus). But it was not to end there. Shortly after came the Sarmatians, the Alans, and the Huns, to be followed eventually by the Mongols. In each case they moved west into the Carpathian Basin where the puszta of the Great Hungarian Plain represented the westernmost remnant of their familiar steppe; beyond lay the forests, mountains, and agricultural lands which offered little attraction to those whose lifestyle depended on the horse.
One of the earliest incoming groups of Scythians settled in the north Caucasus with a concentration in the valley of the River Kuban. From here warrior bands crossed the mountains in the late eighth and seventh centuries to become involved in the conflicts being fought out between the Kingdom of Urartu and the Assyrians.
The Middle period (c.600-400 BC) also saw considerable changes to Scythian society on the steppe as the nomads began to become more sedentary. More than one hundred settlements are known from this period along the River Dnieper, including large complex trading sites like Kamenskoe.
The importance of the north Pontic colonies to the Greek world changed dramatically in the middle of the fifth century when the advance of the Persians into Egypt cut off the grain supplies upon which the Greek city-states had depended..... From now on the high-quality grain produced on the arable lands of the Kerch Peninsula was loaded onto convoys of ships and sent south to feed the citizens of Athens..... The Greek cities on the Black Sea coast provided the trading interface between the Aegean and the steppe worlds, but other trading and manufacturing centres developed inland, usually on river routes where regional exchanges could take place, Greek merchants may well have taken up residence in these enclaves.
The book is a mixture of hard scholarship......notably in relation to the exploration of tombs and the artefacts found in them .....and speculation about "what WOULD have happened" which I find generally convincing but it's still just speculation. He covers in great detail things like burial customs (presumably, mainly for the elite), practices for milking mares, or sheep and goats, warfare and the instruments of war: religion and art. In regard to war, the weapon for which the Scythians were famous throughout the ancient world was the bow and arrow. Since the bows were fired from horseback they were short, seldom more than 0.8 m in length, the strength of the shot relying on the compression of the composite structure rather than upon its length. ......Stringing a bow required strength and dexterity. Even greater strength was needed to draw the string against the compressed forces locked into the shaft. The range of such a bow was considerable. A Greek grave monument found at Olbia records that Anaxagoras, son of Dimagoras, shot an arrow over a distance of 282 orgyai. This converts to more than half a kilometre.
It was sometime at the beginning of the first millennium BC that flows began of people from the east, from the area that is now eastern Kazakhstan, southern Sibe-ia, and Mongolia movements that were to continue in waves over more than two thousand years. Climate is likely to have been a prime mover, along with population growth.
This book explores the story of the nomadic societies from the ninth century BC, when the earliest movements to the west began, until the second century BC, when new forces emerging in the east brought pressure to bear on the inhabitants of Central Asia, thereby creating a further spate of westerly migrations. The earliest predatory nomads to impinge upon the Pontic -Caspian steppe between the ninth and seventh centuries вс brought with them a culture closely similar to that which had developed in the Altai-Sayan region. While it is likely that the flow of incomers was spread, perhaps continuously, over these two centuries, such documentary evidence as there is identifies two separate peoples: first the Kimmerians, then the Scythians. The archaeological record, however, shows that there was little significant difference in their material culture that cannot otherwise be ascribed to gradual change or to the influence of the indigenous folk culture on that of the incomers.
Early in the second century BC the growing power of the Han dynasty in China began to destabilize the various nomadic tribes that lay on its northern border. The most powerful were the Xiongnu of the Gobi region.. Facing the rising power of the Xiongnu, two indigenous peo-ples, the Yuezhi and the Wusun were forced to migrate, there being no option but to move westwards, This inevitably had knock-on effects throughout Central Asia..... The arrival of the Yuezhi and the Wusun in territory long occupied by the nomad Saka caused widespread disruption, driving many Sakä southwards into western Bactria and through the Hindu Kush.
The Alans: The Last Spectacular Thrust The origin of the Alans, like that of other nomadic hordes, is obscure but there is some evidence to suggest that they emerged from the confederacy of the Aorsi. That, at least, is what the Chinese annals imply when the say that the Aorsi were renamed Allan'ai..... The beginning of the end for the roman empire came in AD 401 when Alans and Vandals crossed the Danube and drove deep into the heart of the empire. A few years later, in AD 406, Alans, in company with Vandals and Suevi, crossed the frozen Rhine near Mainz and began a devastating, two-year-long rampage through Gaul before crossing the Pyrenees and settling in western Iberia. Ten years later, in AD 418, they were ousted by the Visigoths, working to the orders of the Roman emperor, but found a temporary home in Galicia in the north-west corner of the Iberian peninsular, where they merged as one people with the Vandals....... The Alans who fled to the Caucasus fared better. Settling first in the comparative isolation of the foothills and then extending deep into the central Caucasian high-lands, they were still known as Alans as late as the thirteenth century
Certainly the book covers a huge sweep of important but overlooked history and has some lovely maps...and unlike many books of this genre, most of the place names mentioned in the text can be located on the maps which is a big plus for me.
Oh, I did find Figure 4.2 rather confusing and I wonder ion the labels or horizontal scales have been reversed. But a minor quibble. Happy to award it five stars
The steppe corridor is a remarkable phenomenon. It is the largest expanse of temperate grassland in the world, stretching in an almost continuous swathe from Manchuria in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the west a distance of 8,000 km. It mostly lies between the latitudes of 40° and 50°N. The temperature range within the zone is warm enough to allow grass and shrubs to grow but is too dry to favour tree growth....... The steppe gradient: as one travels from the east to the west the climate changes from cold and dry to warm and damp. It was a reality well understood by those who inhabited these regions and provided an ever-present incentive to migrate. A community living in the cold high steppe of Mongolia subjected to cycles of intense cold had three options to improve its life: to move south into China, to move south-west into India, or to move due west towards Europe. All three options were taken at different times throughout history but the first and second meant crossing into different ecological zones. By choosing to move westwards along the steppe corridor the migrants had the great advantage of staying within an environment with which they were familiar, and one that facilitated fast movement. It was for this reason that the history of Eurasia was dominated by constant flows of people from east to west along the steppe and why so many of them, from the Yamnaya culture of the early third millennium BC to the Mongols of the thirteenth century AD, ended their travels at the most westerly extremity of the steppe zone: the Great Hungarian Plain.
I was especially interested in the reported incursions of the Scythians into the Levant and reaching as far as Egypt but unfortunately, Cunliffe has very little to say about this, merely the following: "Throughout the middle decades of the seventh century, while Assyria was still strong, it is likely that the Scythians maintained peaceful relations with their horse-riding neighbours, the Medes and Mannaeans, and with the Assyrians, but the situation was inherently unstable. With the founding of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty in 626 and the rapid rise of Babylonian power, the Assyrian empire began to fragment. This provided the opportunity for the Scythians, sometimes working in concert with the Medes, to raid widely throughout the old Assyrian domain, feeding off the carcass of the decaying empire. There is some evidence that they were "bought off" by Egypt. Herodotus' version of events, drawn from tales that would have been circulating for nearly two centuries before he encountered them, has a ring of truth to it. The break-up of the Assyrian empire provided the opportunity for young Scythians to leave their homeland somewhere around Lake Urmia, between the Zagros Mountains and the Caspian Sea, and to range widely across the remnants of empire, some bands returning home several years later to a less than friendly reception".
In terms of history, Cunliffe recounts a recurring theme: Comparatively minor changes of climate in an ecozone like the steppe, bringing about only slight or short-term changes, can have a disproportionate effect on the lives of pastoral nomads...... An example of an event which affected Europe and much of the western steppe was the Piora Oscillation, a period of extremely cold winters which began about 4200 BC and lasted until about
3800 BC. One of the effects of this climatic downturn was to bring to an end the system of sedentary agriculture which generated tells.
The brief period of two centuries, from the mid ninth to the mid seventh century, saw a dramatic transformation of the steppe society. At the beginning a patchwork of different communities, culturally rooted in their traditional territories, characterized the vast steppe corridor..... By the end of the period the archaeological evidence suggests that bands of predatory horsemen were ranging widely over considerable areas.
The simplest explanation for these new traditions is that bands of nomadic horsemen from eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region spread westwards across the steppe during the ninth and eighth centuries, some of them arriving on the Pontic steppe and establishing their authority over the local population........ If this scenario is correct, it means that during the ninth and eighth century movements of warrior nomads from the mountain region of eastern Central Asia to the west took place episodically. The driving forces were, no doubt, varied: population growth, the lure of better pastures in the west, and the ambition of these aspiring to power would all have contributed.
The arrival of the nomadic horse riders on the Pontic steppe in the ninth-eighth century and their eventual penetration of the Great Hungarian Plain is part of an age-old story. It had happened before in the twenty-eighth century bc with the westerly movement of the Yamnaya culture (above, pp. 67-9) and it was soon to happen again in the seventh and sixth centuries when the Scythians from Central Asia burst into the Pontic steppe ousting the Kimmerians (if we are to accept the simple narrative provided by Herodotus). But it was not to end there. Shortly after came the Sarmatians, the Alans, and the Huns, to be followed eventually by the Mongols. In each case they moved west into the Carpathian Basin where the puszta of the Great Hungarian Plain represented the westernmost remnant of their familiar steppe; beyond lay the forests, mountains, and agricultural lands which offered little attraction to those whose lifestyle depended on the horse.
One of the earliest incoming groups of Scythians settled in the north Caucasus with a concentration in the valley of the River Kuban. From here warrior bands crossed the mountains in the late eighth and seventh centuries to become involved in the conflicts being fought out between the Kingdom of Urartu and the Assyrians.
The Middle period (c.600-400 BC) also saw considerable changes to Scythian society on the steppe as the nomads began to become more sedentary. More than one hundred settlements are known from this period along the River Dnieper, including large complex trading sites like Kamenskoe.
The importance of the north Pontic colonies to the Greek world changed dramatically in the middle of the fifth century when the advance of the Persians into Egypt cut off the grain supplies upon which the Greek city-states had depended..... From now on the high-quality grain produced on the arable lands of the Kerch Peninsula was loaded onto convoys of ships and sent south to feed the citizens of Athens..... The Greek cities on the Black Sea coast provided the trading interface between the Aegean and the steppe worlds, but other trading and manufacturing centres developed inland, usually on river routes where regional exchanges could take place, Greek merchants may well have taken up residence in these enclaves.
The book is a mixture of hard scholarship......notably in relation to the exploration of tombs and the artefacts found in them .....and speculation about "what WOULD have happened" which I find generally convincing but it's still just speculation. He covers in great detail things like burial customs (presumably, mainly for the elite), practices for milking mares, or sheep and goats, warfare and the instruments of war: religion and art. In regard to war, the weapon for which the Scythians were famous throughout the ancient world was the bow and arrow. Since the bows were fired from horseback they were short, seldom more than 0.8 m in length, the strength of the shot relying on the compression of the composite structure rather than upon its length. ......Stringing a bow required strength and dexterity. Even greater strength was needed to draw the string against the compressed forces locked into the shaft. The range of such a bow was considerable. A Greek grave monument found at Olbia records that Anaxagoras, son of Dimagoras, shot an arrow over a distance of 282 orgyai. This converts to more than half a kilometre.
It was sometime at the beginning of the first millennium BC that flows began of people from the east, from the area that is now eastern Kazakhstan, southern Sibe-ia, and Mongolia movements that were to continue in waves over more than two thousand years. Climate is likely to have been a prime mover, along with population growth.
This book explores the story of the nomadic societies from the ninth century BC, when the earliest movements to the west began, until the second century BC, when new forces emerging in the east brought pressure to bear on the inhabitants of Central Asia, thereby creating a further spate of westerly migrations. The earliest predatory nomads to impinge upon the Pontic -Caspian steppe between the ninth and seventh centuries вс brought with them a culture closely similar to that which had developed in the Altai-Sayan region. While it is likely that the flow of incomers was spread, perhaps continuously, over these two centuries, such documentary evidence as there is identifies two separate peoples: first the Kimmerians, then the Scythians. The archaeological record, however, shows that there was little significant difference in their material culture that cannot otherwise be ascribed to gradual change or to the influence of the indigenous folk culture on that of the incomers.
Early in the second century BC the growing power of the Han dynasty in China began to destabilize the various nomadic tribes that lay on its northern border. The most powerful were the Xiongnu of the Gobi region.. Facing the rising power of the Xiongnu, two indigenous peo-ples, the Yuezhi and the Wusun were forced to migrate, there being no option but to move westwards, This inevitably had knock-on effects throughout Central Asia..... The arrival of the Yuezhi and the Wusun in territory long occupied by the nomad Saka caused widespread disruption, driving many Sakä southwards into western Bactria and through the Hindu Kush.
The Alans: The Last Spectacular Thrust The origin of the Alans, like that of other nomadic hordes, is obscure but there is some evidence to suggest that they emerged from the confederacy of the Aorsi. That, at least, is what the Chinese annals imply when the say that the Aorsi were renamed Allan'ai..... The beginning of the end for the roman empire came in AD 401 when Alans and Vandals crossed the Danube and drove deep into the heart of the empire. A few years later, in AD 406, Alans, in company with Vandals and Suevi, crossed the frozen Rhine near Mainz and began a devastating, two-year-long rampage through Gaul before crossing the Pyrenees and settling in western Iberia. Ten years later, in AD 418, they were ousted by the Visigoths, working to the orders of the Roman emperor, but found a temporary home in Galicia in the north-west corner of the Iberian peninsular, where they merged as one people with the Vandals....... The Alans who fled to the Caucasus fared better. Settling first in the comparative isolation of the foothills and then extending deep into the central Caucasian high-lands, they were still known as Alans as late as the thirteenth century
Certainly the book covers a huge sweep of important but overlooked history and has some lovely maps...and unlike many books of this genre, most of the place names mentioned in the text can be located on the maps which is a big plus for me.
Oh, I did find Figure 4.2 rather confusing and I wonder ion the labels or horizontal scales have been reversed. But a minor quibble. Happy to award it five stars
October 21, 2024
Scythian rider wearing vibrant red tight-belted coat and trouser, visibly holding his battle-axe and wearing akinakes (a type of short-sword) on his waist. Painting by Evgeny Kray based on the archaeological finding of Pazyryk kurgan.
This is an extremely invaluable book. A treasure trove of archaeological findings and historical information about one of the most enigmatic ancient people and their civilizations in history, the Scythians. I so often heard about the Scythians, you can’t run away from them especially when you read the history of classical Greece and in general, Greek mythology. The Greeks so often, in their course of history and myth-building, encountered these nomadic steppe people inhabiting the wide Eurasian steppe and incorporated them in their myth and arts. The Amazons were inspired by the fiercely predatory Sarmatian women. Yet, of all the smattering mentions of them by the Greek and Roman writers, we still have no clear picture of the Scythians. That’s because they were illiterate and did not leave a writing of their own. Fortunately, they left something that would become the basis of Scythian studies, their burial mound called the kurgan.
It’s clear that Barry Cunliffe is not a historian but an archaeologist. He didn’t weave a historical narrative or attempt to create one but he tried to fact-check the findings with already written sources (by Herodotus, Pseudo-Hippocrates, Strabo, Persian literary works, Chinese annals and even the Bible) and then draw a conclusion from their works but even then, Cunliffe always gave a warning that we still have no idea if our conclusion is correctly representing these people or not. Thus, some of the chapters can be a bit dry and overly academic in tone but if you persevere, this book makes a valuable reading. Besides, the abundance of maps and images in this book will lessen the boredom of reading Cunliffe’s detailed descriptions of each kurgan and its burial contents.
“We shall do well to heed Sir John Boardman's warning: ‘We think we know a lot about Scythian life, but most comes through Greek eyes and texts. The Greek-style finds and Herodotus are given prominence, but the majority of the sites and tombs tell a different story, of a people immune to most Mediterranean ways of life and probably more likely to exploit than be exploited by the newcomers from the south.’” ~Introducing the Scythians: Herodotus on Koumiss research paper, page 85, by Stephanie West.
Artistic representation of the Scythians. Both men wore richly embroidered tight-belted coats and they’re adorned with golden jewellery. A gorytos (leather bow case) is slung on the first man’s waist and the other holds an akinakes (short sword).
I thought it’s about time I picked this kind of reading because I was amazed by the works of Gillian Bradshaw and Harry Sidebottom notably, Bradshaw’s two historical fiction works depicting Sarmatians and the Sakā (Island of Ghosts and Horses of Heaven) and Sidebottom’s The Wolves of the North. Reading the Scythians showed how well-researched both Bradshaw and Sidebottom’s novels were though it’s not a surprise since both had classical studies under their belt (Bradshaw focused more on the Greek side while Sidebottom seems to display the broad knowledge of the Roman ones).
The Scythians and their counterparts (who shared a similar culture across the Eurasian steppe) were nomadic pastoralists. They might not toil the soil and live in an urban city like the Greeks since they move with their herds (cattle and the like, forever seeking greener pasture) but that doesn’t mean they don’t settle down (they just don’t settle down for very long). The Scythians were actually semi-sedentary and often settled near the river during harsh winter and moved to better pastures during the summer. When they migrate, it’s because of a culmination of many things be it the change in climatic conditions or being driven out by other nomads.
“The Roxolani (one of the Sarmatian tribes), now dominant on the Pontic steppe, were described as ‘wagon dwellers’ by Strabo. He writes of their transhumant lifestyle, dependent on their flocks and herds, moving from winter camps along the shore of the Sea of Above, where in their leisure time they hunted deer and wild boar, to the inland steppe pastures, where they turned their attention to wild asses and roe deer. But in spite of this bucolic lifestyle they were a force to be reckoned with.” ~Chapter 12: Scythians in the Longue Durée, page 319.
One of the things that was always associated with the Scythians was their love of golden objects, so many of which were found in their burial tombs. The love of gold, the colour of the sun, is a representation of their belief that in order for the Scythian or Sakā kings to display their charisma and authoritative power, they needed to have farnah, literally “glory” or “splendour” and farnah is represented by these golden objects. These golden objects were crafted by Greek goldsmiths who lived in the Black Sea colonies. And that was the initial encounter between the Greeks and the Scythians, through trade.
“In the Indo-Iranian tradition the king had charisma (farnah-) which materialised in the form of gold, the royal metal. Thus in controlling the sacred golden objects the king was displaying the outward and visible signs of his extraordinary powers.” ~Chapter 10: Of Gods, Beliefs, and Art, page 272.
“The love of gold, the use of inset turquoise, and motifs of fabulous beasts are all characteristics strongly reminiscent of Sakā burials in the Kazakh steppe.” ~Chapter 12: Scythians in the Longue Durée, page 315.
It reminds me of, in Bradshaw’s Horses of Heaven, how king Mauakes dressed in such splendour (golden stitching on his clothing and the likes) when he was about to receive queen Heliokleia and there were many instances when king Mauakes gifted golden objects for Heliokleia despite her apparent indifference towards superficial materials.
Talking about trade, it seems the Scythians’ dominant purchase was always luxury goods whereas the Bosporan Greeks bought from the Scythians various dairy products and even slaves. Perhaps through owning the Scythian slaves did the Greeks glimpsed the cultural differences between the urban mediterranean and the nomadic steppe people and showed it through the many Scythian motifs on their pottery pattern.
“From the Scythians, the Hellenes mainly purchased grain, for which there was a great demand in Greece. Another object of trade were Scythian slaves, whose presence in cities such as Athens is confirmed extensively in Greek literature of the classical era (5th–4th century BCE). It cannot be ruled out that the Hellenes also purchased traditional nomadic products (milk, animal skins, horses, cattle, etc.). Among the Scythians, and among many other nomadic peoples, luxury goods produced in Greek craftsmen’s workshops were highly prized. Judging by the content of the graves of the Scythian aristocracy, articles produced by Greek goldsmiths were particularly popular.” ~Black Sea-Caspian Steppe, part of The Pechenegs: Nomads in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Medieval Europe book by Aleksander Paroń.
Greek depictions of Scythian archer on Attic pottery (sixth century BCE).
The idea of savagery is not far from others’ perception of the Scythians and their counterparts and there might be some truth on it. The use of slain enemy skulls as a drinking cup, human sacrifices, eating a part of meat on slain old men who can no longer hold a weapon or be useful in society, as well as killing favourite concubines and retainers to accompany the dead kings or aristocrats in their kurgans must have given frightening imaginations for the civilized neighbours (and endless materials for creative writers such as Herodotus and modern-day novelists).
“The skull of a particularly detested enemy, such as a relative killed in a feud, might be turned into a drinking cup. ‘Having sawn off the part below the eyebrows and cleaned out the inside, the cover the outside with leather.’ A rich man would also line the inside with gold. On the occasions when the cup was being handed round to prestigious visitors stories would have been told of the exploits which led to its creation. Here the intention seems to have been to insult the memory of the deceased and induce the visitors to share in the insult. The veracity of Herodotus’ description of skull cups is shown by the discovery of a workshop specialising in skull cup production in the fortified settlement of Bel’sk. In 529, when the Sakā queen, Tomyris, defeated the persian leader, Cyrus, in battle, it is said that she took his head as a trophy.” ~Chapter 9: Bending the Bow, page 262.
In Sidebottoms’ The Wolves of the North, his Roman general protagonist engaged in a social ritual with the nomads by inhaling cannabis in a small tent. What a fascinating find when Cunliffe also mentioned this particular ritual although this was more of a purification ritual after participating in a burial festivities.
I enjoy reading and finding valuable information from this book, knowing that the book gave insight through archaeological findings linked with the classical written sources and tore away the assumption so often affixed to these illiterate Indo-Iranian nomads. Unfortunately, the Scythians, Sakā, Sarmatian, Massagetae, Roxolani, Alans, Iazyges, Aorsi, Siraces—just to name a few of these Eurasian nomads with shared cultural beliefs and arts—seem not to leave any trace behind (apart from their burial mounds) since they vanished or assimilated with indigenous population after relentless onslaught by fellow nomadic tribes (Yuezhi and the Huns). Communities that claimed their Scythian heritage do exist which are the Ossetian (in the Caucasus) and the Wakhis/Pamiris (in the Pamir Mountains).
June 6, 2025
3,5 stars; great primer on the bow-and-arrow wielding expert horsemen (and -women!) of the eurasian (or Pontic) steppe; what struck me most was the total obscurity of the history of these people, whose presence and influence on neighbouring cultures (Goths, Greeks, Romans, Persians) spanned over 1000 years, finally disappearing in the 2nd century CE. Most is known from sources from these neighboring peoples, and the impressive archeological findings, in particular their burial mounds.
January 5, 2024
Interesting critters, those Scythians
June 11, 2021
Like walking through a museum exhibit with an expert who is really strapped for time- there is a ton of understandable, well depicted information presented by someone who clearly loves the topic, but it feels rushed. Any time Sir Barrington wants to walk around with a museum with me, I'm down.
April 25, 2020
My near ancestors hail from the region south of the Dnieper River in the Ukraine. As such my mind always drifts to those bands of grassland as I wonder how on earth the people survived there? When I first read about the Scythians, it was as a child researching the Greeks. The Scythians, in their view, were transient occupiers of the grasslands and worth as much as any traveling peddler or sellsword would be to 'the pinnacle of civilization'. Thus exposed to the caricatures portrayed in Greek drama and literature, I developed a biased opinion about the nature of who the Scythians were - outliers on the fringes of the civilized world. And so I thought, even up to a few years ago when I began to research nomadic societies, such as the Indo-European Saka Buddhists, as a sort of personal mythmaking.
How wrong could I have been? How wrong are we to determine the value of a society by the things it leaves behind? For the Scythians, all we have to determine what they were like is archaeological or historiographical accounts - and any nomadic culture is vulnerable to this. Thankfully, there is so much evidence, it is actually startling.
If anything, this book brilliantly lays out the shifting steppe cultures as part of a continuum of migrations and exchanges. The nature of the Silk Road, the Transoxianan kingdoms, the periodic migrations of nomads, the history of Greece, Persia and even the Halstatt and La Tène cultures - all of them are known by physical evidence to have contact with Scythians on a regular basis. If it were not for the Scythians, the histories of these civilizations may be indeed complerely different. All of this is backed up by solid, if not indisputible archaeological evidence. I was actually astounded at how technology has let us peer back into past interfaces with such clarity.
But I think what this book gives me the most, is a decent enough picture to answer a 'how' that had been on my mind for a long time. How were these societies able to keep even a loose semblance of confederations? How is it even possible to live in those harsh conditions? I think, the chief takeaway from this book, is that the kurgans, the massive earthworks left behind by the Scythians, played more of a role than just an embellishment of wealth. They were the nexuses of a culture and civilization that was very well tied to the land. Visual reminders to us, and the people living in those times, of thwir interconnectedness, from Altay to Crimeia to the Carpathians. The sheer distribution of known Scythian burials is astounding, and I encourage anyone to look at a map of Kurgans to see just have wide reaching the continuity is.
I will say that this content may be dry at some points, or lacking in detail in the actual historical recollections. Where the author uses historigraphical data (much from Herodotus, which seems to put people on edge) he always backed it up with actual concrete data. The result of the extensive archaeological corroboration is an actual picture of how the people might have actually survived - including brilliany pieces of artwork, some of Greek or Persian origin, that were commissioned by wealthy Scythians. The book does a solid introduction into interpretations of these artifacts, and certainly whetted my imagination.
Oh, it also inspired me to reconnect with archery, as I imagine what it was like to wander into others like mixing gasses in a bottle - connected by a tenuous, but very apparent cultural tradition. Now hold your horses while I go take a Scythian funeral.
How wrong could I have been? How wrong are we to determine the value of a society by the things it leaves behind? For the Scythians, all we have to determine what they were like is archaeological or historiographical accounts - and any nomadic culture is vulnerable to this. Thankfully, there is so much evidence, it is actually startling.
If anything, this book brilliantly lays out the shifting steppe cultures as part of a continuum of migrations and exchanges. The nature of the Silk Road, the Transoxianan kingdoms, the periodic migrations of nomads, the history of Greece, Persia and even the Halstatt and La Tène cultures - all of them are known by physical evidence to have contact with Scythians on a regular basis. If it were not for the Scythians, the histories of these civilizations may be indeed complerely different. All of this is backed up by solid, if not indisputible archaeological evidence. I was actually astounded at how technology has let us peer back into past interfaces with such clarity.
But I think what this book gives me the most, is a decent enough picture to answer a 'how' that had been on my mind for a long time. How were these societies able to keep even a loose semblance of confederations? How is it even possible to live in those harsh conditions? I think, the chief takeaway from this book, is that the kurgans, the massive earthworks left behind by the Scythians, played more of a role than just an embellishment of wealth. They were the nexuses of a culture and civilization that was very well tied to the land. Visual reminders to us, and the people living in those times, of thwir interconnectedness, from Altay to Crimeia to the Carpathians. The sheer distribution of known Scythian burials is astounding, and I encourage anyone to look at a map of Kurgans to see just have wide reaching the continuity is.
I will say that this content may be dry at some points, or lacking in detail in the actual historical recollections. Where the author uses historigraphical data (much from Herodotus, which seems to put people on edge) he always backed it up with actual concrete data. The result of the extensive archaeological corroboration is an actual picture of how the people might have actually survived - including brilliany pieces of artwork, some of Greek or Persian origin, that were commissioned by wealthy Scythians. The book does a solid introduction into interpretations of these artifacts, and certainly whetted my imagination.
Oh, it also inspired me to reconnect with archery, as I imagine what it was like to wander into others like mixing gasses in a bottle - connected by a tenuous, but very apparent cultural tradition. Now hold your horses while I go take a Scythian funeral.
May 2, 2020
Good read! Drawing upon archaeological evidence and historical sources (Herodotus, Pseudo-Hippocrates, etc.), Cunliffe provides an interesting account of this ancient nomadic people. The book contains lots of pictures of artifacts, drawings, maps, and other visual aids to assist the reader's understanding of the Scythians and related people groups.
May 12, 2021
From the moment I opened The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe and felt the paper--thick and luxurious--I knew I had found a book I would love, and I was right. The paper it is printed on was evidence of the richness within. At last, a book discussing a historical period of time with an abundance of maps and beautiful coloured illustrations and detailed drawings exactly where they should be, and a story captivatingly and intelligently told. I had read Frozen Tombs Of Siberia:The Pazyryk Burials Of Iron Age Horsemen and D. W. Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel and Language and wanted to learn more about the Scythians, but this was the first book I'd found since then that looked like it would also just be a good read. It was worth waiting for.
The twelve chapters cover who the Scythians were and how they were known to their neighbours; the lands they traversed, the clothes they wore, the weapons they fought with, how they decorated their bodies and status symbols and buried their dead. All beautifully written and captivatingly told by one of Britain's most distinguished archaeologists. For me, it is pure joy to have history 'read' through a culture's artefacts and Professor Cunliffe's detailed descriptions and interpretation of some of the greatest Scythian finds (animal figurines, a golden helmet, bowl, a diadem, cups, beakers and gorytos), makes the Scythian world come alive. Anyone interested in ancient history will find this book fascinating and a 'keeper' to pass on to future generations of readers. I can't imagine how any other volume on the subject could surpass this one.
The twelve chapters cover who the Scythians were and how they were known to their neighbours; the lands they traversed, the clothes they wore, the weapons they fought with, how they decorated their bodies and status symbols and buried their dead. All beautifully written and captivatingly told by one of Britain's most distinguished archaeologists. For me, it is pure joy to have history 'read' through a culture's artefacts and Professor Cunliffe's detailed descriptions and interpretation of some of the greatest Scythian finds (animal figurines, a golden helmet, bowl, a diadem, cups, beakers and gorytos), makes the Scythian world come alive. Anyone interested in ancient history will find this book fascinating and a 'keeper' to pass on to future generations of readers. I can't imagine how any other volume on the subject could surpass this one.
August 31, 2020
Fascinating read about a nomadic steppe culture about which little is known beyond what can be gleaned from archaeology and ancient writings. The Persians traded with them, as did the Greeks. The elite were buried in tombs under great earthen mounds with all their worldly treasures, including horses, and the remains were well-preserved due to the freezing temperatures in most of them. Known for beautiful gold ornaments and tattoos depicting actual and mythical beasts, they were also fairly egalitarian; Scythian warrior women are the source of Greek stories about Amazons. Well-illustrated in color with plenty of maps.
June 28, 2021
Barry Cunliffe did great with the source material that he had. Considering that the Scythians were always a 'side character' in ancient histories with no written history, it is hard to piece together a linear history. Instead Cunliffe gives a wonderful summary of everything we do know, leaning on archaeological findings and Herodotus heavily.
A great book if you are interested in steppe culture and archaeological findings, not so much if you are looking for a complete narrative history.
A great book if you are interested in steppe culture and archaeological findings, not so much if you are looking for a complete narrative history.
April 15, 2024
British archaeologist Sir Barry Cunliffe explores ancient Eurasian steppe cultures in The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe.
The Scythians were one of many nomadic, horse-based tribes roaming the Eurasian steppe from the ninth to second centuries BCE. They shared a common pastoral lifestyle, wore similar colorful clothing (low boots, pointed hats, embroidered trousers and tunics), and created vibrant animalistic art.
Nomadic culture was largely consistent along the length of the steppe, from present-day Mongolia to Hungary, reinforced by extensive trade routes. A Mongol dispatch rider in the thirteenth century could, changing horses as necessary, ride from Karakorum in the Mongolian steppe to Hungary (a distance of ~4,600 miles) in less than a month.
In the summers, nomads scattered across the endless grasslands; winters were spent in the relative shelter of river valleys. They tended their herds on horseback and families moved camp in felt-covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen. Some herds were exclusively horses, other tribes also herded cattle and sheep, but these animals were less well suited to survive the harsh extremes of the steppe, where summers reached 113 F and winters plummeted to -49 F.
The Scythians used cannabis smoke ritually, and were said to “bathe” by applying a paste of resins and aromatic oils, then scraping it off, leaving their skin “clear and glossy.'' They also added horsehair and felt to stylize their hair into rigid plaits, using fancy combs to hold their hairstyles in place.
Gender was a fluid concept among the Scthyians. At least one in five warriors were genetic females and Greek historians described transgender individuals living as women and gender-neutral shamans.
Most archaeological evidence of the Scythians comes from excavated kurgans, giant burial mounds. Within these kurgans, elites were buried with everything they needed in the next life: food, clothing, horses. Sometimes retainers were buried with them. Although some modern scholars assume these people were sacrifices, it is possible some loyally followed their beloved leader into death. It’s impossible to understand this ancient culture with modern sensibility.
The book has some weaknesses. The author makes cultural assumptions not supported by archeology, painting a picture of a male-dominated world of vicious warlords. I found this “warlord” model implausible given the Scythian reliance on trade networks documented by other historians. The author’s domineering warlord could have been a beneficent protector. Setting aside this bias, The Scythians is full of lustrous illustrations and maps that help bring the world of the ancient Scythians to life.
The Scythians were one of many nomadic, horse-based tribes roaming the Eurasian steppe from the ninth to second centuries BCE. They shared a common pastoral lifestyle, wore similar colorful clothing (low boots, pointed hats, embroidered trousers and tunics), and created vibrant animalistic art.
Nomadic culture was largely consistent along the length of the steppe, from present-day Mongolia to Hungary, reinforced by extensive trade routes. A Mongol dispatch rider in the thirteenth century could, changing horses as necessary, ride from Karakorum in the Mongolian steppe to Hungary (a distance of ~4,600 miles) in less than a month.
In the summers, nomads scattered across the endless grasslands; winters were spent in the relative shelter of river valleys. They tended their herds on horseback and families moved camp in felt-covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen. Some herds were exclusively horses, other tribes also herded cattle and sheep, but these animals were less well suited to survive the harsh extremes of the steppe, where summers reached 113 F and winters plummeted to -49 F.
The Scythians used cannabis smoke ritually, and were said to “bathe” by applying a paste of resins and aromatic oils, then scraping it off, leaving their skin “clear and glossy.'' They also added horsehair and felt to stylize their hair into rigid plaits, using fancy combs to hold their hairstyles in place.
Gender was a fluid concept among the Scthyians. At least one in five warriors were genetic females and Greek historians described transgender individuals living as women and gender-neutral shamans.
Most archaeological evidence of the Scythians comes from excavated kurgans, giant burial mounds. Within these kurgans, elites were buried with everything they needed in the next life: food, clothing, horses. Sometimes retainers were buried with them. Although some modern scholars assume these people were sacrifices, it is possible some loyally followed their beloved leader into death. It’s impossible to understand this ancient culture with modern sensibility.
The book has some weaknesses. The author makes cultural assumptions not supported by archeology, painting a picture of a male-dominated world of vicious warlords. I found this “warlord” model implausible given the Scythian reliance on trade networks documented by other historians. The author’s domineering warlord could have been a beneficent protector. Setting aside this bias, The Scythians is full of lustrous illustrations and maps that help bring the world of the ancient Scythians to life.
February 20, 2025
As nomadic people the Scythians didn't leave much archelogical evidence behind and msot of this comes from plundered gravesites as they were buried with gold as a demosntration of wealth and made a target for graverobbers. They don't appear to have left much written or oral history so for a short book the information could have been shorter as the author mentions some things several times (such as the habit of only allowing those who'd slain a man to drink wine at festivals and those who'd slain many a pride of place).
The history is told from what evidence is discovered and lacks any sort of narative flow. Whilst as an academic piece this may be preferred I didn't enjoy it as much as some histories with more attested people.
Choice Notes
In the sythian men's absence (the legandary 20 year absence) the women married their slaves. This battle started with no advantage to the sythians "we lose men when we are fallen and property when they are fallen, take my advice and put aside the spears and bow and begin again with the whip.
Drunk as a sythian was a joke in Greek plays. Amphora are found in trading sites but further away from the black sea would have relied on kumis (fermented mares milk) The drunkeness was therefore likely a effect from the contact with the so called civilised Greeks who mocked them for drinking undiluted wine.
Women would hunt on horseback and take to wsr in the field. Herodities histories. Supports the idea women couldn't marry until they killed a man. These were known a the amazonians and said to have been burned on their right breast in childhood for reasons or archery. Warrior women are supported by archaeological evidence, women have been buried in warrior and weapon adored tombs.
Packing up a family and moving several times a year may seem arduous but it takes modern Mongolians less than a day to pack down a yurt and half of Mongolians today live like this.
Herodetus tells of the King Silus who knew his kinsmen would disagree with their Greek predilection. And was killed for participating in a Greek religious ceremony
He knew his kinsmen would disagree with their Greek predilection. And was killed for participating in a Greek religious ceremony
Disperste bands would come together to swear alliegences on the death of a leader.
Siberian- sythian continuum stretching across 3500km of steppe
The history is told from what evidence is discovered and lacks any sort of narative flow. Whilst as an academic piece this may be preferred I didn't enjoy it as much as some histories with more attested people.
Choice Notes
In the sythian men's absence (the legandary 20 year absence) the women married their slaves. This battle started with no advantage to the sythians "we lose men when we are fallen and property when they are fallen, take my advice and put aside the spears and bow and begin again with the whip.
Drunk as a sythian was a joke in Greek plays. Amphora are found in trading sites but further away from the black sea would have relied on kumis (fermented mares milk) The drunkeness was therefore likely a effect from the contact with the so called civilised Greeks who mocked them for drinking undiluted wine.
Women would hunt on horseback and take to wsr in the field. Herodities histories. Supports the idea women couldn't marry until they killed a man. These were known a the amazonians and said to have been burned on their right breast in childhood for reasons or archery. Warrior women are supported by archaeological evidence, women have been buried in warrior and weapon adored tombs.
Packing up a family and moving several times a year may seem arduous but it takes modern Mongolians less than a day to pack down a yurt and half of Mongolians today live like this.
Herodetus tells of the King Silus who knew his kinsmen would disagree with their Greek predilection. And was killed for participating in a Greek religious ceremony
He knew his kinsmen would disagree with their Greek predilection. And was killed for participating in a Greek religious ceremony
Disperste bands would come together to swear alliegences on the death of a leader.
Siberian- sythian continuum stretching across 3500km of steppe
June 24, 2023
This paperback version of this feels more like an art book from a museum gift store than your traditional history book. That's probably a function of the large number of high quality, color images. While Cunliffe covers the written sources for the Scythians, a large part of this book is focused on archaeological research. Cunliffe provides many, many diagrams of the various excavated kurgans and tombs and provide many images of the gold and other metal work from the graves.
I'm giving this 4 stars because of the high quality images and the dense amount of information, but I did have a couple of small frustrations:
1) You get a "further reading" section at the end of the book that offers about a page of references in paragraph form. There are no notes and no comprehensive bibliography. There were some particularly interesting items discussed that I wanted more info on and I could find no references for in the "further reading" section.
2) The organization is a bit confusing. Chapters are organized more thematically and geographically than chronologically, which makes it harder to to develop a historical picture.
I'm giving this 4 stars because of the high quality images and the dense amount of information, but I did have a couple of small frustrations:
1) You get a "further reading" section at the end of the book that offers about a page of references in paragraph form. There are no notes and no comprehensive bibliography. There were some particularly interesting items discussed that I wanted more info on and I could find no references for in the "further reading" section.
2) The organization is a bit confusing. Chapters are organized more thematically and geographically than chronologically, which makes it harder to to develop a historical picture.
May 22, 2021
Spanish Review 🇪🇸
Me gustaría escribir esta reseña en castellano pues muchos de mis seguidores que les encanta la historia estaban esperando una valoración de este magnífico trabajo.
Cunliffe describe todos los aspectos de una forma clara y sencilla del mundo escita.
Nos invita a viajar desde Asia, Medio Oriente, El Ponto, los Cárpatos y la Gran Llanura Húngara.
Es de los pocos libros disponibles que presentan trazos de otras grandes obras e investigaciones de universidades de multitud de países.
Por otra parte si te gusta el arte, ha recopilado las famosas muestras de arte escita de los museos ucranianosy rusos.
Si quieres entender la historia poco conocida de un imperio a caballo que se convirtió en aliado/enemigo de Persia y la Antigua Grecia, te encantará.
Me gustaría escribir esta reseña en castellano pues muchos de mis seguidores que les encanta la historia estaban esperando una valoración de este magnífico trabajo.
Cunliffe describe todos los aspectos de una forma clara y sencilla del mundo escita.
Nos invita a viajar desde Asia, Medio Oriente, El Ponto, los Cárpatos y la Gran Llanura Húngara.
Es de los pocos libros disponibles que presentan trazos de otras grandes obras e investigaciones de universidades de multitud de países.
Por otra parte si te gusta el arte, ha recopilado las famosas muestras de arte escita de los museos ucranianosy rusos.
Si quieres entender la historia poco conocida de un imperio a caballo que se convirtió en aliado/enemigo de Persia y la Antigua Grecia, te encantará.
July 20, 2023
An interesting overview of our current understanding of Scythian tribes based on synthesizing data from archaeological sites (especially kurgans) with historical climate data, broader regional histories, linguistic and cultural connections, and writings of Scythian contemporaries like Herodotus. Its heavy focus on archaeology and discussing site-by-site findings is similar to The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, though it lacks the book's overarching narrative structure as it's more a summary of what we know than something driving towards a single argument/theory. The writing can also be a little less engaging at times, but I never felt bored or disinterested while reading. Chapters are organized thematically and there are lots of beautiful pictures of the artifacts.
The Scythians have always loomed in the background for me--part of the histories of other peoples but never center-stage--so it was great to finally read something so comprehensive where they were the focus.
The Scythians have always loomed in the background for me--part of the histories of other peoples but never center-stage--so it was great to finally read something so comprehensive where they were the focus.
March 13, 2023
I. am interested in history of the areas around the Black Sea and the pre-Greek populations. But not quite this interested. There are 3000 Scythian grave sites, and although the pictures of the treasures that have been found and the quantity of horses buried in some(up to 14 in one grave) are amazing, I started skimming until I reached the chapters on how this nomadic horsemen actually lived--roaming on their horses with wagons and families and stock from Asia to the Hungarian Plains--they are a truly fascinating culture from the prehistoric past
March 8, 2024
I had heard of the Scythians, but only in a general sense of the history of ancient Europe and Eurasia. This book was a fascinating glimpse of an ancient people and how they lived and died. Like many other civilizations they are gone, often forgotten by modern history, yet are a part of who we are today. This was a very detailed accounting of the Scythians and the maps and photos of artifacts were first-rate. I learned a great deal and am motivated to learn more after reading this excellent history.
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