Scythians. Who are the Scythians?

History of the Scythians

Scythians - the common name of the northern nomadic peoples (Iranian (presumably) origin) in Europe and Asia, in ancient times (VIII century BC - IV century AD) Scythians were also conditionally called semi-nomadic tribes related to them, which occupied the steppe spaces of Eurasia up to Transbaikalia and Northern China.

Herodotus reports a lot of interesting information about the Scythians, who made up the bulk of the then population of the Northern Black Sea region. According to Herodotus, which is confirmed by archaeological excavations, the Scythians inhabited the southern part of the Black Sea region - from the mouth of the Danube, the Lower Bug and the Dnieper to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and the Don.

Origin

The origin of the Scythians is one of the most difficult and controversial issues in historical ethnography. Some historians believe that the Scythians were an ethnically integral people and at the same time attribute them either to the Aryans or to the Mongols (Ural-Altaians), other scientists, relying on Herodotus' instructions about the cultural difference between the Western and Eastern Scythians (farmers and nomads), consider that the name "Scythians" encompassed ethnically diverse tribes, and refer the settled Scythians to the Iranians or Slavs, and the nomadic to the Mongols or the Ural-Altaians, or they prefer not to speak out about them definitely.

Most of the available data speaks in favor of their belonging to one of the branches of the Indo-European tribe, most likely to the Iranian one, especially since the scientists who recognized the Iranianness of the Sarmatians, the words of Herodotus about the relationship of the Sarmatians with the Scythians allow them to extend to the Scythians the conclusions obtained by science for the Sarmatians.

Warfare

The army of the Scythians consisted of free people who received only food and uniforms, but could take part in the division of booty if they showed the head of the enemy they had killed. Warriors wore bronze helmets in the Greek style and chain mail. The main weapons are a short sword - akinak, a double-curved bow, a square shield and spears. Each Scythian owned at least one horse, the aristocrats had huge herds of horses.

Warriors not only cut off the heads of defeated enemies, but also made bowls from their skulls. Decorating these creepy trophies with gold and proudly showing them to their guests. The Scythians fought, as a rule, on horseback, although over time, as the settlement grew, the Scythian infantry also appeared. Herodotus described in detail the military customs of the Scythians, but perhaps to some extent exaggerated their militancy.

heyday

IV century - the Scythian king Atey, who lived for 90 years, was able to unite all the tribes of the Scythians from the Don to the Danube. Scythia at that time reached its peak: Atey was equal in strength to Philip II of Macedon, minted his own coins and expanded his possessions. These tribes had a special relationship with gold. The cult of this metal even served as the basis for the legend that the Scythians were able to tame griffins guarding gold.

The growing power of the Scythians forced the Macedonians to undertake several large-scale invasions: Philip II was able to kill Atheus in an epic battle, and his son, Alexander the Great, after 8 years went to war against the Scythians. But Alexander could not defeat Scythia, and was forced to retreat, leaving the Scythians unsubdued.

Language

The Scythians did not have a written language. The only source of information about their language is the works of ancient authors and inscriptions of the ancient era. Some Scythian words were recorded by Herodotus, for example, "pata" - meant "to kill", "oyor" - meant "man", "Arima" - meant "one". Taking as a basis fragments of these words, philologists attributed the Scythian language to the languages ​​of the Iranian family of the Indo-European language group. The Scythians themselves called themselves Skuds, which, most likely, could mean "archers". The names of the Scythian tribes, the names of deities, personal names, toponymic names have also come down to our times in Greek and Latin transcription.

What did the Scythians look like?

What the Scythians looked like and what they wore is known mainly from their images on gold and silver vessels of Greek work, discovered during archaeological excavations in such world-famous burial mounds as Kul-Oba, Solokha and others. In their works, Greek artists depicted the Scythians in peaceful and military life with amazing realism.

They wore long hair, mustaches and beards. They dressed in linen or leather clothes: long trousers-harem pants and a caftan with a belt. Shoes were leather boots intercepted with ankle straps. The Scythians wore pointed felt hats on their heads.

There are also images of Scythians on other items found in Kul-Oba. For example, a gold plaque depicts two Scythians drinking from a rhyton. This is a rite of twinning, known to us from the testimonies of ancient authors.

Religion of the Scythians

A characteristic feature of the religion of these tribes is the absence of anthropomorphic images of the gods, as well as a special caste of priests and temples. The personification of the god of war, more revered by the Scythians, was an iron sword stuck into the ground, in front of which sacrifices were made. The nature of the funeral rituals may indicate that the Scythians believed in an afterlife.

Attempts by Herodotus, listing the Scythian deities by name, to translate them into the language of the Greek pantheon were unsuccessful. Their religion was so peculiar that it could not find direct parallels in the religious ideas of the Greeks.

1) Fiala (Mid 4th century BC); 2) Golden Scythian pectoral; 3) Gold earrings with a boat-shaped pendant. Gold, enamel; 4) Cup spherical, golden (4th century BC)

Scythian gold

Initially, gold jewelry was made only for noble Scythians, but over time, even ordinary people could afford to buy jewelry, although the amount of gold in them was less. The Scythians made cheaper products, consisting of bronze. Part of the heritage is called just that - Scythian-Greek art, and part is attributed exclusively to the products of the Scythians.

The appearance of the first gold jewelry dates back to the end of the Bronze Age, when people already knew how to process gold, giving it a shape and appearance. If we talk about the most ancient gold jewelry of the Scythians, then its approximate age is 20,000 years. Most of the products were found in burial mounds. The first decorations were found during the reign of Peter 1.

They used gold because they considered it a divine, magical substance. They were attracted by the brilliant appearance, and they considered the decoration a talisman even during the battle. The thickness of the jewelry is a few millimeters, but they often looked rough, because the Scythians wanted to fit as much gold as possible into the product. There were massive chest decorations in the form of plaques, they often depicted the heads of animals, while in volume, and not in a plane.

The most common were images of a deer or a goat - animals that the tribes saw. However, sometimes fictional creatures come across, the meaning of which is difficult to unravel.

1) Bracelet with sphinx protomes (Kul-Oba mound, 4th century BC); 2) The ceremony of "drinking the oath" (fraternization); 3) a golden comb depicting a battle scene; 4) A plaque in the form of a figure of a lying deer

Scythian tribes. Lifestyle

Although the material culture of the Scythians, which spread throughout this vast territory, had its own characteristics in different regions, on the whole it contained features of a typological community. This commonality was also reflected in the types of Scythian ceramics, weapons, horse sets, and in the nature of funeral rites.

According to the way of economic life, the Scythians were divided into settled agricultural and nomadic, pastoral tribes. Listing the agricultural tribes known to him, Herodotus first of all named the Kallipids and Alazons, the closest neighbors of Olvius, founded by immigrants from Miletus on the banks of the Bug-Dnieper estuary. In this city, Herodotus mainly conducted his observations.

Herodotus called the Kallipids and in another way - the Hellenic-Scythians, to such an extent they assimilated with the Greek colonists. The Kallipids and Alazons in the list of Herodotus are followed by Scythian farmers who lived along the Dnieper at a distance of 11 days of navigation from its mouth. Scythia of the times of Herodotus was not ethnically united. It also included tribes not related to the Scythians, for example, agricultural and cattle breeding, who lived in the forest-steppe.

economic life

The economic life of most of the Scythian tribes reached a relatively high level. According to Herodotus, the Alazons sowed and ate, in addition to bread, onions, garlic, lentils and millet, and the Scythian farmers sowed bread not only for their own needs, but also sold it through the mediation of Greek merchants.

Scythian farmers plowed the land, as a rule, with the help of an ox-drawn plow. Harvested with iron sickles. The grain was ground in grain graters. The inhabitants of the settlements were engaged in breeding cattle and small cattle, horses and poultry.

The nomadic Scythians and the so-called royal Scythians, who, according to Herodotus, were the strongest and most warlike of all the Scythians, inhabited the steppe space to the east from the Dnieper to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, including the steppe Crimea. These tribes were engaged in cattle breeding and arranged their dwellings in wagons.

Among the Scythian nomads, animal husbandry rose to a relatively high level of development. In the 5th-4th centuries, they owned huge herds and herds of cattle, but distributed it unevenly among their fellow tribesmen.

Trade

Trade was developed on the territory of Scythia. There were water and land trade routes along the European and Siberian rivers, the Black, Caspian and North Seas. In addition to war chariots and wheeled carts, the Scythians were engaged in the construction of river and sea flax-winged ships at the shipyards of the Volga, Ob, Yenisei, at the mouth of the Pechora. Genghis Khan took craftsmen from those places to create a fleet that was intended to conquer Japan. Sometimes the Scythians were building underground passages. They laid them under large rivers, using mining technology.

A busy trade route from India, Persia, China ran through the lands of the Scythians. Goods were delivered to the northern regions and Europe along the Volga, Ob, Yenisei, the North Seas, and the Dnieper. In those days, there were cities with noisy bazaars and temples on the banks.

decline. Disappearance of the Scythians

During the 2nd century, the Sarmatians and other nomadic tribes gradually ousted the Scythians from their land, leaving behind them only the steppe Crimea and the basin of the lower Dnieper and Bug, as a result, Great Scythia became Small. After that, Crimea became the center of the Scythian state, well-fortified fortifications appeared in it - the fortresses of Naples, Palakiy and Khab, in which the Scythians took refuge, waging wars with Chersonesus and the Sarmatians. At the end of the 2nd century, Chersonese received a powerful ally - the Pontic king Mithridates V, who attacked the Scythians. After many battles, the Scythian state was weakened and bled dry.

In the I and II centuries. AD, the Scythian society could hardly be called nomadic: they were farmers, rather strongly Hellenized and ethnically mixed. The Sarmatian nomads did not stop pushing the Scythians, and in the 3rd century the Alans began to invade the Crimea. They devastated the last stronghold of the Scythians - Scythian Naples, located on the outskirts of modern Simferopol, but could not stay for a long time on the conquered lands. Soon the invasion of these lands began, ready, who declared war on the Alans, the Scythians, and the Roman Empire itself.

A blow to Scythia was the invasion of the Goths around 245 AD. e. All Scythian fortresses were destroyed, and the remnants of the Scythians fled to the southwest of the Crimean peninsula, hiding in hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

Despite the seemingly obvious complete defeat, Scythia continued to exist for a short time. The fortresses that remained in the southwest became a refuge for the fleeing Scythians, several more settlements were founded at the mouth of the Dnieper and on the Southern Bug. But they too soon fell under the onslaught of the Goths.

The Scythian war, which after the events described was waged by the Romans with the Goths, became so called due to the fact that the word "Scythians" began to be used to refer to the Goths who defeated the real Scythians. Most likely, there was some truth in this false name, since thousands of defeated Scythians joined the army of the Goths, dissolving in the mass of other peoples who fought with Rome. So, Scythia became the first state that collapsed as a result of the Great Migration of Nations.

The Huns finished the work, in 375 they attacked the territories of the Black Sea region and destroyed the last Scythians who lived in the Crimean mountains and in the Bug valley. Of course, many Scythians again joined the Huns, but there could no longer be any talk of any independent identity.