Scythians

The Scythians were mounted nomads. They controlled the western Eurasian steppe in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, after the Cimmerians and before the Sarmatians. They seem to have entered the region from the east, perhaps by way of western Siberia. They were Iranian, or at the least ruled by an Iranian-speaking military and political elite.^[1] They took the political supremacy of that steppe from the Cimmerians, probably in the late ninth or early eighth century BC. Soon after that, they made their presence felt in the Near East with destructive force.^[2]

Name

ΣκύθαιGreek
AškuzaiAkkadian
*skudaIranian
ΣκόλοτοιGreek

The Greek Σκύθαι and the Semitic Iškuzai, Aškuzai and Ashkenaz are understood as renderings of an Iranian skuda, skuδa, “archer”. The Iranian word goes back to an Indo-European root that also gives the Germanic words for shooter.^[1] A people named for its weapon is not unusual on this steppe. The same derivation has been proposed for two further names. One is Σκόλοτοι, a Scythian grouping, with l for the δ. The other is Sogd, the name of Sogdiana, through a chain of forms running back to skuda.^[1] Both are reconstructions. Neither is settled.

The Persians called the eastern groupings of the same Iranian nomads Saka, and Herodotus says so explicitly. The Greek name and the Persian name therefore describe the same world from two sides.^[1]

The Royal Scythians and the Achaemenids

In Herodotus’ own day, the Royal Scythians were the ruling tribe. They appear to have migrated into the Pontic region about 600 BC.^[2] Achaemenid Iran tried to subdue the Scytho-Saka nomads and had limited success. Darius I counted the Saka among his satrapies. His attempt on the Pontic Scythians was not one of his victories.^[3]

What the Greek sources give of Scythian history is thin. They viewed the Scythians as bloodthirsty savages, which shapes what they thought worth writing down.^[2] That judgement is itself a datum. It is the earliest instance of the settled account of the steppe that recurs in the Chinese annals.

Customs

Three of the customs Herodotus records have a bearing on the Turkic world. He describes horse sacrifice. This is hardly unexpected in a horse-based economy, and it was still observed among the Turkic peoples of the Altai in the nineteenth century. He describes a taboo on washing in water. The taboo was later found among pagan Turkic tribes, the Oghuz among them, and among the Mongols. He also describes the making of drinking cups from the skulls of slain enemies. The Xiongnu, the Bulgars and the Pechenegs would each repeat this custom.^[2]

None of that makes the Scythians Turkic. A practice can travel where a people does not. The steppe passed its forms along by contact as readily as by descent. The debate over Turkic origins sets out what is claimed from such parallels and by whom.

End of their supremacy

Scythian hegemony in the west was challenged in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. The Sarmatians brought it to an end, probably early in the fourth century or in the third to second.^[2] The pressure that moved the Sarmatians came from the steppe further east. In the second century BC it can be traced to its origin, the rise of the Xiongnu in Mongolia. The migrations of the Xiongnu reached the Danube.^[2] The history of the steppe empires of Mongolia begins at the other end of that chain.