Dr. Owen Rees
Appearances
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, so the image of the Scythian woman in Greek and Roman thought is one of fear. So Scythian women are portrayed as quite independent, holding prestigious positions, leaving the house, riding horses. And in some contexts, we also hear them, especially young women, so sort of young adult women in the context of battle.
The Ancients
The Scythians
The reason why this causes fear in the Greek and Romans is because this is the exact opposite of what the Greek or Roman male writers think a woman should be doing. There's a couple of things here. One is our alarm bells should be ringing because it's a bit of a cliche. At the edges of the world, the order of things is reversed. Men stay at home, women go to war, things like that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
This is quite a common trope. However, Going back to the burial evidence we have, they have found female burials where the bodies bear all the hallmarks of combat. Not violence, as in literally they've clearly been subject to a violent attack and that's what's killed them, but the hallmarks of a combative body. If it was male, we'd have no question we're looking at someone who's experienced war.
The Ancients
The Scythians
For a long time, it was always explained away. There must be another reason, even to the point where they just assumed they were male bodies, things like that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But over the past 30 plus years, there's been a lot of research kind of going, no, this does seem to verify what we're hearing, which is that young women in particular may well have seen battle or combat or raiding or whatever it be that they did. So this is also where you can start to see the links to the Amazon myth. So this culture of a female warrior group that
The Ancients
The Scythians
bans men from its society on horseback with the bow. We can see the Scythian imagery coming in. And they are the great foe of so many Greek heroes, whether it be Hercules, Theseus, whoever it be. So many of the Greek heroes have to fight the Amazons at some point. And it's almost like this sense of asserting patriarchal control over this embodiment of everything the Greeks fear.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, absolutely. And it is revealing, really, because what they're not talking about is some bogeyman that's been created. We're actually seeing a Greek cultural reaction to a culture that is the opposite of itself or what it perceives to be the opposite of itself. And sometimes it elicits fear and sometimes it elicits intrigue and sometimes it elicits respect.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So we also see early on in some of the stories of Herodotus as well, a cliche of writing likeness throughout history, which is the idea of the noble savage. So sometimes the Scythians are presented as a pure way of living, a simpler way of living. And they have that kind of
The Ancients
The Scythians
wisdom that's supposed to come from that they understand you know without the the drive for money the drive for power the drive for this that and the other that they can just live a simpler way you know with nature and the way we're supposed to be so we do also see that as well so it is interesting that as you say but the basis of this we're not seeing an entirely fictionalized presentation
The Ancients
The Scythians
But again, we've got to be a bit careful as to where we assume Herodotus is still being right, where we assume that the Hippocratic writings are still correct, things like that. Before we move on, what's also this thing with headhunting? Headhunting. Another cliche, I'm afraid. that we get of the northern tribes or northern cultures from Rome and Greece.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Headhunting is like the antithesis of, shall we say, civilized life. It's the idea of going around and actually hunting people down, specifically to take trophies and things like that. It was for a very long time assumed, again, that this is just, like I said, a cliche. However, one of the sites we're going to talk about, there is actually potentially evidence, possibly,
The Ancients
The Scythians
of human skulls being worked to transform into drinking vessels, which is a story Herodotus tells us that the Scythians do. I say, allegedly, this is not accepted across the board by all scholars. It is a bit debated, but it just becomes more plausible. And ultimately, they are headhunting. That might also explain a lot of the cultural fear that goes with it.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Again, it's that idea of where reality and myth blend and where they are actually distinct from each other. So, you know, the bogeyman suddenly becomes a lot scarier.
The Ancients
The Scythians
That's basically the answer. I mean, ultimately, we have found evidence. We have found sites where clearly Scythian culture exists in a stationary state, shall we say. So the site I'm going to talk about is a place called Bilsk, which is sort of northern Ukraine, which is a massive wooden fortification.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Nothing we'd associate with nomadism, nothing we'd necessarily associate with the Scythians as we're told about them. It's not uncommon for nomadic or pastoralist groups to have sort of temporary settlements they go to as they move around and have sort of camps, set camps they go to. And again, Herodotus tells us this. What's different about Bilsk is just how big it is.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And it is an enormously enclosed space where we have evidence of certain areas where people are living. But the reason why I'm cagey about this is because there's so much evidence for so many cultures. We're not 100% sure if the Scythians are staying there, but they clearly use it. So yes, and maybe no.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Okay, so in terms of where we are geographically, we're at an amazing crossroads between the steppes as we kind of think about it. You know, there's large plains that go all the way east and, you know, the Ukrainian steppe, and then we sort of associate with sort of along to like Mongolia and all these kind of places we've already talked about.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But there's also the forest steppe where it's sort of dense woodland. And Bilsk is sort of around where those two points kind of meet. So... clearly an important moment of where different lifestyles are blending. So the nomadic horse-based life of the Plains meeting the more pastoralist, agro-pastoralist life elsewhere.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But it's also connected by the river systems that cut through what is now Ukraine. So in terms of transport, it is an amazing place to link north beyond Ukraine, east towards Siberia, west towards Central Europe, and south to the Black Sea, which takes you to the Greek lands, which takes you to the west coast of the Persian Empire, which takes you down to Egypt.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So in terms of a single place that links so many different ways of life, so many different markets, and so many different trade cultures. It is just fascinating. And as a result, it becomes this amazing melting pot of all of this going on at the same time. So that's the kind of location we're talking about. That's the significance of this location.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And in terms of the archaeology and the history as a historian, It brings together cultures we don't read about coming together in the history books. So again, it allows us to really fill out a picture of more global history beyond just the Black Sea, beyond just Greece and Rome and things like that. So it is an amazing insight into that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
In terms of the size of this thing, you cannot overstate how big this place is. So we're talking, it's just wooden walls, nothing particularly fancy in its design. But the wooden walls stand about nine meters tall, so it's tall. We're talking large. In terms of height, they're surrounded by ditches. Those ditches are like five meters deep. There's a massive undertaking to create this hill fort.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Perimeter actually is the combination of more than one small fort that then gets connected. And the overall perimeter is about 33 kilometers long. 33 kilometers. Wow. It creates sort of like a triangle shape. It actually connects three smaller forts with one big wall. And so 33 kilometers, let's put that in context. You're like, that sounds big. How big are we talking?
The Ancients
The Scythians
The Aurelian walls of Rome that we're looking sort of third century AD, the walls that got built were in Rome are about 19 kilometers. Yeah. In terms of footprint, it's just under 5,000 hectares, which is like double the size of Imperial Rome, five times the size of Babylon. It's about the size of Manhattan Island with a little bit of wiggle room.
The Ancients
The Scythians
It is absolutely enormous. And this is why it's so unexpected. All right. And it's also why it's so important. And the most interesting thing for me is most of the center of it is empty. We've got all this space. And there's nothing seemingly in it. It's not like they filled it with houses. They filled it with loads of buildings. They haven't built a city as such.
The Ancients
The Scythians
This is why we're archaeologists are really trying to piece together like, what is this space for? And one of the theories, and it is just one theory, but I quite like it, is one reason you'd have such a large space is to home a large nomadic group with their horses and everything with it for periods. And then they move on.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So whilst we have static life there as well, what you and I might think of as urban life, what we have with this massive gap is, you know, potentially is this to accommodate nomadism or pastoralism? Maybe that explains why there's such a large empty space. Because in terms of man hours, in terms of the effort to build this, in terms of all these things, it doesn't make a lot of sense on its own.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah. And this is why scholars and archaeologists and the researchers looking at places like Bilsk are really trying to look at it in terms of not, this is a one culture's place.
The Ancients
The Scythians
is their city this is their fortification they look at it in terms of different groups using it so we do have evidence of the sithian culture so we have the triad i mentioned so in the burials around bills we have the triad we have proof of it we even have evidence of industry there making things as part of that Scythian triad. So they're making some of those artifacts on site.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So clearly they're producing for the Scythians as well. But we also have evidence that shows that the original forts were made by migrants coming from more central Europe who have come east. and possibly from around maybe the Northern Balkans. It's hard to entirely map out exactly where they've come from, but they seem to be coming from those sort of regions and have come and done it.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And interestingly, it's one of the few Scythian groups that Herodotus describes as autochthonous, so indigenous. So he describes the group who built a city called Golonas, which may be Bilsk, we don't know. Could be Bilsk, seems to sound a bit like Bilsk. But he describes the people who made it as autochthonous, as of the earth.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So they're born where they live, which of course goes against the whole idea of nomadism. So we do have evidence of That group, we have evidence obviously of the Scythians. We have evidence of Greeks possibly even living there. We have not just trade items, but what we might call quite mundane day-to-day items like lamps and just torches basically to help see around.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And we also have evidence of the Halstatt culture, which is sort of proto-Celtic, which we associate with slightly further west. You preempted my question there because you mentioned before.
The Ancients
The Scythians
There is no sort of hard and fast rule on this. Scythian is more Latin based in its pronunciation. Scythian with a hard K is more in keeping with the Greek wording and pronunciation. We'll stick with Scythian. It's what most people who have come across the name will see. And it's also how many English readers will naturally read the word. But I should probably apologize in advance, Tristan.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, absolutely. And if you wanted to bring it back to the Greek perspective on all this, so we're talking about, this is fascinating, this is interesting, what's actually going on here? Nomads with static fortifications, what's happening? Herodotus had the same problem. So he had the same question, which is how can there be this massive city up in the north somewhere with nomads?
The Ancients
The Scythians
So in his own explanation for it, he basically describes a wooden city that looks remarkably like a Greek one. He even describes Greek temples and pillars and things like this being built out of wood. And his explanation is, well, it's not possible that the Scythians did it, so they must have had Greeks with them. So the Greeks did it for them. And then the Scythians could live alongside them.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So, you know, that's almost his way of explaining away this confusion. But of course, we know, well, we don't need to explain that away. But yeah, it is absolutely fascinating. Of course, there is no direct link between these things. I know there is a radical conspiracy that the Scythians made all the way to Ireland. There is no truth to that. But, you know, be honest. Exceptionalism.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But yeah, no, there is no connection here between them. So it is just an interesting thing where humans are doing similar things to solve similar problems when they're not connected, which is a major thing which I became obsessed with writing the book I've done where human ingenuity
The Ancients
The Scythians
solves problems as they come to a various society or a culture sometimes they solve it the same way sometimes they solve it a different way but what's so amazing the reason why we love history so much is because humans are so alike and yet so different and it's just fascinating to see how different people dealt with the same problems
The Ancients
The Scythians
I'm an ancient Greek historian. Scythian might come out a couple of times.
The Ancients
The Scythians
The most amazing discovery I came across in my research was a burial just outside Bilsk of a woman, presumably an elite woman, We don't know her standing. We don't know her role. She could be a priestess. She could be a leader. We don't know. But she's clearly an elite woman because it's a very ornate burial and she's buried with some amazing items.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And, you know, such as an ornate hairdresser, bronze mirrors, jewelry, and all these sort of things that you can associate. There's even a sacrifice goat in there. So clearly there's rituals going on in the burial, things like that. But for us, the most interesting thing at this point is the... decorative beads that had been found, which you wouldn't necessarily focus on when you're looking at it.
The Ancients
The Scythians
It was part of a necklace made from faience, which is an item usually associated with Egypt. We also have an amulet in the shape of a scarab, an item and a design you'd associate with Egypt. The scarab, we don't have the blue glaze on it now, but you can still see the remnants of it. And on the bottom of it, it's inscribed with two hieroglyphs, Again, the written language of Egypt.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And the two images are a cobra and a scorpion, two creatures that at this point were not indigenous to the region at all.
The Ancients
The Scythians
That's how interconnected the ancient world can be. It doesn't mean anyone in Bilsk is really aware of Egypt. It doesn't mean anyone in Egypt is particularly aware of Bilsk. What we've got is an interconnected marketplace and trade network that spans thousands and thousands of kilometers that allows Egypt to appear in Northern Ukraine. We don't even know how it got there. We don't know.
The Ancients
The Scythians
It may have come via Greece. It may have come via Persia and their trade networks. It might come through another trade network we don't know anything about. What is just fascinating is one, an Egyptian set of items appears there. And two, that someone who is not Greek, living in Bilsk, presumably Scythian, wants this and wants that artifact, those items from Egypt.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yes, precisely that. If you look at the earliest Greek descriptions of the Scythians, that's going to happen every time. The earliest description from the Greeks, from the Greek writer Herodotus, father of history, he very much builds the story of the Scythians. The further north you move, the more and more fantastical this culture becomes.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So they clearly hold some sort of prestige to it, probably because of how expensive they would have been.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, it's that river network I was talking about. That's how things travel so quickly and so effortlessly north through it. As I said, Bilsk is perfectly situated to combine so many different trade networks around Eurasia. So it would actually have been quite simple, whether it be by boat or carts. I personally wouldn't do that. I would get on the water and do it quicker.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And of course, Greek traders, this is what they do. This is all they ever do. They know how to go around environments. They know how to find the best marketplaces. They know how to sell their wares to people. This is why we see Greek objects such as fine pottery, such as wine and foray, much further beyond the cultural boundaries of the Greek world.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Because, you know, it's very easy for us to kind of think, oh, well, it's because Greek culture is so enticing. Everyone wants it. Whereas, you know, really, some of this has to come down to the fact that the Greeks are really good at pushing their stuff. They're very good at convincing everyone you want this. So it would not have been difficult for them at all.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So, you know, we're obviously talking about the more foreign goods to the Greeks as well with these Egyptian items. But also, you know, wine, the pottery I was talking about, fine pottery, this is all found in and around what is now Ukraine. I mean, so much so, wine is a really interesting one because the Scythians don't produce wine themselves.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So all the wine they have comes to them from Greece and possibly Persia as well. And yet the Greeks consider the Scythians heavy drunks. So they drink wine wrong. So they drink wine without water added to it. So Greek wine is made to a particular strength. Not that strong, to be fair. We're talking maybe 9% to 12% as it is now. But in ancient Greece, you add water to that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And the amount of water you're having kind of determines the sort of sophistication of what's going on. And the Scythians were renowned for drinking without adding water. And so you get this description in Greek writing as drinking Scythian wine, which is basically unwatered down. So you're going to be a drunken sod.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So he starts quite close to a city you and I have talked about before on this podcast, Olbia. a Greek town just by Crimea. He describes Scythian groups around there, and they're sort of, for want of a better word, normal to him. They're sort of agricultural, a little bit of nomadism, nothing too spectacular.
The Ancients
The Scythians
You're going to basically get, for want of a better word in English vernacular, you're going to get bladdered. And I just find it really interesting that it holds this reputation as a society that they can't drink properly. They're barbaric. Look at them. And it's an item. It is a drink given to them by the Greeks. Completely pissed Scythians.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, this is ultimately it. So this is also why we've got to make sure we're not looking at everything entirely through Greek eyes. So it might well be that they are drinking it without watering it down. But as I just said to you, this wine is not like 20% or plus. We're not talking spirits. And we would be considered drinking a wine that was way too strong for the Greeks now. So context...
The Ancients
The Scythians
I suppose the key ones is all the Scythian cultures, especially around the Black Sea, are renowned for their metalwork. And if you ever just Google Scythian art, Scythian gold work, artifacts, and just look at what was being made, it is beautiful, intricate work. So precious metals, precious metal goods, absolutely. Around the Black Sea, there does seem to be one of the key areas for grain.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Not the only one, but it is a key area for grain. So again, they'll be trading in grain and food goods and things like that. But also they seem to be getting quite a lot of enslaved people via this trade route as well. So we see Scythians appearing like Athens' slaves and things like that. So there's clearly a trade link there via those routes. But we also get the blending of things.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So you wouldn't necessarily say it's Scythian items, but we do see Greco-Scythian art styles appear. So where you get the more naturalistic human forms of art, but with the craftsmanship and the skill of Scythian production. So we get this lovely blending of artifacts as well, or blending of artistic cultures going on throughout.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Then as he moves further and further north in his description, they suddenly become like werewolves and immortal beings. Werewolves and immortal beings? Oh, we will get to that, Tristan, don't you worry. But it's the idea that the further you move away from the Greek world, the way I think of it is you move from reality into almost myth.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So yeah, those are the sort of things that you're getting from Scythia predominantly.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So from the region around the Black Sea, one of the things you get is a, like I said, what we might describe as more naturalistic art. So it's trying to look like the world as it is, rather than the fantastical world of the animalistic style I was talking about earlier with the swirls and the beauty and things like that, where it looks almost fantastical.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So we have artifacts of like Scythian men just sort of sorting out their bows and arrows. So it has, I wouldn't describe it as mundane. I don't think that's fair, but that kind of normal life that the Greek art forms are really interested in depicting that we kind of associate with the pottery of Athens and the like, where they're showing normal everyday things going on.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So we have that, but it's in like gold, so like combs made of sort of gold plated and things like this. And it's just, It's just amazing to see. Flip side of that, in Athens itself, during this period of exposure to the Scythian world, especially as Athens' empire is building in the 5th century, we start to see cultures from around the Black Sea starting to be depicted on Greek vases.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And they're most notably identifiable by tattoos. Because tattooing culture is not an Athenian culture. They only tattoo for basically crime more than anything else, or really the enslaved. That's who they're tattooing. Whereas North, the Thracians, the Scythians, they tattoo themselves culturally for very different reasons, for artistic reasons, but also for cultural reasons as well.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And as the fifth century goes on, Greek art starts to depict these tattoos in greater and greater detail. And they go from the bobbly lines on a leg that are clearly just, look at this foreign person, isn't it weird? And then by the sort of beginning of the fourth century, they painstakingly depict very different tattoos on a single body to show the variety of what's going on.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So I also love the idea that not only are they trading with the Scythians for food and for slaves and all these things, they're also sharing artistic trends and ideas are coming back and forth as well. And we see that in the art.
The Ancients
The Scythians
We do have a few stories. You're absolutely right. So if we talk about Scythians moving into the Greek world, the most common thing we would think about is mercenaries and slaves. I mean, in Athens, there's the Scythian police force.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And we see this in the Greek and the Roman writing, Greek in particular. So the further north, the further east we go, the more fantastical and the more mythological the Scythians become as a people.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So what that actually looked like, what that actually meant in terms of it. But we've got Scythians in Athens being depicted. So they're clearly about... But we do have examples. We have one example of a guy called Anarchasis, who is a Scythian prince who does come and travel the Greek world. And he is depicted very much as a philosopher.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And he's traveling the Greek world to learn all the kind of knowledge bases the Greek world have, but from the perspective of an outsider. So I mentioned to you earlier that sometimes the Scythians are depicted as this noble, savage figure. And he is a classic example of that. There's one story where he meets Solon, the legendary lawgiver of Athens.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And Solon is talking to him and explaining his new plan for his new laws that are basically going to create democracy in the long run. And it would become that foundation. To the Greek mind, this is a pivotal moment. individual who gave the very essence of Athenian democracy its early shoots, its beginning. Anacharsis is beautifully blunt and he's beautifully laconic with his words.
The Ancients
The Scythians
He's told the laws and he describes them as being like a spider's web, basically saying what you're doing is you're creating a spider's web around the people of what would be Athens. But And he says they would hold the weak, that is the web itself would hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in them.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So the weakest and the poorest would be caught up in these webs, but they would be ripped apart by those with power and money. So from the very early fledglings of democracy, an outside Scythian philosopher went, this is only going to control the poor and the rich will always find a way to break through it. And if that's not a relevant story to today, I don't know what is, Tristan.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But this individual's kind of legacy within the Greek world is he's often named as one of the seven sages of the ancient world. So this list of the great philosophers of the Greek world alongside people like Solon, he sometimes appears on that list. That's kind of how he's remembered, but only through the Greek tradition. We obviously have no evidence whatsoever of a Scythian tradition of him.
The Ancients
The Scythians
We don't even know if he's necessarily even real. which is quite frustrating, but I like to assume he is.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So Bielsk is a chapter from my latest book, The Far Edges of the Known World. And it sits within a series of chapters that looks at life at the edge or beyond the edges of the ancient world as it's normally taught. So the world of Greece, the world of Rome and the world of pharaonic Egypt. I wanted to kind of look at what life was like for everyone else.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So if we stick to the Greek perspective, we can talk about the Scythians as a group. Archaeologically, we cannot. We'll talk about that in a minute. But the Greeks very much saw the Scythians as a group, but made up of little, for want of a better word, tribal groups. So what they're describing are the nomadic or semi-nomadic groups north of the Black Sea and moving east.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So, you know, what was life like as a Greek living so far away from Greece, places like Olbia, places in Ukraine. But also I wanted to get the other cultural perspectives as well. So actually, what is actually going on in Scythian land when we don't necessarily just listen to the Greeks?
The Ancients
The Scythians
So it sits alongside other towns, whether it be Naucatus, a Greek city in Egypt, or Hadrian's Wall in the Roman life up in northern England, but also places like Taxila, which is in Pakistan, and Colois, which I know you've had a fantastic podcast on as well, in ancient Vietnam. So it really looks at life at the edge and beyond the edge of the known world as the Greeks and Romans perceived it.
The Ancients
The Scythians
I mean, they didn't know about it, the Greeks, but you and I would go as far as Siberia. So that's how far east we're kind of looking. There's also names associated with the Scythians through other cultures as well. So I think you've done a podcast on the Saka.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And also brings us down into sort of Persia and Iran. That's the group that are talking about the Sakai. So that kind of geographically gives you an idea. But in terms of names, in terms of who we're talking about, we're talking about Scythians, we're talking about the Sakai, we're talking about another group that gets talked about are the Chimerians.
The Ancients
The Scythians
All of these are sort of loosely associated with this big label of Scythian, which really kind of means foreign nomadic group to the north and east that we don't really know a lot about.
The Ancients
The Scythians
In terms of writing, most of our evidence comes from external groups to the Scythians. You're right, the Greeks, Romans to an extent. They're our main sources describing the culture because they're fascinated with it. It's a real other culture. So they tell us a lot. We've got to kind of wade through that and see what's a bit exaggerated and what's plausible and piece two and two together.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But also we have evidence from sort of Mesopotamia and sort of the Persian Empire as well. So, you know, the various large inscriptions from like Darius the Great and Cyrus and all these kind of people. They make mention to these groups as well.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So we do have sort of different cultural perspectives on the Scythians, but always from the sense that they are the other, that they are the different group, and that they are being sort of judged accordingly to that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah, we do. And this is where, I mean, ultimately with any conversation about the Scythians, you'd either, if you get a historian like me, you'll get a lot of conversation about how the Greeks and how the sort of the settled world, shall we say, that kind of city building, urbanized cultures, how they view the Scythians. An archaeologist would give you a very different story.
The Ancients
The Scythians
they would focus on the archaeological evidence, which is far superior in understanding that culture. I'm going to try and mix it. I'm going to give it a go. And that's obviously a big part of the research I do, blending these things so we can try and understand it within both contexts. But we do, we have a lot of evidence. A lot of evidence comes from the burials.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So we have burials from Ukraine right through to Siberia and the Altai Mountains. With amazing levels of preservation, especially further east where the cold climate really helps. I mean, we have Pazarek burials where we have surviving skin from the buried men and women. We have hair, locks of hair, hairstyles. We can literally show you a plaited ponytail from the 4th century.
The Ancients
The Scythians
That's how well it's been preserved. The British Museum had an exhibit a few years ago with a couple of these items and they're just horrific and beautiful and odd. And you're not quite sure how to react to what you're looking at because of it. But because of it, we can show you an ancient tattoo. on their skin.
The Ancients
The Scythians
We can show you hairstyles, we can talk about the food, we can talk about what's buried around them in amazing detail. It's always difficult without words and without narratives and without stories to piece together, but we can at least start to confirm or analyse what was important to them, so important that they're buried like that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
That's just on that. That's a really key point, which is, You did it. I've done it. Everyone does it when we talk about the Scythians. We go quite vague and start throwing lots of labels around in fear of inaccuracy. It's because Scythian is as much an archaeological culture than it is a real one, for want of a better word.
The Ancients
The Scythians
The reason why we call all these things Scythian is because of certain commonalities So we have no proof that they are actually innately connected by a cultural bond that you and I would associate with a single ethnic group. We don't have enough evidence to really show that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
They talk about the Scythian triad, which are the three items that we're looking for in a burial, in a site, in an archaeological context. That kind of goes, yeah, okay, this might well be Scythian or Scythian-like. And you mentioned a few of them. So it's the distinctive animalistic art style.
The Ancients
The Scythians
where it's sort of semi-fantastical with the beautiful swirling geometric shapes built within the design of animals, often like the swirls in the ears and things like that. And it is absolutely beautiful. We have the specific weapons, so the Scythians are always renowned for the bow, a very distinctive type of bow.
The Ancients
The Scythians
The Greeks in particular associate them with a particular type of axe, a very long-handled axe. So we've got the art, we've got the weaponry, and the other one is the horse bridle, a very distinctive type of bridle. So if we see those three... that's when the name Scythian will kind of be comfortably associated with a site.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But we've always got to be a little bit careful because we don't necessarily know if it's because they were Scythian, because they held these items in great esteem, what quite the relationship is there. So yeah, so it's just always something to kind of keep in mind whenever we talk about the Scythians, especially further east and the more vague it becomes.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Absolutely that. So this is why I was sort of throwing around some of the names. We've also got like the Sarmatians, the Saramatians. These are names you might come across, especially in Roman history.
The Ancients
The Scythians
And then you've got the other sort of nomadic groups that come after them, the Alans and things like that. Sometimes they're still called Scythian, sometimes they're not. Scythian is, like you said, it's an overarching name they give to talk about a collective concept. Often when they want to be specific, they start talking specific names. So they start using these specific titles.
The Ancients
The Scythians
Herodotus does this. He talks about Scythia and he talks about the Scythians and then breaks them down group by group by name. So even he acknowledges they're the same, but they're not.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So Herodotus is often considered the father of history. Cicero, the Roman writer, famously called him the father of history. He is the first in the lineage of what we would consider the writing of history. So what I mean by that is not the recording of events of the past. That's chronicling. And that's been going on since Egypt and before. So there's a long heritage and history of that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
But history itself is supposed to be an inquiry. You're supposed to be asking questions, trying to answer a question. rather than just recording facts and recording information and recording events for whatever reason. This is what Herodotus was trying to do. So Herodotus was exploring the causes and the outcome of the Persian Wars.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So that was the great Persian Empire in conflict with the tiny poleis of Greece and the various poleis of Greece and basically why the Greeks won, why this conflict even occurred and things like that. So he's interested in all that.
The Ancients
The Scythians
What I love about Herodotus and the purity of what Herodotus was trying to do was he wanted to understand all the cultures involved in this, to his mind, global conflict. So Persia was a big empire that included lots of different areas of the world within it, a lot of cultures within it. So Herodotus explored those. One of those groups was the Scythians.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So he has an entire section of his histories dedicated to Scythia, the land of Scythia, and the peoples within it. He's not only a historian, as you and I think of it, he's also a bit of an ethnographer. He's fascinated by culture. And he's also somewhat of a geographer. So he's also interested not just in the Scythians, not just Scythian land, but also his concept of a world map.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So where does Scythia end? What is beyond it? He's trying to build a world picture as well as doing all these other things. So this is why I love Herodotus. And if you read his section on Scythia, it is a meandering, tangent-filled,
The Ancients
The Scythians
glorious piece of writing that i absolutely adore and you're just going through things where you're like i wonder if he even believes this and i bet he believes that bit okay he seems to agree with this bit and then there are he's very honest about what he can and cannot say and what he can or cannot prove but he's also not afraid of giving an opinion which i really i really like so that's so whilst he's exploring the scythians that's kind of the context of what he's doing
The Ancients
The Scythians
I reckon he would have. There is a bit of debate as to his travels. He does seem to have travelled extensively for his research. He does seem to have gone to the Black Sea. But you wonder, would he have gone past the Greek cities?
The Ancients
The Scythians
Yeah. But even then, there's no reason he wouldn't meet Scythians there. And there's no reason he wouldn't be able to communicate or have ability to communicate with them. So what we then do as historians to try and work this out is we start to look at what he says and what can be verified.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So for instance, his description of them, certain Scythian groups living with basically carts that are houses. There is some archaeological evidence to kind of support that possibility in certain groups. He also mentions the use of cannabis in a ritualistic context, basically like a steam tent, for want of a better term.
The Ancients
The Scythians
So alongside the obsession with horses, alongside the cultural importance of the bow, all of this is confirmed. All of this is verified. So does that mean he's gone and lived with Scythians? No, I don't think we can quite go that far. But he does seem to be getting his information sort of from somewhere. And there's no reason to constantly assume he's wrong.