The Scythians were a ferocious civilization of nomadic warriors who ranged throughout the steppes of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Both the Scythians and their closely related successors, the Sarmatians, were nomadic cultures of the Russian and Ukranian steppes. In fact the name "Scythian" literally translates to "nomad", associated with the Slavonic root "skit", as in the Russian "skitat'sya", meaning "to wander". They were essentially nomads, semi-nomads and farmers; yet history finds them most notable as, first and foremost, excellent horsemen. In fact they were the first ever horsemen in the world to master arrow-shooting at full tilt. Anthropological evidence suggests that both the Scythians and Sarmatians were of Indo-European Celtic origin (along with the Galatians, Gauls, Latini, Mycenae, Hittites, Dorics, Slavs, Goths, Germanic tribes, as well as the ancestors of the Vikings). Though the Celts left no written history of their own, though it is believed they originated in Southern Russia and by around 2,000 B.C. had reached the British Isles.
According to the 5th century B.C. Greek Historian Herodotus, the Scythians gave birth to the Samartian culture, the Sarmatians in legend said to be the offspring of Scythians who had mated with Amazonians. The Amazons of course were a (perhaps) mythical civilization of fierce female warriors. According to Herodotus, the union of Scythian men and Amazonian women produced female Samartian descendants that, "have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient (Amazonian) customs". These customs included, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men". Moreover, claimed Herodotus, "no girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle." Herodotus quoted one of these fierce women warriors as stating, "we are riders; our business is with the bow and the spear, and we know nothing of women's work."
Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine recorded that these women warriors, "have no right breasts. While they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm." Until very recently, archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists regarded the Sarmatian women warriors as purely mythical. However recent excavations including the skeletal remains Sarmatian Prince-Warriors have upon closer examination turned out to be the remains of decidedly female warrior priestesses.
In the ancient times the Sarmatians and Scythians were composed of diverse nomadic tribes living in the South Urals steppes. Both the Scythians and their successors, the Samartians, were skillful hunters and brave warriors. Their armies were greatly feared, and were formed mostly of archers. They had a very special relationship with their horses. Their warrior archers not only fought mounted on horses, they were often buried with their horses. These cultures produced not only exceptional warriors, shepherds and farmers, but also skilled metallurgists. From bronze they would manufacture axes, knives, daggers and various articles of personal adornment. The Scythians in particular were well known for their astonishingly intricate and sophisticated animalistic gold work.
The story of the Scythians and the Sarmatians started almost a million years ago in present-day Kazakhstan. As early as the Paleolithic, ancient man settled down on these lands rich with game and wild fruit. It is there that they founded ancient Stone Age settlements, and eventually came to control the area of present-day Kazakhstan. Excavations of their Neolithic settlements have shown that they were horse breeders, and likely some of the earliest peoples to use horse-mounted warriors. The horse enabled considerable movement, and these ancient peoples developed what in contrast to most ancient cultures was a mobile, nomadic lifestyle. Recent archeological discoveries have unearthed dwellings, along with numerous hand-made articles of stone and ivory.
As early as the Bronze Age, some four thousand years, ago these tribes were engaged in farming and cattle-breeding, and were fine warriors who expertly handled chariots in combat. To this day we can see images of chariots drawn on rocks where these ancient people would arrange their tribal temples and sanctuaries. These petroglyphs include chiseled scenes of dances, images of sun-headed deities, and mighty camels and bulls as impersonations of ancient gods. Burial mounds of noble warriors scattered all throughout the Kazakh steppes are known for the magnificent size of mounds and burial vaults. They buried their dead warriors in deep pits, up to 50 feet deep, and then mounded up to 70 additional feet of earth above ground level.
If the Scythians were not the first to domesticate the horse they were among the earliest, if not the first of the Central Asian people to learn to ride it. Mounted soldiers were the foundation of the Scythians' success in war. When the Scythians penetrated Asia their techniques of riding and warfare were rapidly adopted and mastered throughout the entire Middle Eastern area. They are one of the earliest races to wear trousers, reflecting their horseback lifestyle. They wore pliable boots with heels. From the 2000-years-old frozen body recovered in 1947 in Siberia, it was learned that Scythians liked to cover themselves with elaborate tattoos. Men cropped their hair, lacerated their ears, forehead, noses and arms. After the king was buried with the best of all his weapons and possessions, the funeral party strangled one of his concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, his lackey, his messenger and his best horses and placed all the bodies beside him. Even then, the funeral was not over. One year later as many as 50 Scythian youths might be selected from among those who had directly served the king. They would be strangled and buried in a circle around the royal tomb.
Scythian mythology holds that their origin was the Black Sea Region. Perhaps the most striking feature of Scythians was the enormous amount of gold they wore and used. Commonly the Scythians wore golden ornaments and belts. Gold plates were sewn to their garments and gold gleamed from their weapons. Archaeologists are consistently amazed by the amount of gold offerings deposited in the great burial mounds of the Scythian kings. Dating the earliest Scythians has been a problem since they did not develop their distinctive art style until the 6th century B.C. However it is believed that between the middle of the 2nd millenium B.C. and the end of the 7th century B.C., Scythians moved in several waves from the Volga-Ural steppes into the North Black Sea area and assimilated the local Cimmerians. In history, the Scythians was first recorded in the 7th century B.C. as Assyria's ally against the Cimmerians. Scythians and Assyrians together conquered the Medes of the Caspian Sea; however the Medes was able to drive the Scythians out of western Asia and back to the Pontic Steppes by the turn of the century.
In 514 BC., Darius, the third of the Persian great Kings, decided to invade Scythia, marching an army of 700,000 soldiers across the Danube to the Russian steppes. The ancient historian Herodotus in his histories records the campaign, and its ultimate failure. It was during the 4th century B.C. that the Scythian kingdom reached the highest economic, political, social and cultural development. Many nomads became sedentary in the North Black Sea and Kamenskoe Gorodishche was the economic, political and trading capital of Scythia in the 4th till the first half of the 3rd century BC. The great king Atheas united all the Scythian tribes and expanded his territory to Tracian border on the right bank of the Danube. In 339 B.C., Atheas was killed at age of 90 in the battle with Philip of Macedon. However the Scythian kingdom remained strong and wealthy.
The outside threat did not disturb their stability until the Celts and the Thracians swept in from the west and the Sarmatians from the east starting at the second half of the 3rd century BC.; after which the Scythian kingdom was absorbed by other powers (principally the Sarmatians) and by and large disappeared from history. However ancient first century (BC) historian Diodorus Siculus recorded of the diminished Scythians, they "lived in very small numbers at the Araks River....that they gained for themselves a country in the mountains up to the Caucasus, in the lowland on the coast of the Ocean (Caspian Sea) and the Meot Lake (Azov Sea) and other territories up to the Tanais River (Don River). Born in that land from the conjugal union of Zeus and a snake-legged goddess was a son Scyth who gave the name Scythian to the people."
The known history of the Sarmatian tribes starts around 1,000 B.C. during a period of flourishing nomadic cattle-breeding. Around this time they built fortified settlements in the Urals River valley. Classified as Indo-Scythians, and like the Scythians to whom they were closely related, they are believed to have originally been of Iranian descent, migrants from Central Asia who settled most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans. Their administrative capability and political astuteness contributed to their gaining widespread influence. The first nomads who lived in what is today Kazakhstan were the Cimmerians. During the 7th century B.C., in the steppe north of the Black Sea, the Scythians replaced the Cimmerians, who, vanquished by the new invaders, migrated toward Asia Minor. The Sarmatians original westward migration from Central Asia, starting in about the 6th century B.C., brought them into conflict with the Scythians, whom they gradually displaced, coming to dominate the southern area of European Russia from about the 4th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D.
When the Sarmatians penetrated into southeastern Europe, they were already accomplished horsemen. They were nomadic, devoting themselves to hunting and pastoral (livestock) occupations. Owing to their common nomadic Central Asian heritage, at first Sarmatian society paralleled that of the Scythians. However the Scythian gods were those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerated a god of fire to whom they offered horses in sacrifice. In contrast to the reclusive, domestic role of Scythian women, unmarried Sarmatian females, especially in the society's early years, took arms alongside men. The Sarmatians horsemanship and cavalry corps led to the invention of the metal stirrup and the spur. These innovations contributed greatly to success in military campaigns and even influenced the Roman style of combat.
By the 5th century B.C. the Sarmatians held control of much of the Urals region, and in the 4th century B.C. they conquered the Scythians, replacing them as rulers of almost all of southern Russia by the 2nd century B.C. Some tribes which lived near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov ultimately gave rise to the Slavs. The Sarmatians penetrated the Roman province of Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) during the time of Nero's rule, and an alliance which the Sarmatians formed with Germanic tribes posed a formidable threat to the Romans in the West as late as the 1st century A.D. During the period of their greatest power, the Sarmatians were a constant threat to Roman provinces in the Balkans, especially to Dacia (Romania).
The Sarmatian civilization was described by the Alexandrian scholar Ptolemy (100-178 A.D.) in his work, "Geographike Hyphegesis". They were also described by the Roman writers Pliny and Tacitus. Under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) the Roman Army campaigned for eight years in Pannonia Barbarica (i.e., in the central and northern parts of the Carpathian Basin, north and east of the Roman lines along the Danube) against the Quadi, a German tribe, and the Sarmatians. Roman history recorded the Sarmatians as, "Iranian speaking barbarians who came from east of the Carpathians, from the south Russian steppe and from the Lower Danube Plains near the Black Sea". Eventually the Roman armies prevailed against the Sarmatians. However the Romans had so much respect for these warriors that 5,500 Sarmatian heavy (armored) cavalry prisoners were posted to Britain in 175 A.D. to augment the Roman soldiers already stationed there. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius sent these warriors to Britannia not only to keep them out of trouble in Pannonia Barbarica, but also to deploy them beyond Hadrian's Wall.
These Sarmatians are known to have been stationed in permanent camps outside the Roman forts at Ribchester in Lancashire, Chester, and elsewhere. The Sarmatian enclaves, especially the one at Ribchester, known in ancient times as "Bremetennacum Veteranorum", survived until the end of the Roman era in the late 4th century A.D. As Rome's power waned in the west, and her focus shifted to Constantinople, Roman soldiers were essentially "marooned" in Britain and were eventually absorbed into the local population. Speculation is that a similar fate befell the Sarmatians who did not manage to work their way back to their homelands in Eastern Europe.
In the final centuries of their existence the Sarmatians invaded Dacia (Romania) and the lower Danube region, only to be overwhelmed by the Goths during the 3rd century A.D. Many Sarmatians joined their conquerors in the Gothic invasion of Western Europe as the Roman Empire crumbled. However Sarmatia as a discrete civilization perished when hordes of Huns conquered Southern Russia after 370 A.D. Those surviving Sarmatian became assimilated or escaped to the West as refugees to fight the Huns and the last of the Goths. Then in 472 A.D. the remaining refugee population of Sarmatians were beaten by Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, and the two Sarmatian kings, Beukan and Babai, fell in battle. Within decades there were no more historical references to the Sarmatians, their conquered descendants vanished or were assimilated without a trace, and this glorious civilization was at an end.
