Scythians

The Scythians were an Eastern Iranic, horse-riding nomadic people who built a loose confederation of tribes that dominated the western and central Eurasian steppe from roughly the 8th to the 3rd century BCE.

Migrating from Central Asia, they displaced the Cimmerians and Agathyrsi to become the leading steppe power, eventually controlling a corridor stretching some 4,000 kilometres from the Altai Mountains and Central Asia westward across the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the fringes of Thrace. Rather than a centralised state, they were organised as a confederacy of tribes and chiefs headed by a high king whose authority over distant groups was limited; cohesion came from a shared Iranic language, warrior-nomad culture, dress, and a distinctive 'Animal Style' art. Masters of mounted archery and mobile warfare, the Scythians raided into West Asia in the 7th century BCE, clashed with Assyria, Media, and the Achaemenid Persians, and famously frustrated Darius I's invasion around 513 BCE through scorched-earth and hit-and-run tactics. Their elite burials in great kurgans, rich with worked gold depicting stylised animals, reveal a sophisticated material culture and far-reaching trade with Greek Black Sea colonies. From the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE they were gradually absorbed and supplanted by the related Sarmatians, though Scythian influence on later steppe peoples endured for centuries.