Scythians and related peoples
Within the vast Iranian-speaking group that bears their generic name, the Scythians in the strict sense are the best known people and the best documented by history and archeology. We will therefore content ourselves here with the few indications necessary for our purposes.
Whether the Cimmerians were expelled as Herodotus claims, or whether there was a simple change of dominant tribes within he same nomadic continuum, the Scythians dominated the Pontic steppe from the 8th or the beginning of the 7th century BC. J.-C. of the Slavs)
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- Scythians
The nomadic, pastoral and warlike existence of the Scythians will also be that of their Sarmatian and Alani successors. The rider's costume, part of his equipment and his tactics, certain objects of daily life will remain without much change until the Middle Ages and even later (thus the small tripod tables still used by the Ossetians under the name of fyng).
This continuity also exists in social structures, religious beliefs, and artistic expression through the successive animal styles of “steppe art”. Archaeological data now allow us to break with the simplistic image of primitive nomads sometimes given to the Scythians and their successors. Pastoral nomadism is not a mark of backwardness, but a complex economy which does not exclude either exchanges with neighboring sedentary populations, or even the existence of fixed establishments (wintering). The late Scythians, and after them the Sarmatians and Alans, would show a great aptitude for sedentarization and even for urban life, by choice or (more often) under the pressure of circumstances.
On many points where comparison is possible, the technical capacities of the Scythians equal those of their sedentary neighbors, including in unexpected fields such as architecture. The large “kurgans” or funerary mounds of the Scythians and related peoples, far from being simple heaps of earth, include elaborate structures:corbelled stone vaults, frames, wells and galleries of several tens of meters (the mound itself , among the Scythians, can measure more than 20 m in height and 300 m in diameter).
The famous "gold of the Scythians", but also the objects made of perishable materials discovered in the "frozen kurgans" of Altai, allow us to imagine the luxury enjoyed by the tribal aristocracies, and the relative comfort of daily life.
From the Scythian period date two historical traditions whose repercussions on the destiny of the Alans will be seen later.
The first is the rapprochement that takes place on the coasts of the Black Sea between the Scythian culture and that of the Greek colonists. Its best-known translation is the admirable mixed decorative art of the 4th century BC. J.-C., but we must above all retain this ancient intimacy between Hellenism and “Scythigma”. The second is the Iranianization - more precisely the "Scythization" - of the northern and even central Caucasus, from the seventh and sixth centuries BC. On ren, against elements of Scythian culture as far as the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus (necropolis of Tli). Archeology distinguishes in the Caucasus monuments that are strictly Scythian, others mixed (coexistence of Scythian and indigenous funerary rites, as in Narban near Naltchik), and still others attributable to natives strongly influenced by Scythian culture. Whether there was, depending on the case, permanent domination, simple raids, symbiosis or fusion, the reciprocal influences are obvious, for example in animal art.
In the middle of the 1st millennium BC, the Scythians of Ukraine and the Caucasus were only the westernmost part of a large "Scythian", Iranian-speaking and nomadic group, which occupied the steppes between Don and the Urals, and vast territories in Siberia and Central Asia. East of the Don are the Sauromates, who represent at least part of the ancestors of the future Sarmatians. To the east of the Caspian and up to the Amu Darya, the Massagetes and the Saces are in contact with Achaemenid Persia. Cyrus the Great is said to have perished fighting the former, and we know of several Persian representations of the latter (figured tributaries at Persepolis, relief of King Skunkha at Béhistoun).
All of these related populations originated from the Andronovo civilization (17th-9th centuries BC). Their links with the Western Scythians are well known in antiquity:Herodotus reports that the Sauromates speak a "corrupted" form of the Scythian language, and Persian inscriptions give Scythians and Saces the same name of Sakâ.
It should be emphasized right now - and this applies to later periods - that what the ancient sources present to us as "peoples" are in fact rather confederations in nomadic fashion, united around dominant tribes, liable to break up and to recover quickly. Their names do not necessarily correspond with the dialectal distinctions that must have existed between different "Scythian" (Eastern Iranian) dialects, nor with well-individualized archaeological cultures. The Greek and Persian nomenclatures do not coincide exactly:where Herodotus speaks of Scythians, Sauromates, Massagetes, and other "peoples", the Persians only know Sakâ differentiated by simple nicknames. The inscriptions of Darius thus evoke the Salai tyaiy Paradraya "from beyond the sea", the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ "with the pointed cap", and the Sakâ haumavargâ ("makers" or "worshippers of the haoma (the sacred drink of the Aryas) or even “haoma wolves”?). The location of these different groups is discussed. The Sakâ tyaiy Paradraya are perhaps the Scythians of the Ukraine; the other two varieties would represent Saces from Asia. The Haumavargâ seem to correspond to the "Amyrgetes" cited by Herodotus alongside the Bactrians, and the Tigrakhaudâ to his "Orthokorybantes".
The relative linguistic and cultural unity of these populations is not accompanied by any political solidarity, and the tribes are agitated by frequent migratory movements due to wars or the modification of ecological conditions. These movements can reverberate step by step in this very fluid nomadic world.