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Scythians in the Steppe P1 - Examining the statements from Herodotus – With Dr Gino Caspari (S01E02)
103 Plays3 years ago
For Episode 2 we come to a topic, which fascinates me since many years: The mysterious Scythians who lived in the Eurasian steppe, some 2500 years ago. I’ll begin with a quick overview of these people from the antiquity and thanks to the preserved writings of the Greek author Herodotus, we have the unique opportunity to learn about them almost from first hand. I then compare Herodotus statements about the burial habits of the Scythians with actual archaeological evidence from excavated grave monuments in order to test the validity of the antique author. After this overview and comparison, I will talk with Dr. Gino Caspari about his experience’s excavating grave sites in the Eurasian steppe and the Scythians in general.
Reverences:
- Simpson/Pankova Eds. (2017), Scythians. Warriors of ancient Siberia
- Parzinger (2004), Die Skythen
- Rolle et al. (1991), Gold der Steppe
- Rolle (1980), Die Welt der Skythen
- Rolle (1972), Neue Ausgrabungen skythischer und sakischer Grabanlagen in der Ukraine und in Kazachstan
- Herodotus HIV
Links: https://linktr.ee/23_minutes_archaeology
Support: patreon.com/23minarch
Transcript
Introduction to Scythians and Herodotus
00:00:08
Speaker
Skithians in the Steppe, Part 1, examining the statements from Herodotus. Alright, welcome back everybody tuning into 23-Minute Archaeology with me, Noah. Now we come to a topic which fascinates me since many years, the mysterious Skithians from the Eurasian Steppe.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'll begin with a quick overview of these people from the antiquity, and thanks to the preserved writings of the Greek author Herodotus, we have the unique opportunity to learn about them from almost first hand.
00:00:47
Speaker
Some years ago I wrote a paper comparing Herodotus' statements about the burial habits of the Scythians with actual archaeological evidence from excavated grave monuments. I tried to test the validity of the antique author and thought maybe that could also be interesting for you.
00:01:08
Speaker
After this overview and comparison, we will talk with my friend Dr. Gino Kaspari about his experiences excavating grave sites in the Eurasian steppe and Scythians in general. As a teaser, here's already a small extract.
00:01:25
Speaker
Scythians sort of became associated with a very broad material culture category and geographically extended from the northern Black Sea region all the way to essentially what is Mongolia today.
Scythian Society and Practices
00:02:03
Speaker
Herodotus would definitely be worth his own episode, but for better understanding of today's topic, here are just some basic facts about him. He lived from around 485 to 425 BC, so almost 2500 years ago and about 100 years before the time of Alexander the Great, for example.
00:02:29
Speaker
Some 400 years after his death, the famous Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero named him Pater Historia, or the Father of History, because he was credited to have been the first Greek historian. His text, Historiae, or The Histories, later divided into nine books, is famous for the detailed account about the Greco-Persian Wars, but in Book 4 he also wrote about the Scythians.
00:02:59
Speaker
The Scythians inhabited the region of more or less present-day Ukraine. Herodotus marks the land of the Scythians between the rivers Don and Danube, as well as the Black Sea. Additionally, most archaeological evidence places them in this region as well.
00:03:18
Speaker
So, when we talk about the Scythians, we mean the people which inhabited the Ukrainian steppe. The tribes, more to the east, had a similar language and lifestyle, but different names, meaning the modern denominations for Scythians between the Ukraine and the Altai Mountains bordering Mongolia, more than 5,000 kilometers to the east,
00:03:42
Speaker
is more a social and chronological term. And already, a small teaser, in the next episode, we will focus more on these fascinating, quote, Scythian mummies from the Far Eastern Siberia.
00:03:58
Speaker
It's interesting that the present-day names for the rivers Don and Danube could also come from their Scythian denominations because Danu meant river. Their language has Persian origins from where they probably also originated before passing through the Caucasus Mountains to the Ukrainian steppe, presumably in the 8th century BC.
00:04:22
Speaker
The Scythians inhabited this land until they were more and more, quote, suppressed by the Sarmatians some 500 years later in the 3rd century BC, or actually their culture transformed and mixed with elements indicated as Sarmatian.
00:04:41
Speaker
Apparently, the Scythian society was divided between farmers, warriors and priests, but most people were probably un-free farmers and or slaves. Herodotus distinguished the Scythians into three groups, the farming Scythians, the nomadic Scythians and the royal Scythians, which were probably the ruling class over the other two.
00:05:09
Speaker
The names show us that some Scythians were living nomadic lifestyle with livestock, while others practiced farming and were living in big cities. The main source of the great wealth of the Scythian elite was grain export to Greek colonies in present-day Turkey, for example. It was so important that wheat was even depicted on Scythian coins.
00:05:36
Speaker
The soil north of the Black Sea, which is very good for growing crops, enabled the good harvest of grain. The grain exports allowed the Scythians to import a great number of Greek goods like wine, ceramics and golden objects.
00:05:54
Speaker
As already mentioned, Herodotus wrote in his fourth book about the Scythians and his observations survived the centuries. And I just have to highlight some cool little quotes. For example, Herodotus tells us that they drank the blood of the enemies and took their scalps as trophies.
00:06:16
Speaker
But it gets more gruesome. They apparently skinned enemy soldiers and used their skin as towels. Many Scythians even soothed these skins together and used them as clothes.
Burial Practices and Archaeological Discoveries
00:06:29
Speaker
Apparently, cannabis grew in the land of the Scythians, and according to Herodotus, they burned it on hot stones and inhaled the smoke.
00:06:39
Speaker
He also speaks of fantastic tribes that live even further to the east and north, like the Nureans, for example, a tribe of wizards who would once a year transform into a wolf.
00:06:54
Speaker
But even Herodotus did not fully believe such stories. Also to the north, he mentions the mysterious Amazons. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians called them Ojorpata, which translates to, quote, man-killer. But they are a topic for another episode.
00:07:15
Speaker
Now I will read the English translation of the section where Herodotus describes in detail the burial of a Scythian king. It is important to keep in mind that Herodotus probably never actually visited the Scythian mainland himself.
00:07:34
Speaker
However, he is verified to have been in Olbia, located at the northern coast of the Black Sea, neighboring the land of the Scythians, so at least he probably was able to gather information from direct sources. When the king dies, they dig a grave which is square in shape and of great size.
00:07:59
Speaker
When it is ready, they take the king's corpse and, having opened the belly and cleaned out the inside, fill the cavity with the preparation of chopped cypress, frankincense, and parsley seed, and after which they sew up the opening, enclose the body in wax, and, placing it on a wagon, carry it about through all the different tribes.
00:08:25
Speaker
On this procession, each tribe, when it receives the corpse, imitates this. Every man chops off a piece of his ear, crops his hair close, and makes a cut mark all around his arm, lacerates his forehead and his nose, and thrusts an arrow through his left hand.
00:08:46
Speaker
And so they come to the tombs of the kings. There the body of the king is laid in a prepared grave, stretched upon a mattress, and beams stretched across and above it, to form a roof.
00:09:01
Speaker
In the open space, around the body of the king, they bury one of his concubines, first killing her by strangling, and also his cup-bearer, his cook, his groom, his lackey, his messenger, some of his horses, the best of all his other possessions, and some golden cups, for they use neither silver nor brass. After this, they set to work,
00:09:28
Speaker
and raise a vast mount above the grave, all of them seeking it to make it as tall as possible. Such, then, is the mode in which the kings are buried." So, to sum up these statements, when a great leader died, he was mummified and then carried around.
00:09:51
Speaker
The goal was to show the deceased to all of his subordinates, which had to mark themselves, probably to show obedience. The journey was accompanied with feasts organized by the successor to ensure loyalty and transition of power.
00:10:10
Speaker
When the journey of the deceased reached a predetermined location, he was placed in a prepared grave. The body was stretched on a mattress under a tent or rather chamber, accompanied with precious possessions.
00:10:26
Speaker
During the funeral celebrations, servants as well as horses were ritually strangled to death and laid alongside the deceased leader. After that ceremony, a mound made of rocks and soil was built above the grave chamber.
00:10:45
Speaker
With these statements in mind, we will now look at an example of such a grave monument. They are called kurgen, the Russian word for mount or burial mound. Most of these kurgens were looted because these enormous mounds were very well visible in the otherwise flat steppe.
00:11:10
Speaker
But luckily, the grave monument of Tolstoyamogila, as always, forgive my pronunciation, was only partially robbed. Located on the outskirts of the small town of Pokrov on the river Dnieper, this kurgen was excavated in the 1970s.
00:11:31
Speaker
It had an only partially robbed central grave and an untouched additional grave chamber containing the remains of a so-called princess and presumably her servants. The mount had a diameter of approximately 70 meters and was up to 12 meters tall.
00:11:53
Speaker
The two grave chambers were catacombs six to eight meters below the antique surface. Around the mound was a ditch with burned horse and boar bones and sherds from Greek wine amphora, probably from the funerary feast.
00:12:11
Speaker
The remains of an approximately 50-year-old man were found in the central grave chamber. The uncovered grave goods mainly consisted of weapons like two swords with golden scabbards, a whip wrapped in gold and four quivers containing lots of bronze arrowheads.
00:12:33
Speaker
The most impressive object of this grave and probably for the whole Scythian archaeology in Ukraine was a golden pectoral, a lunar shaped chest jewel made of more than one kilo of solid gold.
00:12:50
Speaker
Portrayed on this are 44 animals and mythical creatures modeled in the famous and typical Scythian animal art style dynamically fighting each other. We'll return to this style in the next episode when we will focus on the famous tattoos of the mummies from Siberia.
Comparing Herodotus with Archaeology
00:13:14
Speaker
In between the animals, there are four figurines, probably depicting Scythians, working with fur and milking sheep. And just as a reminder, you can go on Instagram and see a picture I took of this impressive object during my last visit to Kiev.
00:13:35
Speaker
neighboring the central grave was an untouched deep shaft filled with wagon wheels that led to the grave chamber of the so-called princess. The remains of a young woman were bedded on carpets and accompanied with lots of precious grave goods like a golden diadem
00:13:58
Speaker
a golden necklace, eleven golden fingerings, and more than two hundred small gold plates, which were soon on her purple robe. On the floor of this catacomb, right next to the princess, was the skeleton of an approximately twenty-year-old tall male, assumed to have been her bodyguard, because he was armed with a short sword, bow and arrows.
00:14:26
Speaker
In one corner next to the chamber was the skeleton of her presumed cook since it had an iron knife, a bronze cauldron, a pan and lots of animal bones on two wooden tablets. It's interesting to note that there are indications that the cause of death of these quote servants was indeed strangulation.
00:14:49
Speaker
With all the gathered information from Herodotus and the presented kurgen, it should be possible to compare to preserved statements of the Greek author with actual archaeological evidence. So, let us compare the two. Herodotus claimed that after a king died, his body was mummified and then carried around on a wagon.
00:15:13
Speaker
Unfortunately, only the skeletons of the individuals buried inside the presented kurgen were preserved. But more to the east, there are many examples of intentionally mummified Scythian leaders, most from the Altai Mountains. This probably also because of their overall very good preservation in the Siberian permafrost. But we will focus on that next time.
00:15:40
Speaker
Again, it is difficult to prove if the dead king was carried around on a wagon, but at least remains from wagons were often found in the kurgens, indicating that they played some role in the funerary rituals of the Scythians. Herodotus further explains that the journey of the deceased ended at a predetermined place where all the kings are buried.
00:16:08
Speaker
When we look at the map of the distribution of Scythian kurgans, it is evident that they are indeed concentrated in certain locations in so-called, quote, valleys of kings. It is obvious that the construction of the great kurgans required an enormous amount of work.
00:16:29
Speaker
This indicates lots of planning and organization. Herodotus then describes that the king was bedded on a mattress under some sort of tent or chamber with lots of golden grave goods. All of these statements can be observed with the presented kurgen.
00:16:50
Speaker
The princess from Tolstia Mogila was bedded on carpets forming a mattress. Further, all diseased were buried in chambers and also with enormous wealth in golden grave goods.
00:17:06
Speaker
One of the most interesting parts in the descriptions from Herodotus is the claim that servants from the deceased king were ritually strangled to death at the funeral and then placed around him. And with the kurgen of Tolstia Mogila, it's actually possible to observe evidence of such rituals.
00:17:29
Speaker
in the chamber of the princess surrounding her are bodies of people with very explicit grave goods and one is keen to give each of them a specific role, like the bodyguard or cook. Additionally, there are some indications that their cause of death was strangulation.
00:17:52
Speaker
As Herodotus writes, the Scythians finished their funerary ceremonies by raising a high mount over the grave, followed by a big feast. The enormous size of the kurgens speaks for itself, but it's very interesting to note that burned horse and boar bones, as well as shirts from wine amphora, were found which were probably from a feast.
00:18:21
Speaker
Now, when we sum up all of these comparisons between the statements from Herodotus and actual archaeological evidence, we see mostly consensus. It can be affirmed that the Greek author must have had some good sources or even direct contact with Scythians.
00:18:42
Speaker
But it also has to be stated that the chosen Kurgan is among the best researched and of course only one example from dozens in the region. And with that I am very happy to present to you the first part of my conversation with Dr. Gino Kaspari.
00:19:10
Speaker
Gino, thank you very much for sitting down with me. And maybe as a starter, how did you become interested in Far Eastern or Siberian archaeology and Scythians in general?
Dr. Kaspari on Scythian Culture and Identity
00:19:23
Speaker
Well, thank you very much for having me. I guess I started out studying the Eastern archaeology at University of Bern. And I became interested in these more peripheral cultures that somehow nobody really seemed to know all that much about. And so I gradually transitioned eastwards into the steps
00:19:46
Speaker
because these barbaric tribes on the steppe, they come into the picture among sort of Near Eastern civilizations once in a while and also play a role in Mediterranean archaeology.
00:20:02
Speaker
But they're always sort of far out and that's what kind of fascinated me because they were just very different from the archaeology that I had seen in sort of our core areas of study.
00:20:19
Speaker
And that's what brought me to like gradually moving eastwards into the steppe and dealing with these people who ride on horseback, who are incredible archers, who live a nomadic life, who are herders and are just not sedentary civilizations in sort of the broad general sense of the word.
00:20:42
Speaker
Speaking of Scythians, I was wondering, what is your opinion on the term? Is it OK to use, as you said, for people with similar material culture and lifestyle who ride on horseback and shoot arrows? Or would you prefer maybe a different nomenclature for tribes from the Ukraine and tribes from far eastern Siberia?
00:21:09
Speaker
For a long time, archaeology was really concerned with matching ethnonyms, so names of people with material culture. And through history of research on the steppes, Scythians sort of became associated with a very broad material culture category and geographically extended from the northern Black Sea region.
00:21:36
Speaker
all the way to essentially what is Mongolia today. But of course there's a number of ethnic terms that we have from written sources, all of which are written sources that come from outside of the steppe. So they're people who talk about these tribes on the steppe. They're not necessarily
00:22:01
Speaker
names that these people gave themselves. And so it's very tricky to just use one term for this entire gigantic geographical area. And obviously people in the Altai, people
00:22:17
Speaker
in western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan didn't necessarily consider themselves being Scythians, but they had a similar way of life. And that's what we usually refer to when we say Scythians. It's not that they're the same people as in the northern Black Sea region, but they live similar lives.
00:22:44
Speaker
And coming back to that, do we know what they called themselves in Altai or in Tuva or from bordering civilizations? What did they refer to those people?
00:22:57
Speaker
Well, we have Near Eastern sources, we have Persian sources, we have Chinese sources, but all of them are necessarily a little bit overgeneralizing and do not reflect the frequently changing circumstances on the steppe.
00:23:16
Speaker
And if we're heading more towards northern Asia, where we don't really have direct connections and written sources, we obviously don't have any ethnics to deal with. And in many cases, even the names for people that we have
00:23:36
Speaker
are so massively biased in certain ways against these people on the step that it's not necessarily useful to actually associate them with a material culture because by doing that you take over essentially a Chinese imperial bias or a Persian bias into your research and that is something that in my opinion should be avoided.
00:23:59
Speaker
You mentioned that coming from our more Mediterranean point of view, it was very interesting for you to go more to the east and to work with the cultures there. I was wondering, in regards to Greek imports like wine, amphora and golden objects, and more are quite common grave goods in the Scythian grave mounds in the Ukrainian steppe.
00:24:24
Speaker
I was wondering how far do we see those objects being traded eastwards? Do you have some in your Siberian excavations in Tuba, for example?
00:24:35
Speaker
No, we don't really have them. We have a lot of Greek influences and imports in the Northern Black Sea, obviously, because there were all these trading hubs where also Greeks were present. In the East, we have a bit more Iranian-Persian influence
00:24:54
Speaker
And then, of course, we also have a little bit of Chinese influence that becomes way stronger because we're just really far away from any kind of Greek influence at the time.
00:25:08
Speaker
As we're speaking of golden grave goods, I mentioned the severe problem with lootings of kurgens. In one of your papers you wrote that approximately 92% of all the royal burial mounds in the Valley of Kings in Tuva are looted.
00:25:25
Speaker
We see the same situation for the well-visible kurgens in Ukraine. What are possible reasons for that? And as far as I understand, many kurgens in Tuva and Altai are located in very remote locations. In your opinion, what can be done to effectively prevent further lootings?
00:25:48
Speaker
So these burial mounds have existed, you know, normally around about 2,500 years and people knew that there were nice shiny things that the ancients have put into these graves.
Protecting Scythian Heritage
00:26:04
Speaker
So these
00:26:06
Speaker
burial mounds really were sort of magnets for treasure hunters for a very long time. Also as just a source of precious metals for later cultures in these areas and over the course of 2500 years a lot of it has been destroyed.
00:26:26
Speaker
One of the largest waves though of destructions of these cemeteries probably happened in the 18th and 19th century when grave robbing became effectively a profession in the Tsar Empire.
00:26:46
Speaker
and you had bands of grave robbers that went out every summer going from one burial ground to the next one and excavating pretty much every tomb that was there.
00:27:03
Speaker
is to say the central burial chamber, because that's where the new, the most important treasures, quote unquote, were found. And so that's the time when most of these things were destroyed.
00:27:19
Speaker
This is still continuing, especially in areas where you do not have a lot of protection and so things being in remote areas doesn't necessarily help for the protection of these burial mounds.
00:27:35
Speaker
things that we could potentially do is because they're not really excavated in one night, you can now monitor burial mounds from space using satellite imagery and implementing monitoring systems would be an important step towards protecting these sites and if necessary conducting rescue excavations and saving the knowledge there.
00:28:04
Speaker
A last and a bit of a silly question is, Herodotus mentioned that the Scythians liked to inhale the smoke of burned cannabis. Also, in the burial chamber of the ice maiden from Ukok, which we will focus on in the next episode, they found some sort of container with cannabis.
00:28:25
Speaker
I have no idea about the vegetation in the region of Altai or Tuva. Do you believe this is likely? And have you made similar discoveries yourself? So even though the nomadic tribes in the Altai Mountains are not necessarily connected to Herodotus' tales,
00:28:47
Speaker
They do have similar habits to some extent and using cannabis as a substance.
00:28:57
Speaker
was definitely one of them. We do have traces of cannabis in Pasaric tombs, in the Altai Mountains. We have them in Xinjiang as well. And as a plant, it is really widespread in these mountain ranges. So you just stumble upon fields of cannabis. So it's a kind of a natural resource that you can just harvest in the area.
00:29:32
Speaker
Okay, that was it for the first part of Scythians in the Steppe.
Conclusion and Future Insights
00:29:38
Speaker
After the last episode on burial rituals of Neanderthals, I wanted to present another very interesting aspect of archaeological research in comparing our results with written sources.
00:29:52
Speaker
I hope I was able to highlight why I'm so interested in this specific topic and hope you will return for part 2 where I will present the research results of a Scythian mummy from far eastern Siberia. Again, on Instagram you will find some additional pictures and if you want to help keep the podcast going I would be very grateful for your support on Patreon.