The Scythian Homeland

 A series of articles exploring claims that the prototypes of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as well as the quest for the Grail evolved in the Iranian-speaking people of the Eurasian steppe  known as Sarmatians.1
More recently it is claimed that the descendants of the Alans [an ancient and medieval Iranic nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus, related to the Sarmatians] had a tendency "for telling stories about cups, the importance of cups in the Alanic religion, and the extent of Alanic influence in the church of Gaul" suggests that the French poet Robert de Boron may have had an Alanic source for his Grail material, with the Grail Hallows being the treasure taken from the Temple of Solomon by the Romans in 70 AD.2

Man and Horse on the Eurasian steppe
To actually pinpoint the date when man first jumped on the back of horse and rode it is impossible to determine. However, at same point in time people of the Eurasian steppe suddenly became more mobile, managing larger herds, travelling longer distances in a shorter time. This sudden change was only possible with the domestication of the horse, a transformation which enabled the transition to full nomadism across the steppe. Accordingly, the horse became the most esteemed and valued of animals of the steppe people which saw the emergence of a horse cult as witnessed by mass horse burials interred in the Royal burials of the Scythian period.3

The earliest archaeological evidence for domestication of the horse, bred from the wild Przewalski’s horse (E.przewalskii), emerges around six thousand years ago in the western Eurasian steppe north of the Black Sea from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. This is somewhat later than domestication of the likes of sheep, goat and cattle.4

Przewalski’s horse, also known as the ‘takhi’ or Mongolian wild horse, is an endangered species today that became extinct in the wild but since the 1990s has been reintroduced to its native lands in Mongolia and Central Asia. Genetic analyses indicates that Przewalski's horse is not derived from modern domestic horses but a remnant wild population. Domestication does not appear to be a single event with the modern horse showing diverse ancestry from a mixture of ancient maternal lineages from different geographic areas. 

The Botai Culture
The prehistoric Copper Age Botai culture (3700–3100 BCE) of northern Central Asia was named after the settlement of Botai in modern northern Kazakhstan. The Botai culture has two other large sites: Krasnyi Yar, and Vasilkovka. The main settlement at Botai has been partly eroded by the Imanburlyq river, a tributary of the Ishim, however, around 153 pit-shouses have been identified.

The Botai culture emerged with the transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle with a variety of game to a sedentary pastoralists lifestyle with a diet based mainly on horse meat.

A staggering 300,000 or more bone fragments, over 90% of which were derived from horses, have been identified at the main settlement. The horse bones displayed a multitude of cut and chop marks indicating the Botai were clearly consuming horsemeat – and in some quantity.

The heads of sacrificed horses were placed in pits around the perimeters of houses, facing north-east or south-east, toward the direction of the rising sun at spring and autumn. At Botai canine remains are often found with those of equids in sacrificial pits, suggesting perhaps a close working relationship in life. The dog skulls, or even whole bodies, were buried in paired pits just outside houses on the west or southwest side of the dwelling.  The association of paired canines guarding the west is common to many ancient Indo-European cultures.5

Evidence of damage to dentition in horses commonly linked with the use of bridle mouthpieces, or “bit wear”, taken together with the extraordinary equid assemblage has been presented in the argument for Botai as the birthplace of horse domestication in the 4th millennium BC.

However, recent archaeogenetic analyses has revealed that horse remains from Botai are the wild Przewalski’s horse (E.przewalskii), not modern domesticates (E.caballus), warranting re-evaluation of evidence for domestication. Furthermore, when compared with wild Pleistocene equids in North America a study concluded that the damage observed in Botai horse teeth (assumed bit wear) is likely generated by natural disturbances in dental development and wear, rather than through contact with bridle equipment.6

Not all agree and the debate for horse domestication at Botai is yet to be concluded.7

However, what is clear is that the Botai represent a dramatic shift in lifestyle on the steppe that sprung from the arrival of domesticated horses. Yet, it is argued that this change appears mature rather than sudden; therefore it is suggested that the horse was domesticated elsewhere, probably Ukraine or western Russia, and was then introduced into this region.8

The earliest unambiguously managed specimens of the domestic horse, E.caballus, originate from the Sintashta culture in the Black Sea steppes and the Trans-Ural region of Russia, Kazakshtan, and Ukraine, where paired horse burials and partial remains of chariots can be found dating to the early decades of the 2nd millennium BC.

The Bronze Age Sintashta culture, named after the fortified site in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, stretched from the east of the southern Ural Mountains across the northern Eurasian steppe (north Kazakhstan) and is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture. The area shows extensive evidence of copper mining indicating the main industry was metalworking.

Here, over three quarters (77%) of Sintashta burials had evidence of animal sacrifice, especially horses, some burials contained the remains of horse dawn chariots - the earliest recorded in the world. This seems to have been a development from the wagon burials of the earlier Yamnaya culture.9

In the Late Bronze Age the nomadic peoples of the steppe can be divided into two broad cultural complexes, the Srubnaya who occupied the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Andronovo in Central Asia. The Srubnaya culture extended from the Ural Mountains to the Sea of Azov in the west, while the Andronovo culture occupied the region from the Ural Mountains to the Altai-Sayan Mountains at the far eastern end of the Central Asian steppe where modern Kazakhstan borders Russia, China and Mongolia.

Named from a village in the Minusinsk Basin in the Altai-Sayan Mountains where the first burial was excavated in 1914, the Andonovo culture (1750-1400 BC) seems to have grown out of the two earlier cultures, Srubnaya and Sintashta, displaying a cultural continuity with no requirement for displacement by an influx of new people. Around 1400 BC, toward the end of the Bronze Age, a new culture evolved out of the Andonovo in south Siberia; this new culture was named after a cemetery site by the Karasuk river. 

The Scythian Homeland
The Minusinsk Basin is an area of elevated steppe surrounded by mountains, the eastern Sayan to the north, the western Sayan to the south and the Kuznetsky Alatau and Abakan ranges to the west. The basin was formed by the upper reaches of the Yenisei River but also includes the Chulym River, a tributary of the Ob. The the fifth-longest river in the world, the Yenisei the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. The mountain hollow known as the Minusinsk Basin was a fertile environment protected by mountains, an obvious attraction for settlement. The region has experienced continuous settlement from the Andronovo period to the succeeding Karasuk, a culture that lasted from the 14th century BC to the middle of the 9th century BC

The transition from the Andronovo to Karasuk cultures was a gradual change with many traditions continuing in to the later period. Cultural development coincided with climate change which moved toward to a more humid and cooler climate which led to much lusher vegetation in the basin. This in turn provided extended grazing areas resulting in increased flocks and herds and seasonal transhumance with sheep and goats being moved from lowland steppe to fatten on mountain pastures. This directly led to a requirement for a greater number of horses to manage these flocks and herds. Evidence for increased horsemanship is reflected in the number of three-holed bone side-pieces from the bridle which appear in the archaeological record of the Karasuk period.

The increase in the available food stock lead to a steep increase in population, with estimates suggesting a tenfold increase over a five-hundred year period. It is at this time that a more hierarchical social structure developed as witnessed by the construction of elaborate tombs. The elite were buried in stone-built cists set in large circular burial enclosures up to 100m in diameter.

Situated in relative isolation, with fertile pastures and favourable climate, the Minusinsk Basin provided a microcosm of change in and around the Altai-Sayan Mountains in the Final Bronze Age (c.1200-850 BC). Other regions of the steppe, such as the isolated mountain valleys of nearby eastern Kazakhstan, experienced similar cultural developments.

The main Scythian-related archaeological sites of south Siberia
(Warwick Ball)

While the Minusinsk Basin was experiencing a dramatic increase in population, climate change across Eurasia had varied effects in different regions. On the Pontic steppe conditions became much drier in the 11th century resulting in a fall in the level of the Black Sea and a significant shift of the northern boundary of the steppe zone. Population declined, estimated, possibly, by as much as a tenfold reduction from the 14th century BC. This resulted in some people, such as the Srubnaya culture that occupied the region east of the river Don, and the Belozerka culture between the Don and the Danube, abandoning the steppe and moving to settlements on river valleys and the coastal region. 

The Tagar Culture
The unique upland environment of the Minusinsk Basin accelerated cultural developments. Pollen samples have shown that the climate of the Tuva region, which included the Minusinsk Basin, changed around the 9th century. The region experienced a rise in temperature and an increase in humidity resulting in improved grazing land and increased population. Economic and social changes during this time saw the emergence of a very different society out of the long-established Karasuk culture; the emergence of the Tagar culture saw horse riding elites start to dominate life and change the course of history.

Most of the archaeological data we have on the Tagar culture comes from their Funerary monuments, burial mounds known as kurgans. In the preceding Karasuk period burials were usually placed in stone cists, whereas in the early Tagar period burials were placed in rectangular pits within a square enclosure bounded by stone slabs. These were soon replaced with log-lined chambers and roofed with multiple log layers. 

Over time the burial mounds became larger to accommodate a larger number of burials within the mound. By the 6th century BC the burial mounds had become ever more elaborate as demonstrated in the Salbyk Valley in the centre of the Minusink Basin where barrows of about 20m in height are located. The Bolshoi Salbykskii kurgan reached 11m in height. The enclosure wall contained massive sandstone slabs, weighing around 30-50 tonnes each, set vertically at 6m high. These huge megaliths have been sourced to an ancient quarry at Kyzyl-Khaya mountain, 16 km away, a feat similar to the transportation of the huge sarsens at Stonehenge.10

The grave goods found in the Tagar kurgans provide evidence of skilled bronze casting, a tradition rooted in the Late Bronze Age. Artefacts buried with the deceased, presumably to accompany them to the afterlife, included weapons such as bows and bronze arrow heads, bronze daggers and bronze battleaxes. Horse gear was prominent, the bone side-pieces on horse bridles of the Karasuk period, as noted above, were now made of brass demonstrating advancing metalworking skills.  When combined with the many rock carvings depicting horses, the amount of horse gear found in these burials confirms that the horse played a significant role in Tagar culture, providing milk, meat and enhanced mobility. The value of the horse continued to grow among steppe cultures reaching what can only be described as cult status as we shall see.

Along with weapons and horse gear, animal art completes the so-called 'Scythian Triad' found in kurgans across the steppe and the Tagar culture is no exception. Animals cast in bronze in stylistic form are found throughout the burial mounds of the Minusinsk Basin and include felines, argali sheep standing in distinctive pose with feet together and recurved horns, recumbent deer with raised head and antlers splayed out behind with feet tucked under the body, less often are horses, boars and birds. Often these animals are found as petroglyphs on the stone slabs retaining the burial mounds.11

The earliest form of this kind of animal art, termed ‘Scythian-Siberian animal art’, is found on the so-called deer stones, deer motifs carved on standing stones in the Sayan and Altai mountains, stretching into northern Mongolia, where they have been dated to the Final Bronze Age, c.1300-700 BC. As with the Siberian Ice Princess, a shamanistic belief system is given as an interpretation. Significantly, this confirms that the stylistic animal art also found in kurgans of the Pontic steppe originated in the Bronze Age culture of the Altai-Sayan Mountains and quickly spread westward across the steppe. 

Notes & References
1.  C. Scott Littleton & Ann C. Thomas, The Sarmatian Connection: New Light on the Origin of the Arthurian and Holy Grail Legends, The Journal of American Folklore , Jan. - Mar., 1978, Vol. 91, No. 359 (Jan. - Mar., 1978), pp. 513-527,
2. C. Scott Littleton & Linda A. Malcor, From Scythia to Camelot,  Garland, (Revised Edition) 2000, The Alans and the Grail, p.233.
3. Warwick Ball, The Eurasian Steppe, Edinburgh University Press, p.25.
4. Ibid.
5. Sandra Olsen, The Early Horse Herders of Botai, University of Kansas
6. Taylor, W.T.T., Barrón-Ortiz, C.I. Rethinking the evidence for early horse domestication at Botai. Sci Rep 11, 7440 (2021). 
7. Rebuttal of Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz 2021 Rethinking the evidence for early horse domestication at Botai Outram, A; Bendrey, R; Evershed, RP; et al. Date: 28 July 2021 (excerpt):
"Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz (2021) present a reconsideration of the evidence for early horse husbandry in the Eneolithic Botai Culture of Northern Kazakhstan. However, their critique misrepresents key methodologies applied in the original analyses, demonstrates fundamental scientific misunderstanding of the stable isotopic evidence, omits key details about recent proteomic evidence and underplays or ignores a raft of other evidential lines. This rebuttal paper addresses these points. Additionally, the only primary evidence presented in Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz (2021), relating tooth wear patterns in North American wild horses, if correctly presented, adds more empirical weight to the conclusion that Botai-type wear patterns are only seen in bitted animals."
8. Sandra Olsen, The Early Horse Herders of Botai.
9. Warwick Ball, p.56.
10. Leonid Sergeevich Marsadolov, The Great Salbyk Barrow in Siberia, Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies 2014, 2(2), pp.59-65.
11. Barry Cunliffe, The Scythians, Oxford University Press, 2021, pp.78-95.

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The First Scythian King

A series of articles exploring claims that the prototypes of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as well as the quest for the Grail evolved in the Iranian-speaking people of the Eurasian steppe  known as Sarmatians.
More recently it is claimed that the descendants of the Alans [an ancient and medieval Iranic nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus, related to the Sarmatians] had a tendency "for telling stories about cups, the importance of cups in the Alanic religion, and the extent of Alanic influence in the church of Gaul" suggests that the French poet Robert de Boron may have had an Alanic source for his Grail material, with the Grail Hallows being the treasure taken from the Temple of Solomon by the Romans in 70 AD.

The Ice Princess
In 1993 a team of Russian archaeologists led by Dr. Natalya Polosmak made a fascinating discovery on the Ukok Plateau, high up at 2,500m altitude in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. As they started excavating the burial mound they found a huge block of ice.

Tomb of the Siberian Ice Princess

This was a tumulus known as a ‘kurgan’ typical of the early Scythian culture. A kurgan is a type of barrow-like tomb with a mound constructed over a grave, sometimes containing just a single human body, sometimes more, accompanied with grave goods such as weapons, horses and distinctive animal art. 

The burial mounds of the Altai are different to the kurgans of the Steppes in containing burial chambers constructed from logs and then covered in a low mound of stone. In this case water had trickled through the stones then froze encasing the contents in a block of ice, preserved an almost perfect state.

On melting the ice the archaeologists found the mummified body of a 25-year-old woman termed the Siberian Ice Princess. This discovery provided a rare first-hand glimpse into the world of the Pazyryk culture, a nomadic people that inhabited the Steppe region of Siberia more than 2,500 years ago. 

Body Art of the Siberian Ice Princess

The Ice Princess, also known as the Altai Lady, and the grave contents had been perfectly preserved by the ice of the cold Altai Mountains. This lady was clearly of high status as she was accompanied by six sacrificed horses arranged in a radial pattern. Individual burials of this type were usually reserved for Royalty, hence her assumed designation as a princess. Her body had several tattoos including a deer-like creature with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers.  Her richly decorated skin had been peeled back and her organs removed, then neatly stitched back together. In addition to the tattoo of the deer-griffin-like creature, the Ice Princess's skin was preserved and embalmed with herbs, grasses, and wool to complete the mummification process. Covering her shoulders was sable fur over a silk blouse and striped woolen skirt confirming her royal lineage as silk was usually reserved for high status people of nomadic tribes. The Ice Princess wore a pointed conical felt hat which had led to the suggestion that she was possibly a shaman. 

Frozen Tombs of the Pazyryk Culture
Five other tombs had been found in the Ukok Plateau; the first, Barrow 1, was excavated in 1929 while Barrows 2–5 were excavated between 1947–1949. The content of these burial mounds were also preserved in a similar manner as the tomb of the Ice Princess, water seeping into the tombs in ancient times had frozen and encased the grave contents in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.

It is apparent that ordinary people were not interred, or at least not in large burial sites. The large burial mounds, or kurgans, along with their belongings, horses and sometimes attendants, was strictly reserved for the elite across the Eurasian Steppe.

Ukok Plateau, Altai Mountains

Lower in the Altai is the huge Tuekta kurgan also of the Pazyryk Culture. The region of these Pazyryk kurgans is given protection as the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site. Yet, literally thousands of these kurgans cover the Eurasian Steppe.

The Eurasian Steppe
The Eurasian Steppe is a belt of grassland extending for 5,000 miles  (8,000 km) from near the Danube delta in modern Romania to Manchuria in north-east China. Since prehistoric times the Steppe has been a super-highway between Europe and Asia, inhabited by nomadic tribal confederations, the most well-known being the Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Huns and Mongols.

With relatively low rainfall, typically less than 20 inches, the grassland is devoid of trees and does not support grazing for more than a generation or so requiring pastoralists to regularly move on to fresh pastures. Thus, the nomadic peoples of the Steppe left little in the way of permanent settlements yet their presence can be traced through their burial customs across the Steppe.

The Eurasian Steppe

To the north the Steppe is bounded by the forests of European Russia and Asian Russia or Siberia, to the south land becomes increasingly drier. The Steppe naturally narrows at two points, making, for convenience, divisions of three major regions.

The European, western end of the Eurasian Steppe begins near the mouth of the Danube and stretches to the southern end of the Ural Mountains, this is known at the Pontic–Caspian Western Steppe. In days of old it was bounded to the north by forest steppe, but in more recent times the forest has been cleared for agricultural land. To the south and east it is bounded by the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains.  Further west, the Great Hungarian Plain of the Pannonian Steppe is separated from the main Steppe by the Carpathian Mountains. 

Between the southern tip of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea the Steppe narrows forming a natural division between the Pontic-Caspian Steppe with the Kazakh Steppe, where Europe meets Central Asia. The Kazakh Steppe, or Central steppe, forms the bulk of the Eurasian Steppe stretching from the Urals to Dzungaria, in north-western China. To the south it becomes drier, semi-desert and desert divided by the rivers Syr Darya (Jaxartes) and Amu Darya (Oxus) flowing into the Aral Sea. 

However, the Steppe has few natural barriers, the Urals, regarded as Europe’s conventional eastern boundary, regardless of its name as a mountain range is nothing more than a range of low hills and has never been a cultural barrier. Indeed, nomadic horsemen could ride unhindered from the mouth of the Danube in the west to the Altai Mountain range in the east where modern Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together in East-Central Asia. 

The Altai merges with the Sayan Mountains to the north-east, beyond this is the Eastern Steppe, stretching from the Altai Mountains in the west to the Greater Khingan Range in the east. The primary region of the Eurasian Steppe in East Asia is the Mongolian-Manchurian Steppe which covers large areas of Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, the two divided by the high plateau of the Gobi Desert. 

The Eastern Steppe

Being of higher altitude than the Western Steppe, the Eastern Steppe is colder and more arid with greater extremes of seasonal temperatures making it one of the most severe climates on Earth. This harsh environment duly played a significant role in human migrations either southward and eastward direction toward Manchuria and northern China or westward, passing between the Altai and Tien Shan mountains through the valley of the Ili River and past Lake Balkhash and the more inviting grasslands of the Western Steppe. Migrating people would converge through the Dzungarian Gate.

The narrowing of the Steppe at Dzungarian is defined by the Tarbagatai Mountains to the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains on the east, to the north the Tian Shan Mountains and the Tarim Basin to the south. The Dzungarian Gate is the only mountain pass in the 3,000 mile (4,800km) mountain-wall which stretches from Manchuria to Afghanistan, the most accessible pass for nomadic horsemen between the western Eurasian steppe and land to the east. The pass is associated with the modern conception of the Silk Road connecting China with the Roman Empire and Herodotus’s tale of the legendary Hyperboreans.

This natural boundary between the Eastern and Western Steppes, is where we find the ice tombs of the Pazyryk culture on the Ukok Plateau in the Altai Mountains (as noted above) which have been dated to the 5th century BC. But these are not the earliest Steppe kurgans that have been identified to date, for that we must look at the cultures that preceded the Pazyryk.

Kurgans of the Western Steppe
The Greek historian and geographer, Herodotus tells us that the core area of Scythian tribes was around the northern shore of the Black Sea, modern southern Ukraine and southern Russia. The Royal graves of the Scythians in the steppe area north of the Black Sea were the first known and the first to be investigated in modern times. 

Western Steppe, north of the Black Sea

The kurgans of the Western Steppe were typically around 12–15m high, yet at Solokha on the bank of the Dnieper in Central Ukraine the kurgan was almost 18m high. At Chertomlyk, also in Ukraine, the kurgan was 20m high and 50m in diameter. Both are dated to the 4th century BC. The construction of these two large kurgans suggests a huge communal effort, yet the kurgans never contain burials of ordinary people being reserved exclusively for Royalty and the Elite, and on occasion their attendants.

The body in the kurgan at Solokha was wearing a gold neck-ring, gold bracelets, a gold-sheathed dagger, held a sceptre shaft in the right hand, and gold platelets sewn onto the clothing. Other chambers contained cauldrons, bronze and silver tableware, and Greek drinking vessels. Clearly this individual was interred with all of the status of a Scythian king or high chieftain.

The Scythian kurgans north of the Black Sea region typically contained catacombs, or subterranean chambers, underneath the burial mound. This would be entered through a passageway which led to the catacomb 10-18m deep with side chambers containing  further grave goods, tombs of their attendants and interred horses.

Consistently across the Eurasian steppe, the designated Scythian burial mounds from north of the Black Sea to the Altai Mountains, provide evidence that the tribal chieftain received preferential treatment after death, yet burial mound construction and grave goods could follow quite different traditions, in various regions such as southern Siberia. Dr. Hermann Parzinger has determined that “the complex structure of the kurgans should be considered as rituals which became architecture.”

Until relatively recently the kurgans of the Western Steppe were thought to be the oldest Scythian burial mounds, apparently evidence of a culture that spread east as was the knowledge at the time. This was primarily because ancient historians in the west, Greek and Roman, made the first written records of these nomadic peoples and knew little of life beyond the Ural Mountains. Until the 19th century the kurgans of the Central Steppe and particularly the Eastern Steppe were less known, and until recent times very few had been professionally excavated.

But in the last 20 years or so several Russian–German archaeological teams led by Dr. Parzinger have studied the kurgans of the Ural region, the northern Caucasus,  Kazakhstan, and southern Siberia. 

As Dr Barry Cunliffe writes, “It is no exaggeration to say that the frozen tombs of Siberia have revolutionized our understanding of the first millennium BC nomads of the Altai region.”

The archaeological excavations of the Altai kurgans has shown that a vibrant animal art existed in south Siberia that was so similar to the Scythian animal art of the Pontic Steppe, north of the Black Sea, that we are forced to conclude that the two must have been part of the same cultural continuum. Russian archaeologists refer to this as Scythian-Siberian animal art. 

Scythian-Siberian animal art: Deer-shaped gold plaque (7th century BC)

In addition, three common types of object, known as the so-called Scythian Triad have been found repeatedly in kurgans across the entire Eurasian Steppe, from west to east: Horse Bridal - dagger/composite Bow - animal style art.

The First Scythians
Tuva in Southern Siberia is situated on the eastern flank of the Altai massif, about 100km east of Pazyryk where the famous Scythian frozen tombs were discovered.  

Here on a high plateau traversed by the Uyuk River, a tributary of the Yenisei River, and enclosed by the Sayan Mountains to the east and the Kuznetsk Atatau Mountains to the west, which merge into the Altai, we find the Tuva basin, the site of the early kurgan burials at Arzhan and the largest concentrations of Scythian burial mounds so far found. 

The Arzhan cemetery, Uyuk Valley

The Arzhan culture was preceded by the Karasuk culture centred on the Minusinsk Basin in the Altai-Sayan region of the South Siberian Mountains, northwest of Mongolia. The animal art of the Karasuk culture has contributed to the development of the distinctive Scythian-Siberian animal art style.

The origins of the Karasuk culture are complex, however, it seems to have formed out of the Andronovo culture, from 2,000 BC to 900 BC in Western Siberia and the Central Asian Steppe. Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages.

In northern Tuva is one of the largest and most important kurgan cemeteries in Southern Siberia. Here we find all of the features that characterise Scythian culture further west on the Pontic Steppe actually emerged first in Southern Siberia.

As this is the same region where the Karasuk and the earlier Andronovo cultures developed, we can, with some confidence, pinpoint Southern Siberia as the ‘Scythian homeland’. Therefore, the arrival of Scythian culture in this region cannot be viewed as something that migrated from somewhere else, but is endemic. 

The immense valley of the Uyuk River encloses a huge cemetery of a thousand large earthen or stone-built mounds dated to the 1st millennium BC, the Bronze and Iron eras. The largest reach more than a 100m in diameter and up to 6m high and often in a straight line, suggesting a relationship between the deceased. Especially numerous are cemeteries in the valley near Arzhan, which the local people have termed the ‘Valley of the Kings’. The importance of the site has been recognised by its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Sources:
Warwick Ball, The Eurasian Steppe, Edinburgh University Press, 2021.
Barry Cunliffe, The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, Oxford University Press, 2021.
Richard Foltz, The Ossetes, IB Tauris, 2023.
Ravi K. Mishra1,  The ‘Silk Road’: Historical Perspectives and Modern Constructions, Indian Historical Review, 47-1 (2020), pp.21–39.
Dr. Hermann Parzinger, Kurgans: Ancient Burial Mounds of Scythian Elites in the Eurasian Steppe, Journal of the British Academy 5 (2017), pp.331-335.

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