Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

predatory nomads
4.8 Bronze plaque in the form of a recumbent stag from the Minusinsk region. Collected by V. V. Radlov
in 1863.
boars, and birds. It is a rich repertoire created by people who regularly observed these
animals in their natural habitats and were confident enough to distil the essentials of
a beast into semi-stylistic form befitting the animal’s place in their belief system. This
kind of animal art is found at its earliest on the famous deer stones—standing stones
elaborately carved with deer motifs—that are found in the Sayan and Altai Mountains
extending into northern Mongolia, where they are dated to the Final Bronze Age
(c.1300–700 bc). That the deer stones sometimes depict belts with weapons attached
suggests that they might have been made to commemorate a particular person. If so,
the deer carved on them could represent body tattoos proclaiming status, like those
found on the human bodies preserved in the later Altai burials. An alternative explanation
might be that the stags symbolize the departing soul: there is ample room for
speculation. What is important to the present debate is that the lively animal art of
the Tagar culture, which quickly spreads across the steppe and is so prevalent in the
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