Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

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SCYTHIANS IN
CENTRAL ASIA
700–200 bc
Between the southern end of the Ural Mountains and the northern limit of
the desert, created when the Caspian Sea shrank to its present size, is a comparatively
narrow corridor of steppe and forest steppe providing easy access
between the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the west and the great monotonous expanse
of the Kazakh steppe to the east. This is the divide between the European Scythians
and the Asian Scythians.
The Greeks had very little idea of what lay beyond this Ural corridor but the
Olbians traded at least this far and a few more entrepreneurial or more inquisitive
westerners were probably drawn to explore the unknown lands to the east. We have
already met Aristeas with his tales of one-eyed Arimaspi and griffins guarding gold.
Herodotus adds a few further details of other named peoples. There are the Argippaeans,
who speak their own language but dress like the Scythians, and the Issedonians,
who practise a kind of cannibalism, but he has little reliable evidence of their
exact location. Elsewhere he mentions the Massagetae, who occupy ‘the vast plain
stretching out interminably before the eye’ to the east of the Caspian Sea. They were,
he says, regarded by many to be Scythians. The Persians offer no more precise information.
The people they confronted in the deserts and desert steppe of western Central
Asia were called Sakā though they do distinguish between Sakā Tigrakhauda and
Sakā Haumavargā and Massagetae (above, pp. 39–42). Herodotus regarded the Sakā
as Scythian and the Persian sources used the two names interchangeably.
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