Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in central asia
The Arzhan community is the easternmost of the nomadic group who shared in
and contributed to Scytho-Siberian culture. That a people in so remote a region could
remain part of a cultural continuum covering such an enormous area is a reflection
of the remarkable mobility that lay at the heart of the nomadic social system. It was a
mobility rooted in the transhumance of everyday existence but it was more than that:
it was a restlessness of spirit that, when the occasion arose, encouraged communities
to uproot themselves and move on in search of better pastures, always to the west,
displacing others and pushing them before. For much of the time the flow would
have been gentle but there were episodes of more intense movement causing great
dislocations that the Greek world came to hear about and to vaguely record. Forlorn
tombs rooted in the land belie the nomadic compulsion always to be on the move.
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