Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in the longue durée
around the western edge of the Pamir, arriving in Bactria, where they settled in about
135 bc. At this time the Yuezhi were composed of five tribes with different names.
The king of one of these, the Kushan, became the acknowledged leader and began a
process of expansion that by the beginning of the third century ad had created a vast
Kushan empire extending from the Indus and upper Ganges valleys to the Aral Sea
and from Parthia to the border of China.
The arrival of the Yuezhi and the Wusun in territory long occupied by the nomad
Sakā caused widespread disruption, driving many Sakā southwards into western
Bactria and through the Hindu Kush. Some chose to settle in southern Afghanistan
and western Pakistan, expanding into southern Iran and establishing themselves in
an area which became known as Sakāstan (now Sistan). Others moved into India and
during the period 110–80 bc set up kingdoms to the east of the lower Indus valley and
further north in Gandhara. By the first century ad, when the Periplus of the Erythraean
Sea was being compiled, the Sakā-dominated region extended to the shores of the
Arabian Sea, with its major entrepôt at Minnagara, modern Karachi.
The folk movements were complex and spread over a long period of time. InevitÂ
ably the interactions between the nomad invaders and indigenous population varied
from region to region but something of the violence of the early stages of the exodus
can be seen at Ai Khanum, a city founded by the Greeks in the upper valley of the
Amu Darya, which, about 145 bc, was completely destroyed by the Sakā advance. But
once the disparate nomad bands had found lands to control, they began to settle and
to adopt aspects of the native culture, though the raiding of neighbouring territories
lasted well into the first century ad.
In spite of the acculturation that must have gone on, enclaves of Sakā still adhered
to their old ways of life. One is represented by a small cemetery found at Tillya Tepe in
the north-west of Afghanistan, dating to the end of the first century ad. Here the central
grave of a male was surrounded by the graves of six richly adorned females, probably
his wives. Some of their jewellery was, as might be expected, of Graeco-Bactrian
origin but other pieces were made in the style of the nomadic art of the steppe. The
love of gold, the use of inset turquoise, and motifs of fabulous beasts are all characteristics
strongly reminiscent of Sakā burials in the Kazakh steppe. Here, in this remote
region a nomad community was still maintaining the culture of their ancestors who
had been driven from their homeland two hundred years earlier.
The movement of the Yuezhi and the Wusun into Central Asia in the second century
bc marked the beginning of a succession of movements from the east that were
eventually to culminate in the advance of the Mongols early in the thirteenth century.
The turmoil created by the Yuezhi and Wusun had hardly subsided when a new
confederacy of horsemen, the Huns, arrived in Central Asia. Their ultimate origin is
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