Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in the longue durée
of Azov led the inhabitants of Tanais to strengthen their city’s defences. By this time
they had already established control over much of the steppe east of the Dnieper and
southwards to the Kuban, from where they mounted a series of attacks on Parthia,
probably following the western coast of the Caspian Sea. Later, in the early second
century ad, they raided Roman territory in eastern Asia Minor, this time following
the route along the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
At the beginning of the third century ad a massive and sustained incursion of
Goths coming from the Baltic region into the Ukraine changed the rhythm of life,
blocking the westerly flow of nomads and keeping the Alans to the territory centred
on the Don/Dnieper region. All this time the power of the Huns was building on their
eastern flank. In about ad 360 the Huns suddenly burst out, surging across the Volga
and the Don, and within fifteen years they had devastated the kingdom of the Ostrogoths.
Some of the Alans joined the Huns, some moved southwards into the Caucasus,
others fled west into Europe. One group, joining the fleeing Goths, were allowed,
by the emperor Valens, to cross the Danube to settle within the Roman Empire, but
conflict ensued culminating in the battle of Adrianople in ad 378 in which the Roman
emperor was killed.
Many of those who fled westward took the route around the northern side of
the Carpathians into the North European Plain, where they came into contact with
Germanic tribes who were now beginning to amass for what was to be their final
onslaught against the Roman Empire. The beginning of the end came in ad 401 when
Alans and Vandals crossed the Danube and drove deep into the heart of the empire.
A few years later, in ad 406, Alans, in company with Vandals and Suevi, crossed the
frozen Rhine near Mainz and began a devastating, two-year-long rampage through
Gaul before crossing the Pyrenees and settling in western Iberia. Ten years later, in ad
418, they were ousted by the Visigoths, working to the orders of the Roman emperor,
but found a temporary home in Galicia in the north-west corner of the Iberian peninsula,
where they merged as one people with the Vandals. When, in ad 429, the Vandals
crossed into Africa and forced their way along the North African coast towards
Carthage the remnant of the Alans were with them, but after the vicissitudes of the
long trudge across Europe from their homeland on the Pontic steppe it is unlikely
that the grandsons and great-grandsons of those who had fled from the Huns sixty
years before would have carried much of their steppe culture with them. The expulsion
of the Alans from their homeland marks the end of the Indo-European-speaking
nomads of the steppe. Other horsemen were to follow but they were ethnically different—Turkic
and Mongolian, speaking quite different languages. Like those who
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