Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in the longue durée
came before them, their inexorable progress to the west was facilitated, indeed determined,
by the timeless flow of the steppe.
The Alans who fled to the Caucasus fared better. Settling first in the comparative
isolation of the foothills and then extending deep into the central Caucasian highlands,
they were still known as Alans as late as the thirteenth century. When William
of Rubruck passed this way en route to the court of Chinggis Khan he noted that the
Alans were good at making weapons—an appropriate accolade to their Sarmatian
heritage. Their descendants, the Ossetians, who live now in the Caucasian highlands,
speak a language in which echoes of Scytho-Sarmatian may still be heard.
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