Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the scythians as others saw them
effective system that has the potential both to increase the territorial holding of the
successful contestants and to thin out excess population. At the same time tranches
of the community may decide, or be persuaded, to seek a new life overseas.
Many of the Greek cities had comparatively restricted fertile hinterlands which
were intensively cultivated, the more marginal tracts to the point of exhaustion.
Over-cropping by goats on the mountainsides also led to soil erosion. As the urban
population increased there was little scope for improving local productivity and
communities had to rely more and more on imports of food. At the same time social
stress intensified. In such conditions it is understandable that young men, tiring of
increasing restrictions imposed by the society in which they had been brought up,
were prepared to join others of like mind to seek new lands abroad. In consequence
the Greek city states began to organize overseas colonial expeditions.
The new colonies served a multitude of functions, the most important being that
they relieved social tension at home by providing an outlet for the dissatisfied and
the antisocial. Colonies also syphoned off excess population. Some overseas enclaves
began as trading entrepôts, others as settlements of farmers cultivating the land
around the newly founded city, but the trading centres might soon attract settlers
who wished to farm and so the differences became obscured. Once established, a
colony could serve as a valued trading partner for its mother city, providing a ready
market for manufactured goods which could be traded on to the indigenous native
population. In return they could gather foodstuffs for export, either produced by
the colonists themselves or acquired from the indigenous population, and rare raw
materials such as metals and furs and the ever-valuable slaves arriving from further
inland along the existing trading networks. The essence of the Greek colonial model
was symbiosis. To be successful the colony had to have the agreement of the indigenous
people and to live in harmony with them. The return to the native population
was considerable, not least access to a range of exotic goods and a ready market for
their surplus produce. The patronage of the foreigners could also be a powerful tool
in social negotiations and local power struggles.
The first Greek colonies in the Black Sea were set up on the southern, Asiatic,
shore at Trapezus and Sinope possibly as early as the mid eighth century. If they were
as early as this, they would have been forerunners of the main wave of colonization
to follow, traditionally ascribed to the organizing powers of the Ionian city of Miletos.
The early date claimed for the initial settlement at Sinope is supported by the
report that it had to be refounded by the Miletians after an attack and occupation by
the Kimmerians sometime around 700 bc. Thereafter, until about 530 bc, the setting
up of colonies around the shores of the sea continued at some pace: in all, Miletos is
credited with founding ninety cities. If this figure even approximates to the truth, it
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