Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

landscapes with people
Broadly contemporary changes in climate across Eurasia had varied effects in different
regions. While in the Minusinsk Basin the population was increasing dramatically,
in the Pontic–Caspian it was decreasing at about the same rate. This was a period
of destabilization with communities everywhere attempting to adjust to changing
environmental conditions and to the consequent demographic imbalances.
The New Dynamic
Different communities living in the great expanse of the steppe developed a broadly
similar culture based on the care of flocks and herds rather than on the intensive
growing of cereals. The constraints of the landscape determined the specific strategies
adopted but changes in climate, even quite small changes, forced people to
adapt, often quite quickly. By the beginning of the first millennium bc a greater
degree of mobility was apparent throughout the steppe, with transhumance playing
an increasing part in daily life. Horses and horsemanship accordingly became more
prominent. In the more ecologically favoured regions, such as the upland valleys and
plains of eastern Kazakhstan and in the Altai–Sayan region, these changes encouraged
a rise in population, putting strains on society and requiring new systems to
evolve to alleviate the tensions now being felt. The steppe gradient—the physical
reality that the grass was always greener in the west—introduced another dynamic. It
was the interaction of these complex factors coming together at the beginning of the
first millennium bc that created the conditions for the emergence of highly mobile
predatory nomad hordes. Out of this melee the Scythians were born.
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