Scythian Dracaena

Scythian Dracaena

The Scythians were among the earliest peoples to master mounted warfare.^[1] In the 8th century BC they possibly raided Zhou China.^[14] Soon after they expanded westwards and dislodged the Cimmerians from power on the Pontic Steppe.^[15] At their peak, Scythians came to dominate the entire steppe zone,^[16][17] stretching from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to central China (Ordos culture) and the south Siberia (Tagar culture) in the east,^[11][18] creating what has been referred to as the first Central Asian nomadic empire.

Scythians kept herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, lived in tent-covered wagons, and fought with bows and arrows on horseback. They developed a rich culture characterized by opulent tombs, fine metalwork, and a brilliant art style.

Saka, on the other hand, Szemerényi relates to an Iranian verbal root, sak-, "go, roam", and hypothesizes that the Achaemenids used "nomad" to refer to the northern tribes, rather than their endonym. The name does appear somewhat further east than the Achaemenid Empire, as the Chinese knew the Asian Scythians as Sai (Chinese character: 塞, Old Sinitic *sək). Whether they adopted the Achaemenid name, or "Saka" came to be an endonym, it is not clear. The modern region of Sistan in eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan takes its name from the classical Sakastan ("land of the Sakas").^[

Scythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal-breeding greatly exceeded that of the settled agricultural societies, the pastoral economy also needed supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic or forced alliances with sedentary peoples – in exchange for animal produce and military protection.