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Skilled in mounted warfare,[6] the Scythians replaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BC.[7] In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and frequently raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians.[7][8]
After being expelled from West Asia by the Medes, the Scythians retreated back into the Pontic Steppe and were gradually conquered by the Sarmatians.[9] In the late 2nd century BC, the capital of the largely Hellenized Scythians at Scythian Neapolis in Crimea was captured by Mithridates VI and their territories incorporated into the Bosporan Kingdom.[10]
After the Scythians' disappearance, authors of the ancient, mediaeval, and early modern periods used the name "Scythian" to refer to various populations of the steppes unrelated to them.[14]
The Scythians played an important part in the Silk Road, a vast trade network connecting Greece, Persia, India and China, perhaps contributing to the prosperity of those civilisations.[15] Settled metalworkers made portable decorative objects for the Scythians, forming a history of Scythian metalworking. These objects survive mainly in metal, forming a distinctive Scythian art.[16]
^Sulimirski 1985, pp. 149–153: "During the first half of the first millennium B.C., c. 3,000 to 2,500 years ago, the southern part of Eastern Europe was occupied mainly by peoples of Iranian stock .... The main Iranian-speaking peoples of the region at that period were the Scyths and the Sarmatians ...." Melyukova 1990, pp. 97–98: "From the end of the 7th century B.C. to the 4th century B.C. the Central- Eurasian steppes were inhabited by two large groups of kin Iranian-speaking tribes – the Scythians and Sarmatians ...." Melyukova 1990, p. 117: "All contemporary historians, archeologists and linguists are agreed that ... the Scythian and Sarmatian tribes were of the Iranian linguistic group ...." Davis-Kimball, Bashilov & Yablonsky 1995, p. 91 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFDavis-KimballBashilovYablonsky1995 (help): "Near the end of the 19th century V.F. Miller (1886, 1887) theorized that the Scythians and their kindred, the Sauromatians, were Iranian-speaking peoples. This has been a popular point of view and continues to be accepted in linguistics and historical science ...." Jacobson 1995, pp. 31–32: "Whatever their ultimate origins, by the time the Pontic Scythians settled in the region of the Black Sea, they almost certainly spoke an Iranian language ...." Batty 2007, p. 205: "The original Scythians, as far as we can tell, were Iranian-speaking nomadic pastoralists." Ivantchik 2018: "Scythians, a nomadic people of Iranian origin ...." Dandamayev 1994, p. 37: "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan to distinguish them from the related Massagetae of the Aral region and the Scythians of the Pontic steppes. These tribes spoke Iranian languages, and their chief occupation was nomadic pastoralism." Harmatta 1996, p. 181: "[B]oth Cimmerians and Scythians were Iranian peoples." Sulimirski 1985, pp. 149–153: "During the first half of the first millennium B.C., c. 3,000 to 2,500 years ago, the southern part of Eastern Europe was occupied mainly by peoples of Iranian stock ;.... [T]he population of ancient Scythia was far from being homogeneous, nor were the Scyths themselves a homogeneous people. The country called after them was ruled by their principal tribe, the 'Royal Scyths' (Her. iv. 20), who were of Iranian stock and called themselves 'Skolotoi' ...." West 2002, pp. 437–440: "[T]rue Scyths seems to be those whom [Herodotus] calls Royal Scyths, that is, the group who claimed hegemony ... apparently warrior-pastoralists. It is generally agreed, from what we know of their names, that these were people of Iranian stock ...." Rolle 1989, p. 56: "The physical characteristics of the Scythians correspond to their cultural affiliation: their origins place them within the group of Iranian peoples." Rostovtzeff 1922, p. 13: "The Scythian kingdom ... was succeeded in the Russian steppes by an ascendancy of various Sarmatian tribes — Iranians, like the Scythians themselves." Minns 1913, p. 36: "The general view is that both agricultural and nomad Scythians were Iranian."
^Brzezinski & Mielczarek 2002, p. 39: "Indeed, it is now accepted that the Sarmatians merged in with pre-Slavic populations."
^Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 523: "In their Ukrainian and Polish homeland the Slavs were intermixed and at times overlain by Germanic speakers (the Goths) and by Iranian speakers (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans) in a shifting array of tribal and national configurations."
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