The Book

Life restoration of Protoceratops

Ancient Greek sculpture of a griffin

The scholar Adrienne Mayor hypothesised over the course of 1993 to 2011 that the legend of
the griffin originated among the Scythians, who came across fossilised skeletons of the
dinosaur Protoceratops in Mongolia while mining for gold, and retold this discovery to the ancient
Greeks, who interpreted them as mythical beings, thus creating the myth of the griffin. This hypothesis
was contested in 2016 by the palaeontologist Mark P. Witton, who demonstrated that the imagery of
the griffin originated in early Bronze Age West Asia and was transmitted from there into ancient Greek
art during the Orientalising period.[197] The imagery of griffins in Scythian art itself was borrowed from
the artistic traditions of West Asia and ancient Greece.[19]

Culture and society

Kurgan stelae of a Scythian at Khortytsia, Ukraine

Since the Scythians did not have a written language, their non-material culture can only be pieced
together through writings by non-Scythian authors, parallels found among other Iranic peoples, and
archaeological evidence.[19]