The Book

Archaeology

Main article: Scythian culture

Scythian defence line 339 BC reconstruction in Polgár, Hungary

Scythian archaeology can be divided into three stages:[19]

 Early Scythian – from the mid-8th or the late 7th century BC to about 500 BC

 Classical Scythian or Mid-Scythian – from about 500 BC to about 300 BC

 Late Scythian – from about 200 BC to the mid-3rd century AD, in the Crimea and the

Lower Dnipro, by which time the population was settled.

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to
elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style
wild-animal art), gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human
sacrifices.[198] Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some
remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of cities and fortifications.[199][200][201]

Language

Main article: Scythian languages

The Scythians spoke a language belonging to the Scythian languages, most probably[202] a branch of
the Eastern Iranic languages.[5] Whether all the peoples included in the "Scytho-Siberian" archaeological
culture spoke languages from this family is uncertain.

The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum: "Scytho-Sarmatian" in the west and
"Scytho-Khotanese" or Saka in the east.[203] The Scythian languages were mostly marginalised and
assimilated as a consequence of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages Slavic and Turkic expansion.
The western (Sarmatian) group of ancient Scythian survived as the medieval language of the Alans and
eventually gave rise to the modern Ossetian language.[204]