Once upon a time there were Scythians in the south of today's Russia. Some say that they were farmers, sowing bread for sale. Others - that the Scythians were warlike nomadic herders. According to others, they mined mercury and sold it to Europe (and there they amalgamated gold-bearing ores with it) in such crazy quantities that in that Europe they called mercury "Scythian water". Such statements are very funny - after all, even the most general knowledge about the Scythians is completely absent. So where did this whole story come from?
The description of the Scythian culture is striking in the abundance of details. Moreover, there are no legends, no fairy tales, no epics of the Scythians themselves! There is nothing about them and the allegedly surrounding peoples.
It turns out that everything we know about the Scythians is taken from the works of Herodotus! But maybe there is material evidence of the life of the Scythians? Oh yeah! And what more! These Asians "with slanting and greedy eyes", bloodsuckers and, probably, cannibals, were captured in the most skillful crafts of jewelers!
Historical incongruities
The St. Petersburg Hermitage has many items dating back to the 4th century BC. The general name of the collection is "Scythian gold", although there are items made of silver and electrons, a natural alloy of gold and silver.
On a silver vase from Chertomlyk, a Scythian hobbles a horse. On the horse's face there is a bridle with metal rings, on the back there is a typical English racing saddle with one girth, with a bib and stirrups. The horse's mane is well-cut.
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One of the Scythians is dressed in a beautifully cut overalls; codpiece and panties are functionally and beautifully stitched. It seems that these savages had good needles, awl and thread. The second one, who was bent over the horse, had the floors of the jacket sewn with a double seam. Shoes were stitched on the left and right feet separately, which was not in Russia even during the Napoleonic war.
It is noticeable that the boots have heels and toli straps, or seams. A Scythian, alone taming a horse, has boots stitched on the instep; this is how shoes have been cut for the last three hundred years. Overall impression: well-dressed shepherds or grooms of some medieval prince or khan posed for the jeweler.
These crafts are called "Scythian gold" (since they were found in the allegedly Scythian land and are supposedly depicted on them as Scythians), however, historians claim that they were made in jewelry workshops in Greece. These savages could not have made such a thing themselves! But, probably, they bought these jewelry in Greece and took them with them to the graves.
On a vase from the Kul-Oba mound, scenes of pulling the bowstring and cutting teeth are carefully depicted. But they also learned to pull teeth not so long ago!
It is interesting to compare the “Scythian skates” with the bronze medieval crafts from Florence. Among the latter, there is a “Florentine horse”, almost identical to the half of the golden “Scythian horse,” and the Scythian work is cleaner in execution, more elegant than the products of Florence. Florence was the workshop of Europe.
All this allows us to conclude that Scythian products most likely belong to the late Middle Ages. By the skill of execution - the XV century, not earlier.
But since it has been decided by historians that it was the Scythians who left the gold items, and certainly the ancient ones, now you cannot knock them off. It is clear that it is in no way possible to find out how the Scythians "left" this gold, but it is known how the burial mounds in the southern Russian steppes were opened. This is a very instructive story, set forth in Kharuzina's essay "At the Excavation", published more than a hundred years ago ("Spring" No. 11, 1905). It tells about the excavation of a small mound near the mine in the Verkhnedneprovsky district of the Yekaterinoslav province. Skilled grabbers dug, local historians examined. Grabarians note that the grave had already been opened and filled up again.
“And now the whole grave was cleared of the bulk soil and swept clean with a broom. A skeleton lies in the clay soil of its bottom. The head facing southeast looks up; the arms are extended along the camp, the legs are bent and raised, so that their knees rest against the right wall of the grave. The bones of the legs are painted red, and the remains of the dark red paint are visible at the bottom of the grave.
But what if the findings of the Chertomlyk and Kul-Obsk mounds are just treasures of the Cossacks? Cossack common fund - kosh had to be stored somewhere. On the eve of the military campaign, the kosh with trusted elective comrades hid the kosh in the old mound, next to the old skeleton. And they marked the bones with paint. Not the ancient Scythians painted the bones of the skeleton with red paint! After all, they buried a body, not a painted skeleton!
If so, then even if the remains of the dead lying in such mounds are correctly dated to the 4th century BC, then the gold found in them has nothing to do with that century.
In cases when the kosh and his comrades died, no one could find the buried kosh, except, of course, robbers or archaeologists. Robbers sold and melted the gold, and historians built theories. Ah, ah, IV century BC! "Historical fact"! But in reality - only one superstitious attitude to chronology.
Dmitry KALYUZHNY
"Mysteries of History" October 2012