If you carefully look at the mounds of hills around the Sudak fortress in Crimea or stroll slowly along the beaches of Koktebel, you will surely come across fragments of ancient potters' products - glazed ceramics with a characteristic green-yellow-brown ornament. These are artifacts testifying to the presence of other civilizations in these places …
I
Around 750 BC, the first colonies of the Ionian metropolitan cities arose on the present Black Sea coast. The ancient Greeks at first reconciled or did not notice the ancient name of our Black Sea - Pont Aksinsky ("inhospitable"). However, being guided, apparently, by the current concept of "rebranding", they, following the formation and flourishing of the Black Sea cities, took and changed the name of the sea. Since then, Pontus has received the name Euxinian - "hospitable". And in fact - how else to call that land and that sea that fed the metropolis with bread; the Black Sea lands became a real breadbasket for Ancient Greece.
The masters of ancient Greek literature immediately responded to the consequences of the colonization of the Black Sea; an event was the appearance of the first historical and ethnographic description of the northern part of the oecumene, which belonged to Herodotus. The term "oikumene" was introduced by the ancient Greek geographer Hekateus of Miletus to designate the part of the Earth known to the Greeks centered in Hellas. Initially, it designated the lands inhabited by Greek tribes, later - the lands inhabited and known to mankind in general.
More than ten years Herodotus spent on touring almost all the countries of Western Asia and, naturally, visited the Northern Black Sea region. He observed and studied the customs and customs of foreign peoples with the inexhaustible interest of a true researcher, "so that past events over time do not fall into oblivion and the great and amazing deeds worthy of both Hellenes and barbarians do not remain in obscurity." Another great thinker of antiquity, Plutarch, called Herodotus "filovarvar" - a lover of the alien and an admirer of another culture, despised by educated people of that time. In the fifties of the last century, Herodotus - if he lived, would be called by another Greek word - "cosmopolitan" for objective respect for another's culture.
Unfortunately, the primordially Slavic lands remained completely unknown to the "father of history" - did not reach it. The areas beyond the Danube, he writes, "are apparently uninhabited and endless." He mentions only one nationality living north of the Danube - the Siginns, a nomadic Iranian-speaking tribe. During the time of Herodotus, the Siginns occupied the territory almost along the entire steppe left bank of the Danube; in the west, their lands extended to the possessions of the Adriatic Veneti. From this we can conclude that in the V century BC. e. the areas of Slavic settlement were still far to the north of the almost continuous mountain range - the Ore Mountains, the Sudeten Mountains, the Tatras, the Beskids and our Carpathians - stretching across Central and Eastern Europe from west to east.
Much more information was collected by Herodotus about Scythia and the Scythians.
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II
The Scythians, who supplanted in the VIII century BC. e. from the Northern Black Sea region of the semi-legendary Cimmerians, caused trembling among the Greeks because of their close proximity to the Greek colonies in the Crimea. These cities, as we already know, were rich and prosperous, they supplied Athens and other Hellenic city-states with bread. And envy of wealth and the desire to profit have always been characteristic of humanity. The Scythians were no exception. They were reputed to be barbarously brave and cruel people, flaying the skin from slain enemies and drinking wine from their skulls. They fought fiercely, both on foot and on horseback. Especially famous were the Scythian archers, whose arrows were coated with poison. In the depiction of the way of life of the Scythians, ancient writers who, unlike Herodotus, had never been in the Black Sea region, used "tales": some painted them as cannibals who devoured their own children, while others,on the contrary, they extolled the purity and integrity of Scythian morals and reproached their compatriots for corrupting these innocent children of nature, introducing them to the achievements of Hellenic civilization.
In addition to personal predilections that forced Greek writers to emphasize certain features of Scythian mores, one purely objective difficulty prevented the true depiction of the Scythians. The fact is that the Greeks constantly confused the Scythians, who belonged to the Iranian-speaking peoples, with other peoples of the Northern Black Sea region. So, Hippocrates in his treatise "On air, waters and areas" under the name of the Scythians described the obvious Mongoloids: "Scythians resemble only themselves: their skin color is yellow; the body is fat and fleshy, they are beardless, which makes their men like women."
III
Herodotus found it difficult to say anything definite about the Scythian population. "The number of Scythians," he writes, "I could not know with accuracy, but I heard two different judgments: one by one, there are a lot of them, on the other, there are actually few Scythians." So - either a million, or a hundred. Therefore, Herodotus calls Scythians either all the inhabitants of the Black Sea steppes, or only one people dominating all others. When describing the way of life of the Scythians, the historian also comes into conflict with himself. His characterization of the Scythians as a poor nomadic people, having neither cities nor fortifications, but living in carts and eating livestock products - meat, mare's milk and cottage cheese, the gut is destroyed by the story of the Scythian plowmen selling bread. Let's not forget about the art of our ancestors - take at least the famous golden pectoral,stored in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; it is not only an example of high jewelry technique, but also a magnificent illustration of the life of ancient tribes. A detailed depiction of hunting scenes and other genre events perfectly illustrates the side of the Scythian life unknown to Herodotus.
This contradiction stemmed from the fact that ancient writers had a poor idea of the political and social structure of the steppe people. The Scythian state was organized on the model of all other nomadic empires, when one relatively small horde in terms of numbers ruled over foreign nomadic hordes and a sedentary population.
According to Herodotus, the main Scythian horde was the "royal Scythians" - their self-name was "chipped", which the historian calls the most valiant and most numerous. They considered all other Scythians to be their own slaves. The kings of the Scythian-Skolots dressed with truly barbaric pomp. On the clothes of one such lord from the so-called Kul-Ob grave near Kerch, 266 gold plaques with a total weight of up to one and a half kilograms were sewn. Cleaved in northern Tavria roamed. To the east, in the vicinity of them, lived another horde, called by Herodotus the Scythian nomads. Both these hordes constituted the actual Scythian population of the Northern Black Sea region.
IV
Scythia did not extend to the north very far (the Dnieper rapids were not known to Herodotus), covering a rather narrow steppe strip of the Northern Black Sea region at that time. But like any other steppe inhabitants, the Scythians often went on military raids on their close and distant neighbors. Judging by the archaeological finds, they reached the Oder and Elbe basin in the west, ravaging Slavic settlements along the way. The territory of modern Bohemia was subject to their invasions from the end of the 6th century BC. Archaeologists have discovered characteristic Scythian arrowheads stuck in the ramparts of the so-called Lusatian settlements from the outside. Some of the settlements dating back to this time keep traces of fires or destruction, such as the Vitsin settlement in the Zelenogur region of the Czech Republic, where, among other things, skeletons of women and children who died during one of the Scythian raids were found. At the same time, the original and graceful "animal style" of Scythian art found many admirers among Slavic men and women. Numerous Scythian decorations in the places of Lusatian settlements testify to the constant trade relations of the Slavs with the Scythian world of the Northern Black Sea region.
The trade was carried out, most likely, through intermediaries, since between the Slavs and the Scythians, the tribes of the Alizons and "Scythian farmers" who lived somewhere along the Bug River, known to Herodotus, wedged themselves in. Probably, these were some Iranian-speaking peoples conquered by the Scythians. Further to the north stretched the lands of the Neuros, behind which, according to Herodotus, "there is already a deserted desert." The historian either jokingly or seriously complains that it is impossible to get there - because of snowstorms and blizzards: "The earth and air there are full of feathers, and this interferes with vision." Herodotus tells about the neurons themselves from hearsay and very sparingly - that their customs are "Scythian", and they themselves are sorcerers: "each neuron turns into a wolf for several days every year, and then again takes on a human form." However, Herodotus adds that he does not believe this, and, of course, he is doing the right thing. Probably,in this case, information about some kind of magical ritual or, perhaps, the custom of the neurons to dress in wolf skins during the annual religious holiday reached him in a highly distorted form.
Suggestions were made about the Slavic affiliation of the Neuros, since the legends about werewolves were later extremely common in Ukraine. However, this is unlikely. In ancient poetry, there is a short line with an expressive description of the neur: "a neuron adversary who dressed a horse in armor." We agree that a neuron, riding an armored horse, bears little resemblance to the ancient Slav, as it is portrayed by ancient sources and archeology. But it is known that the Celts were skilled metallurgists and blacksmiths; the cult of the horse was extremely popular with them. Therefore, it is more natural to admit the Celtic belonging of the Herodotovian neurons, connecting their name with the name of the Celtic tribe of the Nervii.
V
Such is Scythia and the adjacent lands, according to Herodotus. In the classical era of Greece, when the ancient literary tradition took shape, the Scythians were the most powerful and, most importantly, the most famous people of barbarian Europe to the Greeks. Therefore, subsequently the name of Scythia and the Scythians was used by ancient and medieval writers as the traditional name of the Northern Black Sea region and the inhabitants of the south of our country, and sometimes the whole unknown world beyond the Carpathians.
Nestor has already written about this: the Tivertsy and Tivertsy “go along the Dniester, along the Bug and along the Dnieper to the sea; their city is to this day; before this land was called by the Greeks the Great Skuf”. In the 10th century, Leo the Deacon, in his description of the war of Prince Svyatoslav with the Bulgarians and the Byzantine emperor John Tzimiskes, called the Rus by their own name - 24 times, but the Scythians - 63 times, the Tavro-Scythians - 21 and the Taurus - 9 times, without mentioning the name of the Slavs at all.
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Western Europeans used this tradition for a very long time, calling the inhabitants of the Moscow state "Scythians" even in the 16th-17th centuries. The poet Alexander Blok, in accordance with the "Mongolian" theory of the origin of the Scythians, popular in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, endowed them in his famous poem with "slanting eyes", which in reality they never had.
Author: S. Mironenko. “Interesting newspaper. Mysteries of Civilization №9