Sarmatian origins of the spatha?

[quisslan]

Thank you Alanus for your kind words! Yes I think that you are correct about the importance of the steppe cultures. They are very exciting and I think that there are some very mistily ancient finds that are still to be found. The more I read about them the more interesting I find them. This might be childish, but the more things that are discovered and the farther back we go and find that things were not as primitive as we used to think, the more I get that sliver of imagination that hints that REH might have been too terribly far off...