Continuing Mis-Identification of the Altai Culture

[Sean Manning]

Hi, Sean
Your explanation of the need to "categorize" people with a commonly recognizable name does make sense. However, we can do better than that, especially if we isolate the customs and art of any given culture. I object to the continuing references to the Pazyryk as "Scythian," because we should know better... and we do know better.

You asked, "What is your favorite generic term for the nomadic peoples of the steppes in the middle of the first millennium BCE?"

I don't have a term for All the steppe people of that period.. because they're not the same, either by culture, religion, or genetics. The term "Scythians" certainly applies to the tribes located west of the Urals, these wonderful pot smoking, scalp-taking, Europoids who so impressed the Greeks. But, we can draw a line through the steppes, north to south below the Urals, and discover the tribes living east of the rivers Oxus and Araxates were an entirely different people, with different cultures, different art, different weapons (including heavy armor), a different religion... plus a significant Asiatic (Mongoloid) admixture. Unlike the Scythians, they were influenced by the proto-Mongols and Chinese. They were Saka or Sacae, as were the Pazyryk and Ukok Cultures, a fact noticed by Rudenko back in the 1920s. Yet almost 100 years later, archaeologists still refer to them as "Scythians."

I am not a specialist in the steppes, so I can't comment on what is the best way to divide up steppes peoples for scientific purposes. But if we look at Darius' tomb inscription DNe, the Old Persian version has the Sakā Haumavargā and the Sakā tigraxaudā amongst peoples of the east, but also the Sakā paradraiya between the Yauna (the Ionian) and the Skudra (the Thracian). I suspect that the Babylonian says Gimmeraya instead of Sakā in all three places but I don't have it on hand to check. So to a speaker of Old Iranian Sakā may have been just as vague as Scythian in modern English. Being loose with these terms has ancient precedents!

Maurice Strategikon XI.2 informs readers that Scythians, Avars, Turks, and Huns have more or less the same way of war. Most people would say that there had been no Scythians for hundreds of years when that manual was compiled, but educated Greeks (like educated Babylonians) preferred to use ethnic terms which were traditional rather than ones which the peoples named would recognize. I don't think that any specialists is confused by calling the Pazyryk finds "Scythian," and if the name can lead beginners astray, at least they are using some kind of non-Greek evidence to understand the non-Greek world!

Edit: Against my view, one could point to the way in which stereotypes about "Persians" or "the near east" influence professional scholars' views of the Achaemenid army, or the mischief which ensues from the chance that there are both ancient and modern peoples who call themselves Hellenes and Makedones.