Hi there. You're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast. Episode 51, Peoples of the Step,

Skithians and Saka, Parthians and Ueichi.

Throughout our journey in this podcast, we've covered quite the range of peoples and civilizations, varying from Greece to Carthage and India to Rome.

However, to some extent, all of the peoples that we have covered share the same basic elements, sedentary, agricultural, and with some degree of urbanization.

The same is generally true for Egypt, China, and the Near East.

And when we often talk about great powers, when we track the progression of humanity,

these are the places that immediately come to mind

for the vast majority of the time.

One key element that is often neglected or largely forgotten in the discussion of Eurasian

history also happens to be a topic that is of a particular source of dread for many of the

peoples who lived in these settled societies.

For the Roman Empire and its heirs, the Huns and

Avars were scourges of God and the sign of the end times. The Chinese emperors of the

Chin and Han dynasties paid dearly in blood, silk and treasure to keep the Zhongnu at bay.

And the systematic destruction of Baghdad in 1258 was the bloody climax of a series of Western and Central Asian campaigns

enacted by the family of Jenghis Khan.

These peoples, whether they were Huns, Mongols, or Skiffians, belonged to a group generally categorized as the Step Nomads,

who share a similar lifestyle of nomadic pastoralism centered on the

use of the horse that remained largely unchanged for thousands of years. Though we associate

them with their often brutal invasions, the peoples of the steppe have played an instrumental

role in dictating the course of human history through trade, exchange, and, indeed, warfare with the settled societies.

The Hellenistic period was no different in this regard, and was actually a time of great change

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