The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler

Volume 3

The Classical World

Episode 56 The Scythians. Oh, At first glance we might suggest that the stepcultures were just nomadic tribes

who were around at the same time as the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Indian

subcontinental cultures and the earliest Chinese dynasties.

Talking about them and devoting episodes of this podcast series might even seem like an obligation.

People who we ought to include because they were around at that time.

Just because they have not left us a lot in terms of written records and just because they weren't as

sedentary or centralized as the glorious classical world cultures that we have

devoted so much time to. It doesn't give us any excuse of falling into a trap of

suggesting that we could overlook them. This is impossible. We are talking about the geographical descendants of the

Proto Indo-Europeans. We are talking about the

the inhabitants of the earliest silk roads.

The nomads of Central Asia were an important connecting culture for all of the Eurasian

cultures. And it is for that reason that we are including them. But we dare not ignore them. We dare not ignore them. We find that we have to turn to outside sources to piece together

the story of the stepcultures. But we already had to do that with the Celts and the Germanic peoples.

We can look at the Scythians in a similar way to the Celts and the Germanic tribes in that they didn't necessarily look upon themselves as

united, but they did have cultural and indeed DNA links with each other.

We also have the problem of perception.

Just like the Celts and the Germanic peoples,

they didn't view themselves as culturally linked. It would be the Romans

...