Scythian horse nomads rule the steppe

From about the eighth century BCE, groups of horse-riding nomads called Scythians dominated the steppe grasslands north of the Black Sea and spread eastward across Eurasia. They moved with their herds, lived in wagons and tents, and fought as mounted archers with short composite bows. They are known from the Greek historian Herodotus, who described them in the fifth century BCE, and from excavated graves. They spoke an Iranian language and left no writing.¹²

Their way of life grew from the earlier spread of domestic horses and the shift to riding. Iron gave warriors cheap and strong arrowheads, swords and knives, and the steppe's vast open spaces suited mobile herders more than farmers. Around the Black Sea they traded grain, furs and enslaved people to Greek colonies such as Olbia and received wine and fine metalwork, which Greek craftsmen sometimes made specially for them in gold. Chiefs were buried under earth mounds called kurgans with horses, weapons and gold, as at Solokha. The Scythians repelled the Persian king Darius I when he led an army onto the steppe around 513 BCE, according to Herodotus, by retreating and refusing a set battle. By the third century BCE other nomads, the Sarmatians, took over their lands.²³