The Cimmerian Horse Lords

On this episode

About this episode

The Cimmerians were among the first great horse nomad powers to crash into the civilizations of the ancient Near East. Emerging from the Scytho-Siberian world north of the Caucasus, they struck Urartu, devastated Phrygia and Lydia, raided deep into the Near East, and became legendary in Greek memory as one of the great barbarian terrors of antiquity. But how dangerous were they really? In this episode, we look beyond the later legends to reconstruct the Cimmerians and their Scythian cousins as actual people: their pastoral economy, horses, clothing, settlements, weapons, trade, and political organization. We examine what made mounted nomads so difficult for settled kingdoms to fight, why…