Scythians

From Herodotus, source: metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3269235.pdf.bannered.pdf

>"When a Scythian records his first kill, he will gulp down the man's blood."
>"There are many Scythians who wear cloaks fashioned out of scalps, which they stitch together in the manner of shepherds who make cloaks out of leather"
>"A common practice is to take the corpse of an adversary, to skin the right hand, fingernails & all, & then to make it into a cover for an arrow-sheath"
>"Now the Scythians blind all their slaves, to use them in preparing their milk."

Also
>Would make drinking cups out of skulls
>Preferred method of execution was tying someone to a wagon harnessed to oxen and setting them on fire while the oxen ran around freaking the fuck out.

What the fuck was with these people? Generally speaking why did nomadic horse archer cultures have such a penchant for brutality and violence?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-digging_ant
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

I would take what Herodotus says with a grain of salt

I'd be inclined to agree, but the majority of his embellishment of history is found in his writings of the Greeks/Greek relations with other peoples to intentionally propagate history with supposed Greek virtue and triumphs.

As for the Scythians, there's no real use for him here to embellish anything.

Didn't they get taken over by the sarmatians? Were they a similar indo steppe people like them?

Do you think horses felt and enjoyed fighting and felt concerned ?

You're forgetting the best part of what Herodotus had to say about them, which is that they smoked weed.

>"look at how barbaric these people are compared to our civilized way of life"

>Generally speaking why did nomadic horse archer cultures have such a penchant for brutality and violence?
Because they loved a harsh and brutal life.
Also, like said, you should take Herodotus with a grain of salt. Even somewhat contemporary sources mocked his lack of truth.

*lived, not loved.

He doesn't say that they smoked it. According to him they bathed in it sweatlodge style. It was also apparantly their favorite pasttime.

what really tickles me is that this shit has found its way into pop culture.
the devs of civilization 6 didn't want to put in the mongols for fear of triggering pussies who don't actually know jack about shit, and filled the spot on the roster reserved for 'nomads with horse bows' with these fucking savages.

none of that stuff is all that weird.
Think of skinning a monkey, that's how the scythians felt when they skinned a semite/mede/greek/germanic/celt

>Herodotus
>India is full of giant ants that mine gold.
xDDDD

no, they wanted to put a qt waifu in.

It's honestly not that outlandish an idea.

>implying definitions don't change with context
>implying it wasn't talking about the diamond mines and casted workers
Besides the wagon kill that's all realitistck tho user

The part about headhunting and drinking out of skulls is a half truth. The native pagan tribes of europe kept their ancestors skulls and believed if you ritually drank out of them you would obtain their wisdom and semi reincarnate them inside you.

It is true though

...

Yeah but its out of context, the Greeks and Romans looked at it in a romantic exciting way that these guys were conan the barbarian orc tier.

>en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-digging_ant
French ethnologist Michel Peissel says that the Himalayan marmot on the Deosai Plateau in Gilgit–Baltistan province of Pakistan, may have been what Herodotus called giant "ants". Much like the province that Herodotus describes, the ground of the Deosai Plateau is rich in gold dust. Peissel interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Deosai Plateau, and they have confirmed that they have, for generations, collected the gold dust that the marmots bring to the surface when digging burrows. The story was widespread in the ancient world and later authors like Pliny the Elder mentioned it in his gold mining section of the Naturalis Historia.

In his book, The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas, Peissel says that Herodotus may have confused the old Persian word for "marmot" with that for "mountain ant" because he probably did not know any Persian and thus relied on local translators when travelling in the Persian Empire. Herodotus did not claim to have seen the gold-digging "ant" creatures, he stated that he was simply reporting what other travellers told him.[2][3]

My ancestors :)

Such brutality.
Other methods of execution in the world used throughout history were: flaying, burning on a stake, crucifixion, impalement, the brazen bull, the blood eagle, the electric chair.

The only thing that seems to be unique is the hand-nail arrow sheath.

>The brazen bull is anything but a meme.
Source please

>fear of triggering pussies

Prove it

They added the mongols before. They just wanted to change civs up but cant change core stuff like india, uk or france.

Meh its not the worst choice

Ants actually have been recorded to do this. Obviously it was exaggerated but only in scale.

I find it interesting if we ignore what Herodotus says about the Scythians a massive gigantic chunk of what we know is gone. Like was there really a woman queen who killed a Persian king?

Doesn't the offical persian legend claim that he died of old age?
The story about Tomyris is just too perfect to not be hybris-related propaganda.

You rapscallion, you.

>Fuck, what animal digs mounds in the ground, and have a whole network of tunnels?
>Man... I shouldn't have drunk so much yesterd-ANTS! That's the name!

It's more that the names for both animals sounds really similar IIRC.

Yeah I always thought it was something like that. We tend to think that people was more stupid/uninformed than they actually were, rather than it being a silly thing like a mistranslation.
I just found the thought of him being too hangover to remember the correct name amusing.

He also said they could and would kill camels

The man was Herodotus after all.

Probably by stepping in one of their holes and breaking a leg.

White subhumans used to associate us with Scythians because we were ebil
I sympathize with Scythians. They must have instilled fear into subhuman whites.

Scythians had nothing to do with Turks.

white subhuman, read the pic that i posted. it was YOUR subhuman RACE who associated US with Scythians. We didn't do that.
you illiterate white subhumans make me want to jump on your bodies till you die.

Just so you know, I would beat the shit out of you. And no, I'm not white. I'm a horde from the East.

>implying i cannot easily overpower a white subhuman

You're probably some swedshit from /int/ larping as the turkposter. That's really patethic you fuck.

They were iranian

if you ever associate me with crackers i'll tiger kick your old whore mother
koduğumun b*Yaz iti

What unclean foods is he refering to?

probably meat
but our cuisine is godtier compared to cracker cuisine lmao

Meat isn't considered unclean in christianity.

I know. But the way we (nomads etc) ate meat probably put off crackers

That's not what unclean foods are refering to.
If you want to troll successfully you should really learn english.

white subhuman, i'm trying to explain it logically. in my opinion your subhuman ancestor was probably very butthurt about my ancestors, hence he tried to shit on our cuisine. but it's possible that the preservation of meat/food by nomad probably put off your subhuman ancestors hence your subhuman white ancestor said "dey eat unclean food but our cuisine -cracker cuisine is consisted of salami and bread- is better nigga we be civilized"
now fuck off before i break your white subhuman bones.

The funny part about the ancient sources is, that historians like Gibbons and Mommsen thought shit like the descriptions of Carthage's sacrficial habits or the insane cruelty of the Scythians was just horse shit.

Joke's on them. In the last 20 years alone archeologists unearthed graves of scythians and they had shit like skinquivers and scalp cloaks.
Or the sacrifical pit that was found in Tunisia not long ago. Filled to the brim with infant corpses. The way they were burried was pretty similar how sacrifced animals were buried.

So yes, take Herodotus with a grain of salt but be prepared to come to terms with the fact, that some ancient peoples were irrational retards.

As I said. If you want to troll sucessfully you should perhaps learn the language your using. Atm you're just coming of as pathetic.

my ancestors:)

Scythians were white, Proto-Turkic elites were also mostly Indo-European explaining the excess of R1a in Turkic populations (which is why Turkist idiots claim R1a1a1 as Turkic).

>reee
yep whites are subhumans
another victory against white subhuman on /his
also
>pathetic
KEK and this comes from a white """"man"""" :DDD
go back to r/incels cracker. this is my board. don't make me tiger kick your mom

It seemed to just be shit talk over how

a) The barbarians are uncivilized savages who even let a woman led them

and

b) The persians are so effeminate (a common trope in those days) that even their king gets killed by a woman

In the other rare instances of woman warriors (the amazons) they serve a story purpose of being defeated by the masculine greek hero (herakales)

In short, I find it more likely to be a widely spoken of story with a basis in real events but certainly the fluffy parts are made up.

Herodotus is writing about an event from well past his time and very far away based on stories of others. How would the ancient greeks even know about this? Why would the Persians even record this?

>As for the Scythians, there's no real use for him here to embellish anything.
The eternal contrast between the east and west. Where the east is not effeminate they are barbarous.

is composed of*

>some ancient peoples were irrational retards.
What's irrational about using the skin of your beaten foe as a fabric? That shit just sounds practical on many layers.
And yes sacrificing children isn't exactly not a logical fallacy but 'correlation is not causation' is one of the most common mistakes people make.

Yeah you're totally not a flaming faggot of a bad troll. I'll stop feeding you now.

>What's irrational about using the skin of your beaten foe as a fabric? That shit just sounds practical on many layers.

Nigga what. That's just borderline crazy. Why not use simple leather from Horses or goats? Human skin is just a:) really fucking disgusting and b.) not as hardy as other hides.

Ever heard of terror, style and trophy collecting? Decorating with human skins does all of those and more.

The Steppe life turns any society raised in such harsh landscapes into titanic assholes.

Honey, when Herodotus writes that sort of shit about you, in addition to the Old Testament calling you a horde of locusts, plus the fact that the Persian Empire built a wall to contain your raids, in addition to the destruction of the first Armenian-based Civilization (Urartu,), these accounts generally corroborate the charge that you're a fucking asshole.

Herodotus was high tier, but plutarch was right in pointing put that Herodotus had a pro-Mede bias and didn't give the Hellenes their proper due.

>Herodotus wrote pro persian history.

That's always the part that gets me. All the historical writers after him, may it be romans or other greeks, were always throwing a fit about herodotus being a persian bitch.

Scythians weren't swarthy. They were white skinned, light haired and eyed people...

WE WUZ !!

Why would you want to skin a useful goat or horse when there's a dude you just killed lying there?

They literally were

>Scythians were in the bible
Sure and so was Alexander the Great

>the Scythians blind all their slaves, to use them in preparing their milk

>why would Persians record this
>why would Persians record their greatest defeat

yeah, they were hotboxing religiously.

they don't call it the Hindu Kush for no reason, amirite?

sickass
these guys just keep impressing me

you'll never be able to recover from being this btfo