Description
"In the late 8th to early 7th century BC, Scythian steppe warriors conquered Central Eurasia and peripheral regions in Iran and China, revolutionizing the local cultures. A nomadic herding people who lived with their cats in felt-tent homes on wheels, the Scythians spread their complex, mobile, highly innovative culture into the frontiers of Southeast Europe, the Near East, Central Asia, South Asia, and East Asia. They produced the world's first "global" civilization: the great cultural flowering known as the Classical Age. In this book, Christopher Beckwith, one of the leading scholars of Central Eurasia, provides a new account of this fascinating culture, their empires, and their influence. He covers their tightly interwoven religious-social economic-political system, their heavenly royal lineage and language, their strikingly elegant new clothing fashions, and their revolutionary thought: Scythian philosophy. Politically, in the west the Scythians founded the sedentary world's first true empire, based in Media (northwestern Iran), which eventually became the Persian Empire. In the east their realm based in Chao (straddling the frontier with northern Chinese culture) introduced the key concepts that led to formation of Chinese national identity and the Chinese Empire. With the Scythian source of these tremendous changes as its focus, the book solves several mysteries surrounding the Scythians and presents some of the greatest true stories of Antiquity in a new light"--
