Of all the peoples ancient Greece called "barbarian," none were more formidable than the Scythians—the hairy, implacable nomads who ranged over the steppes of Central Asia and north of the Black Sea, in what is now Russia. Around 3200 B.C., on these grassy oceans, the horse was first tamed for riding, and the Scythians were the result of that profound change in man's mobility.
On their coarse, nimble ponies, they rode like centaurs. They made cloaks from tanned scalps, and the skin of a right arm would furnish a container for their arrows. ("The skin...
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