I'm loving the questions this week. I'm gonna have some fun with this and go into everything from warfare to military equipment. I'll mostly be using the Scythians, Alans, and Huns as examples, but much of this applies to other cultures and I'll expound on that some.

Information on Steppe Warfare is primarily gleaned through second or third hand accounts of battles, and as a result is rather generic. For example, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing on the Huns from a presumably Gothic source, who himself had never actually seen a Hun and was merely reiterating the tales of fighting them, writes:

They also sometimes fight when provoked, and then they enter the battle drawn up in wedge-shaped masses, while their medley of voices makes a savage noise. And as they are lightly equipped for swift motion, and unexpected in action, they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack, rushing about in disorder here and there, dealing terrific slaughter; and because of their extraordinary rapidity of movement they are never seen to attack a rampart or pillage an enemy's camp. And on this account you would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors, because they fight from a distance with missiles having sharp bone, instead of their usual points, joined to the shafts with wonderful skill; then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives; and while the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sabre-thrusts, they throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding or walking.

Ammianus, Res Gestae, 31.2

This description is a prime example of what we can expect to hear about the warfare of Steppe nomads or mounted horse archery, which the Romans typically perceived as a "devious" style of warfare. It is also a classicizing topos that basically copies older descriptions of Steppe nomads, such as Herodotus' description of the Scythians. This has led many authors to make generalizations about Steppe warfare, particularly the Huns, without addressing the literary or archaeological evidence. E.A. Thompson was one of the first to note that the Huns could not possibly have conquered half of Europe with bone arrows and armor. Thankfully, we have both archaeology and accurate descriptions from other sources that allow us to reconstruct steppe warfare. The one I'm most acquainted with is the Strategikon of Pseudo-Maurice, which tells of "Dealing with the Scythians: That is, Avars, Turks, and others whose way of life resembles that of the Hunnish peoples", written probably in the 590's AD. The other one tells of the ways of war of another people, and that is the 2nd century AD Ektaxis Kat Alanon of Flavios Arrianos or Arrian, translated as "Array against the Alans." And I'll talk about Alan warfare and why it's different and notable in a little bit. But first let's start out with some overview.

Mounted Cavalry warfare by and large stems from the inventions and innovations of people living on what is now the Eurasian Steppes, and its development correlates with the rise of Pastoral Nomadism. This begins with the domestication of the horse, a process that may have begun as early as 3500 BC in the Botai Culture, in the Akmola region of North Kazakhstan between the Caspian and Aral seas, just south of the Ural mountain range. The evidence for this comes from archaeological remains of horse bones which show evidence of breeding of animals for corralling, and mare's milk residue on fragments of pottery. It's believed that from the wild horse (Tarpan, or Equus Ferus) they bred the Mongolian Steppe/Dzungarian Horse, known as Przewalski's Horse, while the Domesticated Horse (Equus Ferus Caballus) may have originated slightly further west in the Pontic-Caspian steppes. It's possible horse domestication may even be older, as domesticated sheep and goats are known from the Khvalynsk culture around 4800 BC, but there remain many uncertainties.

What is known is that domesticated horses used for transport and warfare first emerged around 2100 BC in the Shintashta culture, formerly a subgroup of the Andronovo culture, who were proto-Indo-Iranians and from whom the Indo-Iranian language originated. In the Transcaucasia region (the area north of the Caucasus, including the Kuban, Ossetia, Dagestan, Astrakhan, and other regions between the Black and Caspian Seas), the wheel had first appeared about the same time as domesticated horses, around 3500 BC, and the wheel and axel was first developed around 3150 BC. By 2100 BC, we find Shintashta culture chariots and drawn carts in burials known as Kurgans, indicating the invention of chariot warfare.

Mounted warfare and horseback riding is a bit more difficult to discern. Although bits and bridles appear to have been invented by the Botai culture, there's no evidence of saddles, tack, or spurs for another 2500-3000 years afterwards. Camel blankets and camel tack are, as far as we know, invented first, with camels having been domesticated in South Arabia or Ethiopia around 3000 BC, and in Bactria (Afghanistan) around 2500 BC. Camel Blankets and Saddles both appear around 1200 BC, and the idea may have spread to be applied to the horse. However, the first horse blankets are depicted in Assyrian art around 700 BC, and the first saddles appear in the graves of the Indo-Iranian Pazyryk culture, a Scythian people in Novosibirsk Oblast in the north-west Altai mountains, around 500-400 BC. These were padded treeless saddles, and they lacked a stiff frame to keep the rider in place, but were a major improvement over riding blankets. The necessary tack to control the horse would soon follow, and around 300-200 BC, the high-back steppe saddle was invented, which had a solid wooden frame combined with padded elements. This was followed by the Roman four-horned saddle between 200 BC-100 BC, although it may have had Celtic origins. Finally, around 302 AD, the first evidence of stirrups appear: a further innovation which would affect mounted warfare.

In the series of comments will discuss how some of these changes dramatically affected mounted warfare in the Eurasian steppes.

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