It is my understanding that the people of the steppe lived a very nomadic life and absolutely dominated pretty much everything. Being that they lived in mainly grasslands where did they get the material and how did they build weapons that could compete with the rest of the world?
As a starting point, u/stevapalooza made a comment touching on this on another post concerning the Mongols: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e74ai/so_where_did_the_mongols_get_their_arrows_from/cx0kyxn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x