Saka

Mounted archers in pointed caps, the Saka roamed the grasslands from the Caspian to the Altai and settled the oases of the Tarim Basin, speaking Iranian languages and appearing in written records from around the eighth century BC; Saka speech survived in Central Asia until about the end of the first millennium AD. Close kin of the Scythians of the Black Sea steppe, they fought and allied with Persian kings, founded city-states along the Silk Road, and sent offshoots as far as India.

The Persians used "Saka", the Greeks "Scythian" and the Babylonians "Cimmerian" as broad labels for steppe nomads in general. Modern scholars narrow "Saka" to the eastern groups, from the lands east of the Caspian to the Altai, Tian Shan and Xinjiang, while keeping "Scythian" for those in the west. Chinese sources called them the Sai and placed them in the Ili and Chu valleys. Achaemenid inscriptions distinguished several kinds of Saka, among them the Saka tigraxaudā, "who wear pointed caps". The Massagetae of Greek writers are often identified with one of these groups.

Archaeology now suggests that the shared steppe culture of kurgans (burial mounds) and animal-style art began in the east, not the west. The Arzhan 1 kurgan in Tuva, excavated in the 1970s, has been carbon-dated to around 800 BC, and its deer, boar and panther motifs later spread westward. Genetic studies point to herders from the western steppe moving east towards the Altai, carrying Iranian languages and mixing with Siberian and East Asian populations. The frozen Pazyryk burials of the Altai, from the fourth and third centuries BC, are thought to belong to Saka chiefs.

Greek accounts of Saka dealings with Persia need careful reading. Herodotus says that Cyrus the Great died in 530 BC fighting the Massagetae, whose queen Tomyris defeated him; Ctesias describes another Saka king, Amorges, as an ally of Cyrus. On firmer ground, the Behistun inscription records that Darius the Great, in a campaign of 520–518 BC, captured a Saka king named Skunxa and replaced him with a loyal ruler. Saka lands were then counted within the Achaemenid Empire, and Saka mounted archers served in its armies; on the reliefs at Persepolis they wear long trousers and tall pointed caps.

Saka society was built around horses, herds and seasonal movement. Burials show that women as well as men could be buried with weapons: a Pazyryk grave of the 1990s held a man and a woman each armed, and DNA from a child's burial in Tuva, once assumed male because of its bow and battle pick, proved it female. Their art favoured animals in combat, worked in gold and bronze; a royal burial at Arzhan found in 2001 contained some 44 pounds of gold. Chinese craftsmen copied their style in belt plaques.

In the second century BC, according to Sima Qian, the Yuezhi, driven west by the Xiongnu, pushed the Saka out of the Ili and Chu valleys. Saka groups crossed into Sogdia and Bactria, some fought the Parthian Empire and settled in what became Sakastan, later Sistan, and others reached Gandhara and north-western India, where their kings are known as the Indo-Scythians.

Other Saka settled in the oases of the Tarim Basin. Khotan and Kashgar became Saka-speaking city-states; Khotanese Saka documents, from Buddhist texts to medical works, survive from Khotan, Tumshuq and the library cave at Dunhuang, mostly dating to the tenth century. The Kara-Khanid conquest of the early eleventh century brought Turkic speech and Islam, and the Saka languages faded there. Linguists regard modern Wakhi as descended from a Saka dialect, and some, following Georg Morgenstierne, link Pashto to Saka as well, a view that remains a hypothesis.

Our 100 BCE map labels the Saka "Saces" and draws them across the Syr Darya basin and the western Tian Shan, with the Scythians of the open steppe to the north and, to the south, a territory the map labels the Kushan Empire. The outline is approximate; the Saka were many groups spread far more widely, over many centuries.