FOCUS ON PHILATELY: How many Scythians were there? (04/07/02)

FOCUS ON PHILATELY

by Ingert Kuzych

How many Scythians were there?

The ancient Scythians who lived on Ukrainian territory were renowned as fierce warriors, yet at the same time they were connoisseurs of exquisite artwork. Known primarily as a nomadic folk, these enigmatic people bequeathed to posterity various unique gifts. They were the first people in the world to invent trousers, which aided them in their riding. Their dazzling gold metalwork was incredibly detailed, depicting animals so frequently that an artistic Scythian zoomorphic style has been coined.

In warfare they are credited with the invention of the powerful double-curved bow, which could carry an arrow distances much further than conventional bows (Figures 1 and 2). They may also have developed chain mail, which offered superior protection in battle, but was lighter than the scale armor of the time (Figure 3). They paraded over the Ukrainian steppes for some 500 years (7th to 3rd centuries B.C.) and lingered in Crimea until the 3rd century A.D. Today their most visible remains are their scattered burial mounds (kurhany).

New Scythian stamps

An earlier "Focus on Philately" article already dealt with the Scythians and their fabulous gold artwork, but a new stamp series begun this year by the Ukrainian stamp production firm Marka Ukrainy provides a wonderful excuse to revisit these fascinating Ukrainian forebears. The new series is titled "History of the Military in Ukraine" and the first issue of four 40-kopiyka stamps depicts various types of Scythian warriors (Figure 4).

The first stamp depicts a light cavalryman in action, firing his bow at the enemy over the rear of his mount. Scythian tactics were to advance on an enemy shooting fusillades of arrows. They would plunge forward as if to attack, but at the last instant wheel away and launch a fresh volley of arrows over the rumps of their retreating horses, thus leaving the dust-enveloped enemy in disarray. The expression of a "parting shot," meaning a surprise attack just when the victim assumes the battle - verbal or otherwise - is over, may well have come from this Scythian tactic.

The second stamp shows heavily armed Scythian infantrymen engaged in a sword battle against Greek warriors. The former wear mail shirts and hoods, and carry square- or crescent-shaped shields. The third stamp presents a mounted Scythian king passing on orders to a young warrior. A typical Scythian burial mound may be seen in the background with several offering fires lit on it.

The final stamp prominently displays a mounted female warrior-archer, identified as an "Amazon." Many Scythian burials have been found of women buried with weapons. Although most Scythian women probably did not fight, there likely was a feminine warrior class.

A great deal of what we know about the Scythians was set down by the Greek historian Herodotus. Although derided in ages past as a teller of tall tales, over the past century or so many of the "tales" he set down have proven to be accurate. It is for this reason that one of his eyewitness stories deserves a closer examination.

The bronze cauldron

Most of Book Four of Herodotus' Histories deals with the Scythians. Paragraph 81 is particularly fascinating as it provides clues to the size of the Scythian population.

Herodotus writes:

"It was impossible for me to find out exactly the size of the Scythian population; I kept receiving conflicting reports of their numbers. Some people said there were huge numbers of Scythians, while others said that there were few of them - few genuine Scythians, that is. However, I was shown something relevant to the issue. Between the Borysthenes [present-day Dnipro River] and the Hypanis [present-day Buh River] there is a district called Exampeus, which I mentioned a short while ago [in a previous paragraph], when I was talking about the brackish spring there which flows into the Hypanis and makes the water undrinkable. Now, in Exampeus there is a bronze vessel which is six times as big as the bowl that Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus set up at the mouth of the Euxine [Black] Sea. For the sake of anyone who has not seen Pausanias' bowl, I should explain that the vessel in Scythia easily holds 600 amphoras of liquid, and that it is six fingers thick. Now, I was told by the local Scythians that this bowl was made out of arrowheads. What happened was that one of their kings, who was called Ariantas, wanted to know how many Scythians there were, so he issued a proclamation that every Scythian was to bring a single arrowhead, and that anyone who failed to do so would be put to death. A huge quantity of arrowheads were brought, and the king decided to use them to make this bronze vessel, and he chose this place, Exampeus, to be its site. That is what I heard about the size of the Scythian population."

A fortunate purchase

Not that long ago on e-Bay a coin dealer from Florida was offering two bronze arrowheads of the 7th to 4th century B.C. described as coming from Ukraine. I was immediately interested and in checking out the photograph recognized the arrowheads as being of Scythian style. I quickly put in bids sufficiently high to make sure I acquired the two items.

Figure 5 displays various types of Scythian arrowhead styles. Note that they are all barbed. This attribute was intentionally added by the Scythians in order to ensure that removal of arrows would cause additional damage to their victims (and, therefore, frequently their deaths). The two arrowheads I was able to purchase most closely resemble the second and sixth from the left.

Having these Scythian arrowheads and carrying out some calculations I have been able to come up with an approximation of the number of Scythians living in Ukraine in the middle of the 5th century before Christ (Herodotus lived ca. 485-425 B.C.). Readers "numerically challenged" may wish to skip the calculation details and proceed directly to the final section of this article.

The calculations

We do know the approximate modern equivalents of the measurements mentioned by Herodotus. A breadth of 16 fingers was considered the equivalent of one foot, so six fingers would equal 0.375 feet or 4.5 inches (the thickness of the cauldron). An amphora of the time held approximately nine gallons.

In order to determine how many arrowheads were used to make the cauldron, one must first figure out how much bronze was melted to make such a huge vessel. For my simplified calculations, I assumed the cauldron took the shape of a hemisphere (half a sphere) and its volume was 5,400 gallons (600 amphora times 9 gallons/amphora). The formula for the volume of a sphere is 4/3 r3 where r is the radius of the sphere. Since half the volume is 5,400 gallons, the sphere has a volume of 10,800 gallons or 10,800 x 231 cubic inches (there being 231 cubic inches per gallon).

Knowing this, we can compute the radius of the inner sphere to be approximately 84.1 inches. The outer radius is 84.1 + 4.5 inches (4.5 inches being the thickness of the cauldron wall). From this we can compute the volume of the outer sphere. The difference between the outer and inner volumes is the volume of the shell of the sphere and it is 421,740 cubic inches. Half of that is the volume of the hemispheric shell of the cauldron or 210,870 cubic inches. This volume would be the approximate bronze volume of the melted arrowheads.

Having determined how much bronze composed the cauldron, the final determination is to figure out how much volume was taken up by an average arrowhead. This was accomplished by dipping my two arrowheads in a test tube (graduated in cubic centimeters; cc) partly filled with water. The two arrowheads displaced almost exactly 1 cc of water (therefore, on average, each displaced one half cc). Since there are approximately 16 cc in a cubic inch, it would have required about 32 arrowheads to make up a cubic inch of bronze. Multiplying 32 times 210,870 cubic inches yields 6,747,840 arrowheads or the possible population of ancient Scythia two and a half millennia ago. So, if Herodotus' tale is true, the pile of arrowheads collected by King Ariantas must have been immense.

An assessment

A population of 6.7 million or so, to me at least, seems overly large - about triple or quadruple what I would have expected the population of the time to be. Much depends on my estimate of 32 arrowheads per cubic inch. It certainly could be that my arrowheads are not representative and that Scythian arrowheads were generally larger (which would leave fewer of them per square inch and, therefore, would indicate a smaller Scythian population). I would invite anyone with access to such arrowheads to determine how much space they displace and to see if your figure(s) approximate mine.

Early population figures for Ukrainian territories are simply unknown. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine mentions that the population of Ukraine in 1629 A.D. was 5 to 6 million and in 1764-1774 was over 8 million. So, a comparable population two millennia earlier seems far fetched.

On the other hand, even though I am somewhat skeptical of my own result, it may have been possible that the rich Ukrainian lands did support a huge ancient population. Maybe one even larger than the figure I calculated. After all, Herodotus does write that the vessel "easily holds 600 amphoras of liquid." In addition, the cauldron almost certainly was not perfectly spherical and so would be much larger than what was calculated.

In another part of his Histories, Herodotus describes the different tribal groupings of the Scythians. Far from all being nomadic pastoralists, several of these were sedentary and agricultural: the Callipidae, the Alazones and the Aroteres among them. Populations of settled groups do tend to be considerably larger than those of nomadic herdsman.

So, in the end, it is up to the reader to decide what the population of ancient Scythia might have been. I invite feedback and may be reached at: ingert@starpower. net or at P.O. Box 3, Springfield VA 22150.

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