Civ: Scythians

[Lion.Kanzen]

  On 13/03/2016 at 2:08 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What doo you think about instead of making separate female soldier units I just make male and female variation in each actor?

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That source have good points. And Amazon tribal Civ. have enough years older than but the question here is Scythians were patriarchal or not? Or were the Sarmatians?.

 

returning to your question. No. I see plenty of art work the rol are same. And may be is the Greek influence that try to separate the female from the war. But the villager need be both genres. May be elite needs be separated but not highly 30% vs 60%

may be someone else asking my own question that or may be myself do it that.

 

Edited March 13, 2016 by Lion.Kanzen
Typo editing

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ok

this is because is said 30 vs 60. I need found more evidence.

is a female warrior, see the chest. if was a equality society by genre. the image have sense.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I and we go...

Editing1 this an interview to a Folklorist/Independent historian of science.

 

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Amazon Warriors Did Indeed Fight and Die Like Men.

An 1882 print shows an Amazon, perhaps Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, about to spear a panther.

Next article I Found in Natgeo I have the same view as before. I put the Strong and Controversy text under Spoiler.

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The Amazons got a bum rap in antiquity. They wore trousers. They smoked pot, covered their skin with tattoos, rode horses, and fought as hard as the guys. Legends sprang up like weeds. They cut off their breasts to fire their bows better! They mutilated or killed their boy children! Modern (mostly male) scholars continued the confabulations.

 

Drawing on a wealth of textual, artistic, and archaeological evidence, Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons, dispels these myths and takes us inside the truly wild and wonderful world of these ancient warrior women.

Talking from her home in Palo Alto, California, she explains what Johnny Depp has in common with Amazons, why the Amazon spirit is breaking out all over pop culture, and who invented trousers.

We associate the word Amazon with digital book sales these days. Tell us about the real Amazons.

 

The real Amazons were long believed to be purely imaginary. They were the mythical warrior women who were the archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Every Greek hero or champion, from Hercules to Theseus and Achilles, had to prove his mettle by fighting a powerful warrior queen.

 

We know their names: Hippolyta, Antiope, Thessalia. But they were long thought to be just travelers' tales or products of the Greek storytelling imagination. A lot of scholars still argue that. But archaeology has now proven without a doubt that there really were women fitting the description that the Greeks gave us of Amazons and warrior women.

 

The Amazons got a bum rap in antiquity. They wore trousers. They smoked pot, covered their skin with tattoos, rode horses, and fought as hard as the guys. Legends sprang up like weeds. They cut off their breasts to fire their bows better! They mutilated or killed their boy children! Modern (mostly male) scholars continued the confabulations. The Amazons were hard-core feminists. Man haters. Delinquent mothers. Lesbians.

 

Drawing on a wealth of textual, artistic, and archaeological evidence, Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons, dispels these myths and takes us inside the truly wild and wonderful world of these ancient warrior women.

Talking from her home in Palo Alto, California, she explains what Johnny Depp has in common with Amazons, why the Amazon spirit is breaking out all over pop culture, and who invented trousers.

We associate the word Amazon with digital book sales these days. Tell us about the real Amazons.

 

The Greeks located them in the areas north and east of the Mediterranean on the vast steppes of Eurasia. Archaeologists have been digging up thousands of graves of people called Scythians by the Greeks. They turn out to be people whose women fought, hunted, rode horses, used bows and arrows, just like the men.

hey've been excavating Scythian kurgans, which are the burial mounds of these nomadic peoples. They all had horse-centred lifestyles, ranging across vast distances from the Black Sea all the way to Mongolia. They lived in small tribes, so it makes sense that everyone in the tribe is a stakeholder. They all have to contribute to defense and to war efforts and hunting. They all have to be able to defend themselves.

The great equalizer for those peoples was the domestication of horses and the invention of horse riding, followed by the perfection of the Scythian bow, which is smaller and very powerful. If you think about it, a woman on a horse with a bow, trained since childhood, can be just as fast and as deadly as a boy or man.

 

rchaeologists have found skeletons buried with bows and arrows and quivers and spears and horses. At first they assumed that anyone buried with weapons in that region must have been a male warrior. But with the advent of DNA testing and other bioarchaeological scientific analysis, they've found that about one-third of all Scythian women are buried with weapons and have war injuries just like the men. The women were also buried with knives and daggers and tools. So burial with masculine-seeming grave goods is no longer taken as an indicator of a male warrior. It's overwhelming proof that there were women answering to the description of the ancient Amazons.

 

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It's the one thing everyone seems to think they know about Amazons: that the name has something to do with only having one breast so they could easily fire an arrow or hurl a spear. But anyone who's watched The Hunger Games, or female archers, knows that that is an absolutely physiologically ridiculous idea. Indeed, no ancient Greek artworks—and there are thousands—show a woman with one breast.

 

All modern scholars point out that the plural noun "Amazones" was not originally a Greek word—and has nothing to do with breasts. The notion that "Amazon" meant "without breast" was invented by the Greek historian Hellanikos in the fifth century B.C.

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He tried to force a Greek meaning on the foreign loan word: a for "lack" and "mazon," which sounded a bit like the Greek word for breast. His idea was rejected by other historians of his own day, and no ancient artist bought the story. But it stuck like superglue. Two early reviews of my book even claimed I accept that false etymology. Linguists today suggest that the name derives from ancient Iranian or Caucasian roots.(As we seed in my other posts. so we have another match).

this part have some sexually aspect...

but give an idea about the relation between Scythians and Thracians.

 

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You describe them as "aggressive, independent man-killers." Were Amazons also lesbians?

That is one of the ideas that have arisen in modern times. Nobody in antiquity ever suggested that. We know that the ancient Greeks and Romans were not shy about discussing homosexuality among men or women. So if that idea had been current in antiquity, someone would have mentioned it.The one interesting artistic bit of evidence that I did find is a vase that shows a Thracian huntress giving a love gift to the Queen of the Amazons, Penthesilea. That's a strong indication that at least someone thought of the idea of a love affair between Amazons. But just because we don't have any written evidence and only that one unique vase doesn't preclude that Amazons might have had relations with each other. It's just that it has nothing to do with the ancient idea of Amazons.

 

 

I talked to a vase expert whose specialty is gestures on Greek vases. He has written an article about gestures begging for mercy in single combat images. Quite a few of the losers in duels are shown gesturing for mercy. But among Amazons, not so much. We have about 1,300 or so images of Amazons fighting. And only about two or three of them are gesturing for mercy. So they're shown to be extremely courageous and heroic. And I think that's the Amazon spirit.

Amazons smoked pot and drank a powerful concoction of fermented mare's milk called kumis, which they used in rituals. Put us around a campfire in ancient Scythia.

In that picture of the ancient Amazons sitting around their campfire we also have to include men. We don't have any evidence that there were whole societies with nothing but women. When we say Amazons, we mean Scythian women. In this case Scythian warrior women

Herodotus gives us a very good picture. He says that they gathered a flower or leaves or seeds—he wasn't absolutely sure—and sat around a campfire and threw these plants onto the fire. They became intoxicated from the smoke and then would get up and dance and shout and yell with joy. It's pretty certain he was talking about hemp, because he actually does call it cannabis. He just wasn't certain whether it was the leaves or the flower or the bud. But we know they used intoxicants. Archaeologists are finding proof of this in the graves. Every Scythian man and woman was buried with a hemp-smoking kit, including a little charcoal brazier.

 

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Herodotus also described a technique in which they would build a sauna-type arrangement of felt tents, probably in wintertime on the steppes. He describes it as like a tepee with a felt or leather canopy. They would take the hemp-smoking equipment inside the tent and get high. They've found the makings of those tents in many Scythian graves. They've also found the remains of kumis, the fermented mare's milk. I give a recipe in the book for a freezing technique they used to raise its potency. [Laughs.] Do not try this at home.

 

 

 

 

They were also very big on tattoos, weren't they?

There are a lot of tattoos—beautifully, lovingly detailed tattoos in images of Thracian and Scythian women on vase paintings. Ancient Greek historians described the tattooing practices of the culturally related tribes of Eurasia.

 

According to one account, Scythian women taught the Thracian women how to tattoo. The Greeks had lots of slaves from the Black Sea area, and they were all tattooed. They thought of tattoos as a sort of punishment. Who would voluntarily mark their bodies? Yet once again they had this push-pull attraction and anxiety about these foreign cultures.

We also now have archaeological evidence that Amazon-like women were tattooed. (the warriors were tattooed) Tattoo kits been discovered in ancient Scythian burials. The frozen bodies of several heavily tattooed Scythian men and women have been recovered from graves. The famous Ice Princess is just one example—her tattoos of deer call to mind the tattoos depicted in Greek vase paintings.

some misc appreciations

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Johnny Depp said, My skin is my journal, and the tattoos are the stories. I think that's a good way to think of this. They could have been initiations, they could be just for decoration, they could represent special experiences, either in reality or dreams. We don't really know. All we know is that they were heavily tattooed, mostly with real and fantastical animals and geometric designs.(like Germanic and Celt patterns)

question I have been dying to ask: Who invented trousers?

The Greeks credited three different warrior women with the invention of trousers. Medea, a mythical sorceress and princess from the Caucasus region, was credited with inventing the outfit that was taken up by Scythians and Persians. The other two were Queen Semiramis, a legendary Assyrian figure, and Queen Rhodogune, which means "woman in red." The Greeks were not that far off. Trousers were invented by the people who first rode horses—and those were people from the steppes.

Leg coverings are absolutely essential if you're going to spend your life on horseback. Trousers are also the first tailored garments. They were pieced together and sewn. The Greeks wore rectangles of cloth held together with pins. They thought trousers were an abomination worn by the barbarians. But once again, they're fascinated by them.(The Romans adopted this, even with their own prejudices).

In the vase paintings the Amazons have wildly spotted and striped and checked leggings and trousers. One of the things I find most interesting is that it was not just the men who rejected trousers. Greek women didn't wear them either. Yet we find images of beautiful Amazons in trousers on women's perfume jars and jewelry boxes. I think there's something going on in Greek private life that we don't really know about yet.(Another joke hahaha)

There was even an Amazon island, wasn't there?

Yes. It's the only island off the southern coast of the Black Sea. It's now called Giresun Island. But it was first written about in Apollonius of Rhodes's version of the epic poem The Argonauts. As Jason and the Argonauts are sailing east on the Black Sea, they stop at what they call Island of Ares or Amazon Island. There they see the ruins of a temple and an altar, where they claim the Amazons sacrificed horses and worshipped before they went to war.

This is really interesting, because it means the Greeks were finding ruins associated with Amazons as far back as the Bronze Age. It shows how real the Amazons were to them. Recently, Turkish archaeologists found the altar and temple ruins that are mentioned in Jason and the Argonauts.

They got a bad press in the ancient world, didn't they? There were rumors that they maimed and even castrated young boys. Separate the fiction from the fact.

The idea that Amazons abandoned, maimed, or killed young boys is a fairly early story that circulated among the Greeks, because several writers assumed that Amazon societies must be women only.

That then raised the question: How do they reproduce? They came up with these stories of women agreeing to meet with neighboring tribes to reproduce. But then what did they do with the boys? So there were stories that they either maimed them so that they couldn't participate in warfare or that they actually killed them to get rid of them and only kept the girls.

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The most common story was that they sent the boys back to the fathers to be raised. Many modern scholars interpreted this as proof that they abandoned their duties as mothers. They don't take care of their babies! They give them away! Blah, blah, blah.

 

But it turns out that it was a very common custom among nomadic people, called fosterage. Sending sons to be raised by another tribe ensures that you're going to have good relations with that tribe. It's a way of sealing treaties. It was very common in antiquity.

Philip the Great was raised by an ally of his father. It was also common in the Middle Ages in Europe. It's also a way of ensuring you don't have incest within the tribe. The fact that the Scythian and Thracian tribes probably practiced fosterage led to these stories that the Amazons gave their sons to the father's tribe. That's probably a reality. But there is no archaeological evidence that they maimed boys.

Tell us about modern-day Amazons.)more misc considerations.

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Today's news from the Middle East and Syria is filled with images of Kurdish Peshmerga women fighting IS. There are movies and TV series featuring bold warrior women and even Amazons. It started with Xena: Warrior Princess, and then there were the animated films Brave and Mulan and The Hunger Games and the role of Atalanta in the Hercules film. The new Vikings TV show has all the shield maidens. And of course there are strong women in A Game of Thrones. So everyone's really aware of the idea of warrior women.

 

It's sort of fair to say that Amazons, both as reality and as a dream of equality, have always been with us. It's just that sometimes that fiery Amazon spirit is hidden from view or even suppressed. Right now they're blazing back into popular culture.

 

Source.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141029-amazons-scythians-hunger-games-herodotus-ice-princess-tattoo-cannabis/

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Edited March 13, 2016 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

how looks the  Ice Maiden?

 

The Ice Maiden died at the age of 25 from breast cancer, though initial research found evidence she suffered a fall from a horse. She was buried with six horses, all saddled and bridled, to signify her high status. She was covered in tattoos, many of which appear to be images of horses wearing the stag headdress. Her head was shaved and she was found wearing a wig made from horse hair.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think language can be used Ossetian.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ossetian_language

 

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From deep Antiquity (since the 7th–8th centuries BC), the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran(Persia), Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians,Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, Alans and Roxolans. The more easterlyKhorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms.

Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizable community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans, medieval tribes emerging from the earlier Sarmatians. It is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language.

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What do other think?

[Lion.Kanzen]

Its fine for me. We can mix   the name with greek if we can't  found an accurate name.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Future ideas from civilizations 

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/scythians-civ-vi-reveal/

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

Weapons and other Unit Props

 

Unit Types: All

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Edited December 29, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

  On 10/08/2016 at 5:08 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

She can be hero. But wow, is this the AOEO version of Civ? lol

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yes

she fought with Cyrus the great

 

 

 

 

Tomyris (/ˈtoʊmᵻrɪs/; from Eastern Iranian: تهم‌رییش Tahm-Rayiš). also called Thomyris, Tomris, Tomiride, or Queen Tomiri, was a Massagetean ruler who reigned over the Massagetae, a Scythian pastoral-nomadic confederation of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, in parts of modern-day Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, western Uzbekistan, and southern Kazakhstan. Tomyris led her armies to defend against an attack by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, and defeated and killed him in 530 BC (although this is debatable since Herodotus mentions that this was only one of many stories relating Cyrus the Great's death).

Tomyris is mentioned by several ancient writers, among whom the first is Herodotus. She is also mentioned by Strabo, Polyaenus, Cassiodorus, and Jordanes.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 Buildings and Wagons (and building props)

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Ovoo "Cult Statue" structure:

 

Wonder Construction:

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

another Hero...

Strabo (c. 63 BC – AD 24) reports that King Ateas united under his power the Scythian tribes living between the Maeotian marshes and the Danube. His westward expansion brought him into conflict with Philip II of Macedon (reigned 359 to 336 BC), who took military action against the Scythians in 339 BC. Ateas died in battle, and his empire disintegrated. In the aftermath of this defeat, the Celts seem to have displaced the Scythians from the Balkans; while in south Russia, a kindred tribe, the Sarmatians, gradually overwhelmed them. In 329 BC Philip's son, Alexander the Great, came into conflict with the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes.

[Lion.Kanzen]

the horse look...

[Lion.Kanzen]

very early...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartatua

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishpaka

less early

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilurus

and the last Scythian king

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacus

Palacus was the last Scythian king whose name is attested in classical sources.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I have an idea for many times, and is training (like zerling in SC2) two units instead of one.you got  2 ones at price of one.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

Scythian king Skilurus, relief from Scythian Neapolis, Crimea, 2nd century BC

this is the best option to be the 3th hero.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

  On 10/08/2016 at 6:06 AM, Lion.Kanzen said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I have an idea for many times, and is training (like zerling in SC2) two units instead of one.you got  2 ones at price of one.

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Hmm, not sure about this. Maube something like this for Persians instead? I don't think Scythian was known for large armies.

[Lion.Kanzen]

  On 11/08/2016 at 6:19 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Hmm, not sure about this. Maube something like this for Persians instead? I don't think Scythian was known for large armies.

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But famous for raids with cavalry archer. Early rush.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 Scythian Tattoos

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Edited December 29, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

Do you need a model for it ?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

  On 28/08/2016 at 10:12 AM, stanislas69 said:

Do you need a model for it ?

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If you would like to make one that would be neat.

 

Maybe something like this, but with one entrance and only 2 stories high instead of 3.

 

Edited August 28, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Okay, my new thoughts about the Scythians.

I think that large buildings like Civic Center, Market, etc. can "upgrade" to a Large Cart. And then this Large Cart can upgrade back to any Large class building (Civic Center, Temple, Market). There can be a Small Cart that can change to any Small class building and back again. So what this does is illiminate the need to remember what cart is which and the need to make a unique cart model for each building. You just have 2 classes of cart, Large and Small, and each can upgrade to any building in their class. Thoughts?

Edited September 9, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[av93]

  On 09/09/2016 at 6:06 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Okay, my new thoughts about the Scythians.

I think that large buildings like Civic Center, Market, etc. can "upgrade" to a Large Cart. And then this Large Cart can upgrade back to any Large class building (Civic Center, Temple, Market). There can be a Small Cart that can change to any Small class building and back again. So what this does is illiminate the need to remember what cart is which and the need to make a unique cart model for each building. You just have 2 classes of cart, Large and Small, and each can upgrade to any building in their class. Thoughts?

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Then you should take care of exploits. Why I should build a CC when I can make a market if it costs and the build time are the halve, and then unpack and pack as a CC?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

  On 09/09/2016 at 9:26 PM, av93 said:

Then you should take care of exploits. Why I should build a CC when I can make a market if it costs and the build time are the halve, and then unpack and pack as a CC?

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You do not build a CC or a Market. You train more carts. It is the upgrading that cost the resources.

Edited September 10, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[av93]

  On 10/09/2016 at 4:40 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You do not build a CC or a Market. You train more carts. It is the upgrading that cost the resources.

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Sorry, I was talking when packing again (if you have to pay another time to unpack there's no problem)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

  On 10/09/2016 at 5:33 PM, av93 said:

Sorry, I was talking when packing again (if you have to pay another time to unpack there's no problem)

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I am making this up as I go. But yes guy, I think once the building is packed then any "memory" of what it once was is forgot. So, to go back to CC or Market, takes time and resources. The key I think would be to make moving buildings around a key element of gameplay of Scythians (and other nomadic civs). I am not sure yet how to go about this but I am committed to experimenting and trying to make it so, as Picard would say.