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The Scythians were nomadic horse archers who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 7th to 3rd centuries BCE. They were famous for mounted warfare, gold art, and burial mounds called kurgans. They controlled trade between Greece and the steppe.
Persia failed to conquer them, and they later faced Sarmatian pressure. Their power faded, but their culture influenced later steppe peoples. Greek writers left vivid, sometimes exaggerated, accounts of them.