Female fire?

 

OK, so I couldn´t resist another ChatGPT essay. Just one more, bro, just one more! 

Can you tell me about the Scythian goddess Tabiti?

Tabiti is one of the most intriguing and least understood figures in Scythian religion, precisely because she sits at the intersection of Indo-Iranian tradition, steppe nomadism, and very archaic fire symbolism.

Our knowledge is limited, but what is known is unusually suggestive.

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1. The sources: what we actually know

The only explicit ancient source for Tabiti is Herodotus (5th century BCE), Histories IV.59.

He lists the Scythian gods and equates them (very roughly) with Greek ones:

• Tabiti → equated with Hestia

• Papaios → Zeus

• Api → Gaia

• etc.

Crucially:

Tabiti is named first, before all other gods.

Herodotus explicitly says she is the most honored deity of the Scythians.

That alone tells us a great deal.

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2. Tabiti as a fire goddess (but not a “hearth goddess” in the Greek sense)

Herodotus’ identification with Hestia has often misled people.

Similarity:

• Both associated with fire

• Both central, not anthropomorphic warriors or rulers

Difference:

Hestia = domestic, civic hearth
Tabiti = cosmic, sovereign fire

Among nomads:

• There is no permanent hearth

• Fire is portable, dangerous, sacred

• Fire binds clan, oath, kingship, and ritual

So Tabiti is not a cozy household goddess. She is closer to:

• Sacred fire itself

• Fire as order, truth, and continuity

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3. Indo-Iranian background: the deeper layer

Most scholars agree Tabiti is of Indo-Iranian origin, linguistically and conceptually.

Name

• Often linked to Iranian tap- / taf- roots:

  • “to burn”

  • “to heat”

• Possibly meaning something like:

  • “The Burning One”

  • “She who is aflame”

Conceptual parallels

Tabiti aligns well with:

• Vedic Agni (fire as divine mediator)

• Iranian Ātar (sacred fire, truth, kingship)

But with an important distinction:

Agni and Ātar are usually male; Tabiti is female.

This points to an older stratum of Indo-Iranian religion, where fire was not yet rigidly gendered.

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4. Tabiti and kingship

One of the most important (and often overlooked) aspects:

Tabiti is linked to royal legitimacy

Among the Scythians:

• The king’s authority was sacral

• Oaths were sworn by fire

• Sacred fire symbolized cosmic order

Tabiti likely functioned as:

• Guardian of oaths

• Source of royal charisma

• Axis between human society and cosmic law

In this sense she resembles:

• Asha/Ṛta (cosmic order)

• More than a “goddess” in the mythological sense

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5. Why she comes first in the pantheon

Herodotus’ ordering is extremely significant.

Tabiti is not:

• A sky god

• A warrior

• A fertility figure

She is foundational.

This suggests:

Fire is not one power among others; it is the condition that makes the rest possible.

In steppe terms:

• No fire → no life

• No fire → no ritual

• No fire → no polity

Tabiti is thus closer to a metaphysical principle than a personality.

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6. Gender and symbolism

Tabiti’s femininity is striking.

Possible interpretations:

• Fire as womb, transformation, continuity

• Fire as guardian rather than aggressor

• A pre-patriarchal layer preserved among nomads

She is not erotic, maternal, or martial.
She is untouchable, pure, dangerous.

That places her closer to:

• Vedic Arani (fire sticks, female principle)

• Later Iranian reverence for sacred flame

• Even Vestal concepts — but without urban domestication

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7. Why we know so little

Several reasons:

• Scythians were non-literate

• Their religion was ritual, not myth-heavy

• Greek observers misunderstood nomadic categories

• Later Iranian religions moved in different directions

What survived is the core, not the stories.

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8. One-paragraph synthesis

Tabiti was the supreme Scythian deity, a female embodiment of sacred fire and cosmic order, older than Olympian-style gods, central to kingship, oath, and ritual life. Rather than a hearth goddess, she represents fire as the living principle that sustains society and truth among nomadic peoples, preserving an archaic Indo-Iranian conception later eclipsed elsewhere.

If you want, we could next:

• Compare Tabiti with Vedic Agni and Iranian Ātar in detail

• Explore whether she reflects a Brahma-Kalpa–like archaic goddess stratum

• Or look at how Scythian religion differs fundamentally from Greek myth despite Greek labels

Debunked by ChatGPT

 

Wtf, ChatGPT debunks some of my favorite speculations about ancient Scandinavia, damn you, Sam Altman, damn you! 

Is there any evidence that Uppland was ruled by queens from Scythia during the so-called Vendel period?

There’s no credible archaeological or historical evidence that Uppland — or any other part of Sweden — was ruled by “queens from Scythia” during the Vendel Period (c. 550–790 CE). That idea belongs more to the realm of myth, speculative ethnography, and 19th–early 20th century romantic nationalism than to modern historical research.

Here’s why:

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1. Where the “Scythian queens” idea comes from

• Classical sources like Herodotus describe the Scythians (nomadic Iranian-speaking peoples in the Pontic steppe) and occasionally mention prominent women among related groups (e.g., Sarmatians, Amazons).

• In the early modern period, antiquarians tried to link Scandinavian legends to ancient world peoples. Olaus Rudbeck (17th century) famously identified Swedes as descendants of Atlanteans and Scythians.

• Some 19th-century historians interpreted saga references to powerful women — especially in Hervarar saga and Ynglingatal — as dim memories of steppe-born “Amazon” rulers.

• The Hervarar saga itself places part of its action in a semi-mythical “Reiðgotaland” and has connections between eastern warriors and the Svear, but this is saga-literary geography, not a reliable historical record.

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2. What archaeology says about the Vendel period

• Uppland in the Vendel Period is known for rich boat graves, weapon burials, and elite male warrior culture. The style of helmets, shields, and harness mounts shows contact with both the Byzantine world and the steppe (through trade routes along the Volga and Dnieper).

• Some burial finds — horse gear, decorated mounts, and certain weapon types — have stylistic parallels with steppe nomad art. This shows trade and cultural contact, not political rule by foreign queens.

• Women’s graves from the period are sometimes richly furnished, indicating high status, but there’s no evidence these women were foreign-born Scythians or held sole political power.

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3. Why the “queens” part is unlikely

• The political structures in Vendel-era Svealand appear to have been dominated by male war-leaders and kin-groups, with ceremonial kingship linked to cult sites like Old Uppsala.

• Elite women could have strong influence (as landholders, marriage alliance brokers, priestesses), but no contemporary or near-contemporary evidence points to a dynastic line of foreign female rulers.

• Even the most prominent saga queens — like Yrsa or Auðr the Deep-Minded — are embedded in a legendary chronology that mixes myth and historical kernels from many centuries apart.

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4. The kernel of truth

• Uppland elites did have contacts with eastern Europe and the steppe world during the Vendel period via trade routes (the “Eastern Way”).

• Exotic goods — silks, glassware, silver, horse equipment — sometimes came via steppe intermediaries.

• A few decorative motifs on weaponry and gear have clear Sassanian or steppe-nomad origins, probably copied locally after goods reached Scandinavia.

• It’s conceivable that some high-status women in Svealand had eastern ancestry through marriage alliances with merchant-warrior groups from the Baltic’s eastern shore, but that’s not the same as rule by “Scythian queens.”

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If you like, I can outline how certain burial finds in Vendel and Valsgärde have been misread as “Amazon” graves and why modern archaeologists interpret them differently. That’s where most of this legend picked up its pseudo-historical momentum.

Yes, please.

Alright — here’s where the “Amazon graves” idea in Vendel-period Uppland came from, and why modern archaeology doesn’t buy it.

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1. The burials that fed the legend

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Swedish archaeologists excavating Valsgärde, Vendel, and other sites in Uppland found:

• Boat graves with richly furnished male warrior burials.

• A smaller number of richly equipped female burials — sometimes with jewelry, imported glassware, high-quality horse gear, and occasionally a weapon.

• Some women were buried with horses or elaborate horse equipment, which is unusual for most of Scandinavia but does have parallels in Eurasian steppe cultures (where mounted female warriors appear in both archaeology and myth).

Early scholars (working under the influence of Herodotus and the Amazon legends) leapt to the idea:

“These must be Scythian or Sarmatian ‘Amazon queens’ who came to rule the Svear!”

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2. Why this was plausible to them at the time

• Steppe parallels: In the 19th century, a few female burials from the Pontic steppe were found with weapons, leading to the “real Amazons” hypothesis. When similar patterns (women + horses) were seen in Sweden, the connection was tempting.

• Saga echoes: Old Norse literature (e.g., Hervarar saga) speaks of warrior women (skjaldmær), sometimes tied to eastern lands. Linking them to archaeology felt natural to romantic nationalist historians.

• Diffusionism: The prevailing model assumed major cultural innovations came from outside — so rich or unusual graves were interpreted as proof of foreign elites.

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3. Modern reinterpretation of these graves

Contemporary archaeology looks at these finds differently:

a) Local elite women, not steppe rulers

• The rich female graves match local Scandinavian elite burial customs — the goods, although sometimes imported, are arranged in Scandinavian styles and are part of known local assemblages.

• Horse burials for women may signal status within an elite household tied to horse-breeding or ceremonial functions, not necessarily martial roles.

b) Trade, not conquest

• The steppe-style horse gear and decorative metalwork probably arrived via Baltic trade routes linking Uppland with Gotland, the eastern Baltic, and through the Rus’ river systems to the steppe.

• Imported objects do not automatically mean imported rulers — the elite were avid consumers of exotic prestige goods.

c) The “weapons = warrior” assumption is shaky

• In many cases where weapons are found in women’s graves, they may be symbolic or related to status rather than evidence of active combat.

• Burial practice is a cultural performance, not a literal record of a person’s life role.

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4. Why the “Amazon queen” idea persists in popular culture

• It’s a romantic, cinematic image: exotic warrior women riding into Uppland from the steppe.

• It neatly connects Scandinavian prehistory to the wider Eurasian drama.

• It blends saga heroines, Greek legends, and striking archaeology — irresistible for TV and novels.

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Bottom line:
Those “Amazon” burials from Vendel-period Uppland are almost certainly local high-status women buried according to Scandinavian traditions, with some imported goods from the east. The “queens from Scythia” hypothesis is a romantic 19th-century overlay, not supported by current archaeological interpretation.

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Could Odin be a euhemerized version of Attila the Hun?

That theory has actually been floated — especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries — but it’s on very shaky ground. Let’s break it down.

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1. Where the idea comes from

• Medieval sources: Snorri Sturluson (Prose Edda, Ynglinga saga) and the Old English poem Widsith present Odin not purely as a god, but also as a legendary ancestor-king who led the Æsir from somewhere in the east into Scandinavia. Snorri even suggests he came from “Asaland” or “Asia,” specifically around the Don River or Black Sea region.

• Medieval chroniclers (like Saxo Grammaticus) sometimes rationalized pagan gods as deified human leaders — this is the euhemerist approach.

• Since Attila the Hun († 453 CE) came from the Eurasian steppe, and Odin was imagined as an eastern conqueror, some antiquarians guessed they were the same person.

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2. Why people thought it might fit

• Chronology guesswork: If Odin had been a real steppe chieftain, his supposed migration to Scandinavia could (in imagination) align with the 5th century — right after Attila’s death.

• Steppe imagery in Norse myth: Odin’s horse (Sleipnir), his role as a war god, and some of his shamanic traits have vague parallels with Central Asian warrior and shaman traditions.

• Name parallels in migration myths: Medieval historians sometimes mapped known “barbarian kings” onto older mythic figures to make sense of them.

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3. Why modern historians reject it

• Time depth: Odin worship is attested in Scandinavia well before Attila — Roman sources from the 1st–2nd century (like Tacitus) already mention a god similar to Odin (Mercury in the interpretatio romana).

• Mythic complexity: Odin’s role as death-god, magic-worker, and culture-bringer is far too mythologically layered to originate from a single historical chieftain.

• Geographic mismatch: The “Asaland” of Snorri is mythic geography, not a literal memory of Hunnic Hungary.

• Linguistics: The name Óðinn (from Proto-Germanic Wōðanaz) has Indo-European etymology meaning “fury” or “inspiration,” unrelated to Attila’s name or title.

• Lack of cultural continuity: Huns left little trace in Scandinavia compared to the massive influence of earlier and later trade/migration waves.

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4. What’s more likely

• Snorri and others were using euhemerism to integrate pagan gods into Christian historiography. They chose “Asia” origins for Odin to make him fit biblical migration stories (everyone ultimately coming from the east after the Flood).

• The “Odin as eastern king” motif might preserve dim memories of some migration of elite warrior bands from the south or east — possibly Goths, Lombards, or other Germanic groups returning north — but not of Attila specifically.

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In short:
The “Odin = Attila the Hun” theory is more of a romantic antiquarian speculation than a serious historical proposition. Odin’s cult is far older, and his mythic profile doesn’t match Attila’s biography. The resemblance is a product of medieval euhemerism plus 19th-century fascination with linking all dramatic history to famous named figures.

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If you want, I can also walk you through the other “historical Odin” theories, including the one that ties him to a real migration leader in southern Denmark around the 4th century. Those have a bit more plausibility than the Attila idea.

Is there any evidence that Värend was the home of the Heruli?

There’s no hard archaeological proof that Värend (the southeastern inland part of modern Småland) was the home of the Heruli, but there is a longstanding historical speculation tying the two together — and it’s based almost entirely on medieval chroniclers and some suggestive (but not conclusive) patterns in place names and burial finds.

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1. The historical Heruli

• The Heruli (Heruli in Latin, Eruli in Greek) were a Germanic-speaking warrior people who appear in late Roman sources from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE.

• They roamed widely — fighting in the Balkans, raiding the Aegean, serving in Roman armies — and were sometimes based near the lower Danube.

• In the mid-6th century, Procopius (Wars, VI.15) famously reports that a remnant of the Heruli, after losing to the Lombards, “returned to the island of Thule” — meaning Scandinavia — to live among “their kinsmen.”

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2. Why Värend comes into the picture

• Olaus Rudbeck (17th century) and later Swedish antiquarians suggested that Procopius’s “Thule” meant southern Sweden, and that Värend (and perhaps Blekinge) was their ancestral homeland.

• Part of this comes from the phonetic similarity between Heruli and certain old place names in Småland (e.g., Härlöv, Härlunda, Häradsbäck). “Här” could be linked to Herul-, though it’s just as likely from Old Norse herr (“army”).

• The region has a concentration of large Iron Age burial mounds and weapon-rich graves, consistent with a militarized elite — but this is true of several parts of southern Sweden.

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3. The evidentiary problems

• There’s no direct inscription, runestone, or artifact in Värend that explicitly names the Heruli.

• Procopius is vague — “Thule” could mean anywhere in Scandinavia. Many have argued for Gotland, Öland, or southern Norway instead.

• Archaeology can’t distinguish “Heruli” graves from those of other Scandinavian elites of the period.

• The idea that the Heruli originated in Värend is mainly a 17th–19th century romantic-nationalist hypothesis; most modern historians treat it cautiously.

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4. Where scholarship stands now

• Mainstream view: The Heruli were a mobile warrior group whose exact homeland in Scandinavia is unknown.

• Värend is a possible return point after 550 CE, but not proven.

• The only solid link is the possibility of onomastic echoes and the general martial character of the archaeological finds in the region.

• Many experts lean toward the idea that the “return” was small in scale — perhaps a noble band rejoining related clans — rather than a large tribal migration.

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If you’d like, I can walk you through the step-by-step reasoning Procopius gives and compare each detail to archaeological finds in Värend, Gotland, and Öland to see which location best fits his account. That’s the method historians use to test the Värend-Heruli theory.

Is there any evidence that the Phoenicians visited Scandinavia during the Bronze Age?

There’s no direct, indisputable evidence that Phoenicians ever reached Scandinavia during the Bronze Age — but there is a mix of suggestive clues, speculative theories, and a few genuine archaeological puzzles that have kept the idea alive in fringe and semi-academic circles.

Here’s how the case is usually presented and why mainstream archaeology remains skeptical:

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1. Chronology problem

• The Phoenicians (centered in what’s now Lebanon) became a major seafaring and trading power around 1200 BCE and thrived until the 6th century BCE.

• The Nordic Bronze Age was roughly 1700–500 BCE, overlapping with the Phoenician period in its later centuries.

• So in theory, long-distance contact was possible in the later Bronze Age.

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2. The trade motive theory

• Bronze Age Scandinavia had no native copper or tin — both had to be imported.

• Phoenicians were expert long-range traders, sourcing tin from as far away as Cornwall.

• Some have speculated they could have extended their tin-seeking voyages farther north, perhaps reaching the amber-rich Baltic.

• Amber from the Baltic is found in Mediterranean Bronze Age contexts — but this doesn’t prove direct Phoenician voyages; amber could have moved through many intermediary traders.

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3. Archaeological hints (and why they’re debated)

• Bronze artifacts in Scandinavia sometimes show stylistic parallels to Mediterranean designs (spirals, sun motifs), but these could also be due to shared Indo-European cultural themes or indirect trade.

• A few rock carvings in Sweden and Norway depict ships with profiles that some claim resemble Mediterranean galleys — but most Scandinavian archaeologists see them as native designs.

• Metal composition studies sometimes show copper in Nordic Bronze Age artifacts with isotopic signatures matching Iberian or even Cypriot sources — again, this shows trade links but not necessarily Phoenician sailors in Nordic waters.

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4. The Carthaginian connection

• Later Phoenicians (especially Carthaginians) certainly reached the Atlantic coasts of Spain, Portugal, and possibly the British Isles.

• Ancient authors like Himilco (reported by later Roman sources) describe voyages far north, perhaps to Britain’s tin mines — but there’s no firm textual evidence of voyages beyond Britain.

• A few fringe writers link the Carthaginian voyages to mythical lands like Thule, which some place in Scandinavia, but this is highly speculative.

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5. Mainstream conclusion

• Yes: Baltic amber and southern copper moved between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age.

• Yes: Phoenicians were capable of such voyages and had trade interests that could, in theory, lead them north.

• No: There’s no solid archaeological or textual proof they personally sailed into Scandinavian waters. The more plausible scenario is a trade relay system through continental and Atlantic intermediaries.

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If you want, I can give you a map reconstruction of possible Bronze Age trade networks showing how amber could have moved from Jutland and southern Sweden all the way to Tyre and Sidon without a Phoenician ship ever touching the Skagerrak. That’s where most scholarly models land today.

Was the Phoenician hypothesis a scholarly consensus about 30 years ago?

No, it never was a true scholarly consensus. Even 30–40 years ago, mainstream archaeologists treated the idea that Phoenicians directly visited Scandinavia as speculative or fringe.

Here’s a brief context:

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1. Early 20th-century interest

• Some scholars in the early 1900s were fascinated by possible Mediterranean influences on northern Europe.

• Researchers sometimes suggested “Phoenician voyages to Scandinavia” to explain certain Bronze Age artifacts or amber trade, but these were mostly hypotheses, not widely accepted conclusions.

2. Mid-to-late 20th century

• By the 1970s–1990s, Scandinavian archaeology had strong empirical bases from local material culture, rock art, burial practices, and isotope studies.

• The focus shifted to regional developments and long-distance trade networks, showing that Mediterranean goods reached the north via intermediaries (Germanic and Central European traders) rather than direct Phoenician contact.

• Textual sources on Phoenician voyages were treated cautiously because they were often much later and sometimes mythologized.

3. Current view

• The “Phoenicians in Scandinavia” idea is now considered highly unlikely, bordering on pseudohistory, though some popular books and fringe writers still promote it.

• Most archaeologists accept Phoenician amber trade via relay networks, not personal navigation into the Baltic.

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So, 30 years ago, the hypothesis existed in publications, but it was never mainstream or consensus. It was more a curiosity at the edge of Bronze Age studies.

If you want, I can list some of the main scholars who argued for and against it in the 1970s–1990s to see exactly how it was debated. Do you want me to do that?

Yes, please.

While the idea that Phoenicians directly visited Scandinavia during the Bronze Age was never a scholarly consensus, it did gain some traction in certain circles during the 20th century. This hypothesis was largely based on interpretations of archaeological finds, such as Mediterranean-style artifacts and the presence of Baltic amber in Mediterranean graves. However, these theories were often speculative and lacked direct evidence.

By the late 20th century, with advancements in archaeological methods and a more nuanced understanding of trade networks, the mainstream scholarly community moved away from the notion of direct Phoenician contact with Scandinavia. Instead, researchers emphasized the role of intermediary trade routes and local developments in the Nordic Bronze Age.

Today, the idea of direct Phoenician voyages to Scandinavia is largely considered a fringe theory, with most scholars focusing on more substantiated models of trade and cultural exchange.

Draft our Aryan daughters

 

This is getting better and better. This ancient Aryan matriarchy of Conan-like female warriors was more based than I expected!  

Ancient Scythians used human skin for leather, confirming Herodotus´ grisly claims

Told you so

 

Sicilian history nerd "The Metatron" discusses whether or not female warriors existed in ancient times, based on ancient sources and archeology. He reaches the conclusion that most such warriors were mythological, fought under extraordinary conditions, or weren´t really warriors but female rulers (not the same thing). 

However, one ethnic group does stand out: Scythians and their subgroup the Sarmatians. *They* had female warriors. This is confimed by both written sources and archeological digs, so it´s a settled question. Especially significant is the female "Roman" soldier found in Britain, probably a Sarmatian. It´s *very* unlikely that she was buried as a soldier for purely symbolic reasons, if he she was just the in-keeper...

No surprise there.

The Metatron ends by pointing out that there were also female warriors in Africa, but says very little about this. Maybe next time?  

Geopolitical apocalypse

 

Imagine a Bronze Age document from circa 2014 BC, saying something like this: "The Great Peninsula at the Sea of Jason will be attacked by an evil empire. The Argonauts of the West will aid the Scythians. Know that I AM Zeus, Your Lord and Savior".

Would we take this to be an authentic supernatural prophecy about the Crimean crisis of 2014 AD and the subsequent war between Russia and Ukraine? Of course not. The Bronze Age author is simply describing his own time. People have been fighting over Crimea since time immemorial. The reason is geography, not prophecy. 

Now, apply the above insight to Biblical prophecy and Mideast geopolitics.    

Empires of the Silk Road

“Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present” is a grossly mistitled volume by Christopher Beckwith. I say that with a smile, since Beckwith happens to be my favorite distracted professor. This 471-page tome could best be described as a long compilation of topics, some connected to Central Eurasian history, which the author feels need further scholarly attention, since most research published so far have been found wanting, at least on the author´s revisionist scales. I un-ironically sympathize with the agenda! Of course, I can´t vouch for Beckwith´s particular reinterpretations, except to say that they are interesting. So is “Greek Buddha”, another work by the same writer which I review elsewhere on this site.

The term Central Eurasia refers to the vast steppe regions spanning from East Europe to northern China. In ancient and medieval times, this was the home to a bewildering maze of “barbarian” peoples rightly or wrongly associated with nomadism, pastoralism and mounted warriors: Proto-Indo-Europeans, Scythians, Huns, Turks, Mongols, Tatars and many others. The author could be described as “pro-barbarian” or “pro-Central Eurasian”. He often refers to the settled high cultures and empires of Europe and Asia as “peripheral”. He doesn´t deny that the steppe peoples were frequently brutal, but so were the “peripheral” empires, so on *that* score there is little difference between them. On a micro-level, ordinary people living in the “great” empires sometimes tried to abscond to the “barbarians”, suggesting that they felt freer among them. To Beckwith, the Central Eurasians were not parasitical nomads who plundered big cities or forced empires to pay huge tributes. All powerful nomadic peoples controlled “empires” of their own, which always included agricultural land and towns alongside the vast steppes. Their primary non-pastoral activity was not plunder, but trade. The nomads controlled the so-called Silk Road, really a vast and ancient trading network connecting China, India and Europe. As long as the steppe peoples were strong, trade was relatively easy and secure. Not only did the nomads promote trade among the empires, they were also keenly interested in luxury products themselves. One example: the Scythians traded in silk, with the Greeks paying them in gold, the same gold used for the exquisite Scythian handicraft later found by archeologists. The fact that the nomads only destroyed cities which resisted them (standard practice among the “peripheral” empires, too) shows that they didn´t “hate cities” á la Pol Pot, but preferred to integrate them into their spheres of influence as hubs for commerce and taxation. The awful tributes supposedly paid by the Byzantine Empire to the Huns and other steppe marauders only constituted a tiny percentage of the total Byzantine budget.

Beckwith believes that many steppe peoples shared something he calls the Central Eurasian Culture Complex. Its origins are probably proto-Indo-European. An important part of this culture complex is the comitatus, a tightly knit band of male warriors sworn to defend the ruler to the death. The ruler and the members of the comitatus were not blood relations, nor were the members of the war-band usually related to each other. If the ruler died or was killed before the comitatus, its members usually commited suicide or were ritually executed! Why would anyone risk such a fate by binding himself to a non-blood-relative? The answer is that the ruler was expected to bestow fabulous riches on the members of the band, including gold, jewels and silk. While plunder was an obvious way of getting such things, a more important one was trade. Thus, the mercantile orientation of the steppe peoples was in large part a function of their peculiar culture, and this also explains the importance of trade in luxury products. (Later, the comitatus system spread to the Muslim world through Central Asia and Persia. The Mamluks and the Ottomans had distinct versions of the system.)

Beckwith regards the Celtic and Germanic peoples of Iron Age Europe as part of the same Central Eurasian Culture Complex as the nomads further east. He is critical of the usual theories about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The “barbarians” weren´t responsible. Rather, internal problems in the Roman Empire made it less interested in trading with the “barbarian” peoples. This forced the “barbarians” to move ever closer to the metropolitan areas of the Empire in order to safeguard their trading rights. This, then, are the so-called “barbarian invasions” much maligned by historians ever since.

Being a trained linguist, the author has appended a chapter on the Indo-European language family. Here, too, the tendency is revisionist. Beckwith believes that the remarkable similarity between Avestan and Sanskrit is no mystery: Avestan *is* an Iranicized form of Sanskrit, rather than the ancestral Indo-Iranian language. The oldest preserved copies of the Avesta, the sacred scripture of the Zoroastrian religion, are from the 13^th century AD. Old Persian inscriptions are known from the 5^th or 6^th centuries BC, and are very different from the Avestan language. Also, the Zoroastrian belief system as recorded in the Avesta isn´t attested from such early times. So why is Avestan regarded as an extremely ancient language at all? Everyone seems to agree that Avestan is weird compared to other members of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Also, the original Vedic scriptures aren´t really attested before 1000 AD, and Beckwith believes that it´s “romantic” to date them from thousands of years earlier. Presumably, this has consequences for how to look upon Sanskrit and its place in the Indo-European language family tree. He doesn´t say, but the implication seems to be that Sanskrit could be from a later period than the Prakrits! Beckwith also argues that the Indo-European languages simply couldn´t have developed by a “glacially slow process” over many millennia. Rather, they must be the result of rapid changes due to creolization between the language spoken by the Indo-European invaders and the that of the natives. Needless to say, the author doesn´t believe it´s possible to *really* reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European language!

In several chapters, Beckwith attacks the modern world, including democracy (really the rule of a new modern elite), secularism, Communism, postmodern discourse, modern art and modern music. In a very curious footnote, he briefly discusses Frank Zappa´s music. This in a book supposedly about Central Eurasian steppe empires! The author sounds “traditionalist”, but it´s a traditionalism with several twists. His ideal isn´t the landed aristocrat nor the lofty philosopher, but rather the dynamic merchant, including merchants who trade in pure luxuries. He is both generally pro-Central Eurasian and specifically pro-Germanic, viewing the Early Middle Ages less as a Dark Age than as an age when Europe was dominated by a dynamic mixed Germano-Roman culture connected with the steppe empires. He also seem to regard the European colonialists, including the early exploits of the Portuguese, as somehow connected to the general dynamism of the Germanic peoples. Beckwith says very little about the only Indo-European people known to have many female warriors: the Sarmatians. Yet, unless I misunderstood him completely, he also suggests that patriarchy and warfare are ultimately bad things!

If "Empires of the Silk Road" has a central point, it is that historians should stop underestimating how all of Eurasia was connected through an overland route since ancient times, thanks to the "barbarians", and how this positively affected cultural diffusion and economic growth. 

I could probably continue this review indefinitely, but for reasons of space (mine being less expansive than the pusztas of Central Eurasia), I simply stop it right here!