Food

Food among Scythian-era communities of the first millennium BCE came from both herds and cultivated crops. The balance differed across the northern Black Sea region: mobile pastoralists relied heavily on animals, while settled and semi-settled communities also farmed. The term “Scythian” is used here chiefly for the Pontic steppe, not as a label for every steppe people. Eastern Saka communities and the Pazyryk culture of the Altai developed within other regional environments.

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Herds, meat, and dairy

For pastoral groups, horses, cattle, and sheep supplied meat and other useful products. Horses were not only mounts: their meat was also eaten. Mare’s milk was consumed and made into cheese and a fermented drink described as similar to kumis, a drink associated with later Eurasian steppe pastoralists. These foods made herds a source of more than meat, and linked everyday nourishment to the management of livestock.

Herding followed the seasons. Accounts describe Pontic pastoralists moving toward the shores of the Maeotian Sea in winter and returning to the steppe in summer. Animals reportedly foraged beneath the snow in winter rather than being fed stored fodder. This seasonal grazing pattern shaped the supply of animal foods.

Pastoral products did not make every community’s diet identical. People also hunted wild animals and fished in the large rivers of the Pontic region, with the contribution of these foods varying by place. Fishing and hunting supplemented herding in those settings.

Grain and farming in the Pontic region

Farming was an important part of life in some Pontic regions, especially around settlements in the forest-steppe and fertile river valleys. Communities in the Borysthenes valley cultivated wheat, millet, and barley. These crops supplemented animal products and supported populations who lived in settlements rather than relying solely on mobile herding.

Settlements such as Bilsk kept grain in pits and other storage structures. Stored grain could be ground into meal or flour, while whole or broken grains could be boiled until soft. A pot or cauldron held the water and grain over a fire, turning a dry harvest into a filling cooked food. Keeping supplies dry and retaining grain between harvests were essential to making crops useful throughout the year.

Food production also involved social and economic relationships. In the fifth century BCE, settled communities in the forest-steppe produced grain that Scythian elites obtained as tribute and moved by river to Greek trading towns. In other settings, farmers and pastoralists lived alongside one another and participated in exchange. Large estates controlled by elites could use enslaved people and members of subordinate communities to cultivate land and tend animals, while free farmers and other producers also contributed to local supplies. Grain moving through trade was therefore not simply a household crop: it could also generate wealth and influence for rulers and intermediaries.

A 2021 study examined diet through teeth and bones from Bilsk, Medvin and Mamai-Gora in present-day Ukraine. Millet leaves a carbon pattern different from wheat and barley, and traces of that pattern pass into a consumer’s tissues. The results suggest greater millet consumption among some people at Bilsk and Medvin and less at Mamai-Gora, where fish may have contributed more. Farming and herding therefore supplied different combinations of food at these sites.

Cooking and drinks

Bronze cauldrons are part of the archaeological record of early Scythian communities, and accounts describe cooking in cauldrons over fires. Dried animal dung served as fuel. These details help explain how people could heat food in regions where fuel and household arrangements differed from those of settled farming populations. A cauldron could heat meat or grain in water and serve a group from one vessel.

Wine was another part of Pontic food and drink, but it arrived through trade with Greek communities around the Black Sea and Aegean. Greek writers describe Scythian drinking as taking wine undiluted, contrasting it with their own custom of adding water. In the earlier phase of the Pontic kingdom, wine drinking was chiefly associated with the aristocracy; after the fifth century BCE, it also spread among wealthier people beyond the elite. Its consumption thus reflected both access to imported goods and changes in social practice.

Regional differences and later change

Eastern Saka settlements provide their own evidence for plant foods. Excavations at Akbauyr in East Kazakhstan produced quern-stones for grinding grain and hoes for preparing soil. At Tuzusai in southeastern Kazakhstan, evidence includes millet, barley and wheat. These finds connect cultivation to the tools used to process food, alongside the region’s livestock economy.

Foodways also changed over time within the Pontic region. After the Scythian kingdom declined, communities in Crimea and near the lower Dnipro became increasingly settled. By the first century BCE, Scythians in the Tauric Chersonese are described as settled farmers, while also keeping livestock. Their circumstances differed from those of earlier mobile pastoralists.

For the wider setting, see Scythian daily life.