Skifi - Scythian Plateau

About a ten minute walk from my home is a plateau where the Skifi or Scythians used to live. The Scythians were a large group of people who lived in Russia, and also further south around the Black and Caspian Seas. By 600 BCE they were already well established, and took over some of the land to their south (modern Turkey) for awhile. The Medes pushed the Scythians back to the Black Sea, and after the establishment of the Persian Empire the Persian king Darius (the son of Queen Esther,) battled the Scythians in the Black Sea area. The Persians lost, and the Scythians kept on living there. They remained identifiable as a group until around 200 CE, when another group, the Sarmatians, overran them and took over their territory. Descendants of the Scythians and the Sarmatians still live in that area today. The Scythians made beautiful objects from gold, which were on display in the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago.

We got to the plateau, and noticed a lot of little indentations, and one massive one. Aharon, a boy who lives with us, said that he learned in school that a meteor had fallen there.

Then we went on and on till we got to the ruins of the old Scythian castle. Supposedly the part we see is only a little bit of it, and most of it is underground. We saw the tops of walls near the remaining part. It has been used by homeless people, and it looks like a door was added to keep them out, but the door itself was taken! That’s life in the Former Soviet Union!