Live from the British Museum: The Scythians
Historical Tours
•
44m
2,500 years ago groups of formidable warriors roamed the vast open plains of Siberia. Ferocious nomads, they roamed from Southern Russia down into Iran – a whole region that makes up the middle portion of the Silk Roads. Feared, loathed, admired – but over time forgotten… until now. A new major exhibition at the British Museum, which has garnered 5 star reviews across the board, explores the story of the Scythians: nomadic tribes and masters of mounted warfare who flourished between 900 and 200 BC. Their encounters with the Greeks, Assyrians and Persians were written into history but for centuries all trace of their culture was lost – buried beneath the ice. Amazingly preserved in permafrost, these clothes and fabrics, food and weapons, spectacular gold jewellery – even mummified warriors and horses – are now revealing the truth about these people’s lives. This material evidence of a warlike people who dominated vast swathes of grassland between the borders of modern China and the Black Sea is a rebuke to those who thought the ancient worlds existed in isolation from one another and that globalization only began as European ships plunged into the Indian Ocean 500 years ago. Now join Dan Snow at the British Museum, where he discusses the Scythians and their extraordinary way of life with St John Simpson, the Curator of the exhibition.
Up Next in Historical Tours
-
RRS Discovery: Aboard the World's Fir...
Dan Snow steps aboard the RRS Discovery in Dundee, the first purpose built scientific research vessel for the Antarctic. Guided around the ship by Ali Gellatly, he learns what life and adventure was like aboard this unique vessel.
The legendary polar explorer Captain Scott commanded Discovery's...
-
Henry's Forts: Castles on the Coast
On the 26 February 2021, around 38 metres of wall collapsed at Hurst Castle, one of a series of vital coastal forts built by Henry VIII in the 16th century to protect England from threat of invasion by the European powers. Recently, Dan went out on his kayak to assess the damage at the castle whi...
-
Britain's Wild West: Discovering Hay ...
The peaceful South Wales town of Hay-on-Wye offers few clues today of its brutal past on a violent frontier. A monument to this history can be found in Hay Castle. Once right on the border between England and Wales, it sits in a region densely packed with castles that saw border skirmishes and bi...
