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America Accidentally Attacked the Soviet Union and Other Lesser Known History Moments

Khalid Elhassan February 27, 2020 34 min

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star - Aircraft — American F-80s in action during the Korean War. Squdron

23. The First Steppe Terrors

For millennia, nomads from the Eurasian Steppe, including the likes of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane, terrorized the settled peoples on their borders. Centuries before those figures became bywords in barbaric destruction, they were preceded by the Scythians, a nomadic confederation of Iranian peoples inhabiting the Steppe between Central China to the east and the Carpathian Mountains to the west.

Controlling an overland trade network that connected the Greeks, Chinese, Persians, and Indians, the Scythians created the first Steppe empire that terrorized its neighbors. Starting in the 7^th century BC, the Scythians began raiding into the Middle East. Their first major disruptive role was the taking a leading part in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.