The Scythians

Summary

The Ancients: Episode Summary – "The Scythians"

Hosted by Tristan Hughes | Released on February 13, 2025

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Introduction to the Scythians

In the February 13, 2025, episode of The Ancients, host Tristan Hughes delves into the enigmatic world of the Scythians, a group often depicted by ancient Greeks as the quintessential "other" – fierce horsemen roaming the vast Eurasian steppe over two millennia ago. The episode aims to unravel who the Scythians were, the reliability of their portrayal by Greek historians, and the nature of their interactions with the Greek world.

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Host and Guest Introduction

Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Owen Rees from Birmingham Newman University, a recurring guest on the podcast known for his insightful discussions ranging from ancient Greek colonization to the intricate histories of archaeological sites like Olbia in modern-day Ukraine.

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The Greek Portrayal of the Scythians: Herodotus's Account

Dr. Owen Rees emphasizes the pivotal role of Herodotus, often hailed as the "father of history," in shaping Greek perceptions of the Scythians. Herodotus's writings portray the Scythians as inhabitants living at the world's peripheries, with their depiction becoming increasingly fantastical as one moves northward.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "The earliest description from the Greeks, from the Greek writer Herodotus, father of history, he very much builds the Story of the Scythians. The further north you move, the more and more fantastical this culture becomes." [05:13]

This portrayal oscillates between portraying them as noble savages living in harmony with nature and fearsome warriors engaged in headhunting, reflecting the Greeks' mixed emotions of fear, respect, and fascination towards a culture starkly different from their own.

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Archaeological Evidence of the Scythians

While Greek accounts provide a narrative, Dr. Rees highlights the significance of archaeological findings in substantiating aspects of Scythian life. Extensive burials from Ukraine to Siberia offer tangible insights into their societal structures, artistry, and daily lives.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "We can show you like an ancient tattoo on their skin, we can show you hairstyles, we can talk about the food, we can talk about what's buried around them in amazing detail." [09:10]

These burials, especially those from colder regions like East Kazakhstan's Valley of Kings, preserve organic materials such as skin and hair, providing a vivid picture of Scythian aesthetics and societal values.

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Cultural Aspects: Nomadic vs. Settled Life

A central theme of the episode is the dichotomy between the Scythians' nomadic lifestyle and the evidence of substantial settlements like Bilsk. This juxtaposition challenges the traditional Greek portrayal of Scythians solely as nomads, suggesting a more complex societal structure.

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The Bilsk Settlement

Bilsk, a massive archaeological site in northern Ukraine, emerges as a focal point in understanding Scythian urbanism. Spanning approximately 33 kilometers with towering wooden walls and deep ditches, Bilsk rivals ancient cities like Rome in scale.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "We're talking it's just wooden walls. Nothing particularly fancy in its design. But the wooden walls stand about 9 meters tall." [30:48]

Despite its formidable defenses, much of Bilsk's interior remains sparsely populated, leading scholars to theorize its role as a transient hub accommodating both settled communities and nomadic groups.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "One reason you'd have such a large space is to home a large nomadic group with their horses and everything with it for periods and then they move on." [31:13]

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Interaction Between Scythians and Greeks: Trade and Culture

The episode explores the extensive interactions between Scythians and Greeks, facilitated by Bilsk's strategic location along major trade routes connecting Eurasia. This nexus allowed for the exchange of goods, ideas, and cultural practices.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "We don't even know how it got there. It may have come via Greece, it may have come via Persia and their trade networks." [40:17]

Artifacts such as Egyptian faience beads and scarab amulets discovered in Bilsk attest to the far-reaching connections, illustrating the Scythians' participation in a vast, interconnected marketplace.

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Scythian Women and the Amazon Myth

A captivating discussion arises around the Scythian women, who defied contemporary Greek and Roman gender norms. Greek accounts often depicted them as warriors, influencing the myth of the Amazons.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "Over the past 30 plus years, there's been a lot of research kind of going, no, this does seem to verify what we're hearing, which is that young women in particular may well have seen battle or combat or raiding." [19:01]

Archaeological evidence, including female burials with signs of combat, corroborates these literary accounts, suggesting that Scythian women may have actively participated in warfare, thereby inspiring Greek mythology.

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Headhunting Practices

The episode also addresses the controversial claim of Scythian headhunting, a practice frequently sensationalized by Greek historians.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "And there's an enormous amount of evidence of headhunting within the Scythian culture, you can see actual decorative designs that bear the marks of decapitated skulls." [25:33]

While debated among scholars, some archaeological findings, such as skulls transformed into drinking vessels, lend credence to Herodotus's accounts, albeit with caution.

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Dr. Rees's New Book: "The Far Edges of the Known World"

Concluding the episode, Dr. Rees introduces his latest publication, which positions the Scythians and settlements like Bilsk within a broader context of peripheral ancient civilizations. His work aims to illuminate the lives of diverse cultures beyond the Greco-Roman narrative, emphasizing their unique contributions to the tapestry of ancient history.

Notable Quote:

Dr. Owen Rees: "It really looks at life at the edge and beyond the edge of the known world as the Greeks and Romans perceived it." [54:35]

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Conclusion and Further Exploration

Tristan Hughes wraps up the episode by inviting listeners to explore additional episodes focusing on Scythian archaeology, including investigations into Kazakhstan's Valley of Kings and discussions with military historian Mike Loades on Scythian horse archery. The episode underscores the importance of viewing the Scythians through both historical texts and archaeological evidence to achieve a nuanced understanding of their society.

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Key Takeaways

• Complex Identity: The Scythians were more than nomadic horsemen; evidence from settlements like Bilsk suggests a multifaceted society with both mobile and stationary elements.

• Cultural Exchange: Their interactions with Greeks and other civilizations facilitated a rich exchange of goods, ideas, and artistic influences, highlighting their integral role in ancient trade networks.

• Gender Roles: Scythian women challenged contemporary gender norms, contributing to myths like the Amazons and indicating possible active participation in warfare.

• Historical Bias: Greek and Roman portrayals of the Scythians were often colored by cultural biases, necessitating a careful interpretation of their accounts alongside archaeological data.

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For enthusiasts eager to delve deeper into the Scythians and their archaeological intricacies, The Ancients offers a treasure trove of episodes that complement this insightful discussion.

Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free, get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit with the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary All About Petra and the Nabateans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Acast]

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Welcome to Just A Couple Things. It's your sister Jesse Woo. You may know me from Wild and Out, Dish Nation, All Blacks, Alakart, and so many other platforms. Just A Couple Things is a podcast where we're dishing all things pop culture as well as comedic story times. Give my podcast a follow and make sure that you subscribe subscribe so you never miss out on an episode.

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[Tristan Hughes]

Today'S episode is brought to you by Soundcore from Anker. Now living in London, I struggle with nighttime noise and my sleep quality was poor due to uncomfortable earbuds. However, discovering Soundcore earbuds changed every everything. They are made from incredibly soft ergonomic materials, feeling weightless and gentle even after hours. They offer unparalleled pressure free comfort, perfect for side sleepers like me, and they block out unwanted noise for a peaceful night's sleep. Transform your sleep experience now head to soundcore.com that's S-O-U-N-C-O-R-E.com use the code sleep at checkout for 3 $30 off that's sleep in all caps. Sleep well my friends. Barbarians of the north in the ancient Greek mindset, no group of people epitomized this term more than the Scythians. They were the classic other these horse loving peoples that roamed the great steppe of eurasia more than 2,000 years ago. They wore trousers. They wielded bows and arrows on horseback. Movement was central to their way of life. Their women boasted much more freedom and may have even fought in battle. It's no surprise that the Amazons of Greek mythology may well have a historical basis in Scythian culture. So what do we know about the Scythians? How reliable is their portrayal by ancient Greek writers? Why were the Greeks so fascinated by the Scythians? It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, joining me to talk through the story of the Scythians and their interactions with the Greek world. I was delighted to interview Dr. Owen Rees from Birmingham Newman University. Owen has been on the podcast since several times before to chat topics varying from dogs in ancient Greece to the March of the 10,000 to the story of ancient Greek colonisation in the Black Sea and the fascinating city of Olbia that was founded in what is today southern Ukraine. Now Owen's back to explain the story of the Scythians and a massive archaeological site called Bilsk, an ancient megatown home to Scythians, Greeks and others. That features in his brand new book exploring the peoples and cities often overlooked that's lived at and beyond the edges of the ancient Mediterranean world. Let's get into it.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Owen, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast today. Hello.

[Acast]

Hi, Tristan. Thanks for having me back.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

We've done largely the ancient Greek world in the past, but this feels we're going a bit beyond it. But still you can bring the Greeks heavily into it. I mean, the story of the Scythians or Scythians. First of all, let's clarify this. How should we say the word Scythians?

[Acast]

There is no sort of hard and fast rule on this. Scythian is more Latin based in its pronunciation. Scythian with a hard K is more in keeping with the Greek wording and pronunciation. We'll stick with Scythian. It's what most people who have come across the name will see. And it's also how many English readers will naturally read the word. But I should probably apologize in advance, Tristan. I am an ancient Greek historian. Scythian might come out a couple of times.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

And for the Greeks when they're talking about the Scythians and where they lived, and I'm guessing it's true with the Romans as well. I mean, they saw these people living almost at the edges of the world.

[Acast]

Yeah, it's precisely that if you look at sort of the earliest Greek descriptions of the Scythians, that's going to happen every time. The earliest description from the Greeks, from the Greek writer Herodotus, father of history, he very much builds the Story of the Scythians. The further north you move, the more and more fantastical this culture becomes. So he starts quite close to a city you and I have talked about before on this podcast, Olbia, a Greek town just by Crimea. And he describes Scythian groups around there. And they're sort of, for want of a better word, normal to him. You know, they're sort of agricultural, little bit of nomadism, nothing too spectacular. And then as he moves further and further north, in his description, they suddenly become like werewolves and immortal beings. And this.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Werewolves and immortal beings.

[Acast]

Oh, we will get to that, Tristan, don't you worry. But it's the idea that the further you move away from the Greek world, the way I think of it is you move from reality into almost myth. And we see this in the Greek and the Roman writing with Greek in particular. So the further north, the further east we go, the more fantastical and the more mythological the Scythians become as a people.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Well, to kick off our chat, maybe just a general overview. First of all, I mean, who exactly were the Scythians and where did the Greeks label that they lived or where actually did they live?

[Acast]

So if we stick to the Greek perspective, we can talk about the Scythians as a group. Archaeologically, we cannot. We'll talk about that in a minute. But the Greeks very much saw the Scythians as a group, but made up of little, for want of a better word, tribal groups. So what they're describing are the nomadic or semi nomadic groups north of the Black Sea and moving east to. I mean, they didn't know about it, the Greeks, but you and I would go as far as Siberia, so that's how far east we're kind of looking. There's also names associated with the Scythians through other cultures as well. So I think you've done a podcast on the Saka or the Saka, yes.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

This is the great step, isn't it? Which, you know, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, maybe all the way to Mongolia and Siberia.

[Acast]

As you said, and also brings us down into sort of Persia and Iran. You know that that's the group that are talking about the Sakai. So we have that kind of geographically gives you an idea. But in terms of like names, in terms of who we're talking about Scythians, talking about the Sakai, we're talking about another group that gets talked about are the Chimerians. All of these are sort of loosely associated with this big label of Scythian, which really kind of Means foreign nomadic group to the north and east that we don't really know a lot about.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

And given this huge geographic area and Greek interactions with the Scythians, I'm guessing it's not over that whole area, as you've highlighted there, because it's such a massive landscape. What sources do we have? How many sources do we have that talk about the Scythians? I mean, do we have Scythian writing themselves or is it largely just from the Greeks and where they interacted with the Scythians in terms of writing?

[Acast]

Most of our evidence comes from external groups to the Scythians. So, yeah, you're right. The Greeks, Romans, to an extent, they're our main sources describing the culture because they're fascinated with it. It's a real other culture. So they tell us a lot. And we've got to kind of wade through that and see what's a bit exaggerated and what's plausible and piece two and two together. But also we have evidence from sort of Mesopotamia and sort of the Persian Empire as well. So, you know, the various large inscriptions from, like, Darius the Great and, you know, Cyrus and all these kind of people, they make mention to these groups as well. So we do have sort of different cultural perspectives on the Scythians, but always from the sense that they are the other, that they are the different group and that they are being sort of judged according, accordingly to that.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Do we also have lots of archaeology too, from the great steppe, let's say, in the world where the Greeks would have interacted with the Scythians, maybe in. In Ukraine or Russia in that area?

[Acast]

Yeah, we do. And this is where, I mean, ultimately with any conversation about the Scythians, you'd either, if you get a historian like me, you'll get a lot of conversation about how the Greeks and how the sort of the settled world, shall we say, that kind of, you know, city building, urban, urbanized cultures, how they view the Scythians. An archaeologist would give you a very different story. They would focus on the archaeological evidence, which is far superior in understanding that culture. I'm going to try and mix it. I'll be. I'm going to give it a go. And that's obviously a big part of the research I do, blending these things so we can try and understand it within both contexts. But we do. We have a lot of evidence. A lot of evidence comes from the burials. So we have burials from Ukraine right through to sort of Siberia and the Altai Mountains with amazing levels of Preservation, especially further east, where the cold climate really helps. I mean, we have Pazaryc burials where we have like, we have surviving skin from the buried men and women. We have hair, locks of hair, hairstyles. We can literally show you like a plaited ponytail from the 4th century. That's how well it's been preserved. The British Museum had an exhibit a few years ago with a couple of these items. And they're just horrific and beautiful and odd. And you're not quite sure how to react to what you're looking at because of it. But because of it, we can show you an ancient tattoo on their skin, we can show you hairstyles, we can talk about the food, we can talk about what's buried around them in amazing detail. It's always difficult without words and without narratives and without stories to piece together. But we can at least start to confirm or analyze what was important to them. So important they're buried like that.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Absolutely. I will try once in a while to bring in my own experience of going to East Kazakhstan and see Kazakhstan's Valley of Kings and bereal and cold conditions. These great Kurgans or these great burial mounds high in the Altai Mountains. And they've uncovered the remains of these noble saka or pazaryk in a kind of a Scythian semi nomadic or nomadic group, these high elites and their burials with their art and their horses and. And their food and so on. So I'll try and bring a bit of that in when we can.

[Acast]

That's just on that. That's a really key point, which is, you did it. I've done it. Everyone does it. When we talk about the Scythians, we go quite vague and start throwing lots of labels around in fear of inaccuracy. And it's because Scythian is as much a archaeological culture than it is a real one, for want of a better word. By which I mean the reason why we call all these things Scythian is because of certain commonalities. So we have no proof that they are actually innately connected by a cultural bond that you and I would associate with a single ethnic group. We don't have enough evidence to really show that. I mean, they talk about the Scythian and triad, which are the three items that we're looking for in a burial in a site in an archaeological context that kind of goes, yeah, okay, this might well be Scythian or Scythian, like, and you mentioned a few of them. So it's the distinctive animalistic art style where it's sort of semi fantastical with the beautiful swirling geometric shapes built within the design of animals, often like the swirls in the ears and things like that. And it is absolutely beautiful. We have the specific weapons. So the Scythians are always renowned for the bow, a very distinctive type of bow. The Greeks in particular associate them with a particular type of axe, very long handled axe. So we've got the ring, got the weaponry, and the other one is the horse bridle, a very distinctive type of bridle. So if we see those three, that's when the name Scythian will kind of be comfortably associated with the site. But we've always got to be a little bit careful because we don't necessarily know if it's because they were Scythian, because they held these items in great esteem, what quite the relationship is there. So, yeah, so it's just always something to kind of keep in mind whenever we talk about the Scythians, especially further east, and the more vague it becomes.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Is it an overarching name that's been given to those kind of horse loving groups north of the Black Sea and along the great steppe by Greek historians and writers? That's. That's what we should probably get a sense of with the word Scythian from the off.

[Acast]

Absolutely that. So this is why I was sort of throwing around some of the names. We've also got like the Sarmatians, the Saromatians, these are names you might come across, especially in Roman history.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Yeah.

[Acast]

And then you've got the other sort of nomadic groups that come after them, the Alans and things like that. You know, sometimes they're still called Scythian, sometimes they're not. Scythian is, like you said, it's an overarching name they give to talk about a collective concept. Often when they want to be specific, they start talking specific names, so they start using these specific titles. Herodotus does this. He talks about Scythia and he talks about the Scythians and then breaks them down group by group, by name. So even he acknowledges they're the same, but they're not.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Shall we explore Herodotus now? Because he feels crucial to understanding how the Greeks viewed the Scythians. So Owen, take it away. First off, who was Herodotus and what does he say about the Scythians?

[Acast]

So Herodotus is often considered the father of history as well. Cicero, the Roman writer, famously called him the father of history. He is the first in the lineage of what we would consider the writing of history. So what I mean by that is not the recording of events of the past, that's chronicling. And that's been going on since Egypt, now and before. So, you know, there's a long heritage and history of that. But history itself is supposed to be an inquiry. You're supposed to be asking questions, trying to answer a question, rather than just recording facts and recording information and recording events for whatever reason. This is what Herodotus was trying to do. So Herodotus was exploring the causes and the outcome of the Persian wars. So that was the great Persian empire in conflict with the tiny polis of Greece and the various polites of Greece, and basically why the Greeks won, why this conflict even occurred, and things like that. So he's interested in all that. What I love about Herodotus and the purity of what Herodotus was trying to do was he wanted to understand all the cultures involved in this. To his mind, global conflict. So Persia was a big empire that included lots of different areas of the world within it, a lot of cultures within it. So Herodotus explored those. One of those groups was the Scythians. So he has an entire section of his histories dedicated to Scythia, the land of Scythia and the peoples within it. He's not only a historian, as you and I think of it, he's also a bit of an ethnographer. Like, he's fascinated by culture and he's also somewhat of a geographer. So he's also interested not just in the Scythians, not just Scythian land, but also his concept of a world map. So where does Cythir end? Like, what. What is beyond it? He's trying to build a world picture as well as doing all these other things. So this is why I love Herodotus. And if you read his section on Scythia, it is a meandering, tangent filled, glorious piece of writing that I absolutely adore. And you're just going through things where you're like, I wonder if he even believes this. And I bet he believes that bit. Okay, seems to agree with this bit. And then there are. He's very honest about what he can and cannot say and what he can or cannot prove, but he's also not afraid of giving an opinion, which I really, I really like. So that's Herodotus. So whilst he's exploring the Scythians, that's kind of the context of what he's doing.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Do you think he ever met. Do you think he would have ever met Scythians or did he venture near Scythian territory on his travels? When he's writing, do you think he would have had conversations with actual Scythian people?

[Acast]

I reckon he would have. There is a bit of debate as to his travels. He does seem to have traveled extensively for his research. He does seem to have gone to the Black Sea. But you wonder, would he have gone past the Greek cities, past places like that? Okay, yeah. But even then, there's no reason he wouldn't meet Scythians there, and there's no reason he wouldn't be able to communicate or have ability to communicate with them. So what we then do as historians to try and work this out is we start to look at what he says and what can be verified. So, for instance, his description of them, certain Scythian groups living with basically carts that are houses, there is some archaeological evidence to kind of support that possibility in certain groups. He also mentions the use of cannabis in a ritualistic context, basically like a steam tent, for want of a better term, obviously cleansing. And those sort of rituals that we associate with many different cultures, not with just with cannabis. But he mentions it and the archaeological record supports that. So alongside the obsession with horses, alongside the cultural importance of the bow, all of this is confirmed, all of this is verified. So does that mean he's gone and lived with Scythians? No, I don't think we can quite go that far. But he does seem to be getting his information sort of from somewhere, and there's no reason to constantly assume he's wrong.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Should we talk briefly about Scythian women as well, and how Scythian women were viewed by the Greeks? Because I feel we're going to get to the word Amazons in a bit too.

[Acast]

We certainly are, yeah. So the image of the Scythian woman in Greek and Roman thought is one of fear. So Scythian women are portrayed as quite independent, holding prestigious positions, leaving the house, riding horses. And in some contexts, we also hear them, especially young women, so sort of young adult women in the context of battle. So there is. The reason why this causes fear in the Greek and Romans is because this is the exact opposite of what the Greek or Roman male writers think a woman should be doing. So there's a couple of things here. One is our sort of alarm bells should be ringing because it's a bit of a cliche. At the edges of the world, the order of things is reversed. You know, men stay at home, women go to war, things like that. So this is quite a Common trope. However, going back to the burial evidence we have, they have found female burials where the bodies bear all the hallmarks of combat. Not violence as in like literally, they've clearly been subject to a violent attack and that's what's killed them. But the hallmarks of a combative body that if it was male, we'd have no question. We're looking at someone who's experienced war for a long time. It was always explained away. There must be another reason, even to the point where they just assumed they were male bodies, you know, things like that. But over the past 30 plus years, there's been a lot of research kind of going, no, this does seem to verify what we're hearing, which is that young women in particular may well have seen battle or combat or raiding or, you know, whatever it be that they did. So this is also where you can start to see the links to the Amazon myth. So this culture of a female warrior group that bans men from its society. On horseback with the bow, we can see the Scythian imagery coming in. And they are the great foe of so many Greek heroes, whether it be Hercules, Theseus, whoever it be. So many of the Greek heroes have to fight the Amazons at some point. And it's almost like this sense of asserting patriarchal control over this embodiment of everything the Greeks fear. The independent woman. Basically.

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[Dr. Owen Rees]

So to summarize this first part with you, Owen, it's almost as if the Greek portrayal of the Scythians, there is an agenda there to portray them as, you know, kind of the classic barbarian, the completely opposite way of life and people to the Greeks based on where they live in the world, as you say, living far to the north, near the edges of the world. And yet, despite that evident agenda in the writing, there is a degree of historical basis for many of the things that people like Herodotus write about the Scythians.

[Acast]

Yeah, absolutely. And it is revealing, really, because what we're then talking about is some bogeyman that's been created. We're actually seeing a Greek cultural reaction to a culture that is the opposite of itself or what it perceives to be the opposite of itself. And sometimes it elicits fear, and sometimes it elicits intrigue, and sometimes it elicits respect. So we also see in early on, in some of the stories of Herodotus as well, a cliche of writing like this throughout history, which is the idea of the noble savage. So sometimes the Scythians are presented as a pure way of living, a simpler way of living, and they have that kind of wisdom that's supposed to come from that they understand, you know, without The. The drive for money, the drive for power, the drive for this, that and the other, that they can just live a simpler way, you know, with nature and the way we're supposed to be. So we do also see that as well. So it is interesting that, as you say, at the basis of this, we're not seeing an entirely fictionalized presentation, but again, we've got to be a bit careful as to where we assume Herodotus is still being right, where we assume that the Hippocratic writings are still correct, things like that.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Before we move on, what's also this thing with headhunting?

[Acast]

Headhunting, Another cliche, I'm afraid, that we get of the northern tribes or northern cultures from Rome and Greece. Headhunting is like the antithesis of, shall we say, civilized life. It's the idea of going around and actually hunting people down, specifically to take trophies and things like that. It was for a very long time assumed, again, that this is just, like I said, a cliche. However, one of the sites we're going to talk about, there is actually potentially evidence, possibly of human skulls being worked to transform into drinking vessels, which is a story. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians do. I say allegedly. This is not accepted across the board by all scholars. It is a bit debated, but it just becomes more plausible. And ultimately they are headhunting. That might also explain a lot of the cultural fear that goes with it. Again, it's that idea of where reality and myth blend and where they are actually distinct from each other. So, you know, the bogeyman suddenly becomes a lot scarier.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Well, let's move on then, towards that settlement that we're going to be talking about, as you hinted at there, Owen and I feel the good question to lead us in towards that is we always think, well, you've already used the word nomadic or semi nomadic to describe these small Scythian groups roaming the great steppe. But did they have towns? Did they have kind of urban areas, too?

[Acast]

Yes. No. Oh, basically the answer. I mean, ultimately we have found evidence, we have found sites where clearly Scythian culture exists in a stationary state, shall we say? So the site I'm going to talk about is a place called Bilsk, which is sort of northern Ukraine, which is a massive wooden fortification. Nothing we'd associate with nomadism, nothing we'd necessarily associate with the Scythians as we're told about them. It's not uncommon for nomadic or pastoralist groups to have sort of temporary settlements. They go to, as they Move around and have sort of camp, set camps they go to. And again, Herodotus tells us this. What's different about Bilsk is just how big it is and it is an enormously enclosed space where we have evidence of certain areas where people are living. But the reason why I'm cagey about this is because there's so much evidence for so many cultures. We're not 100% sure if the Scythians are staying there, but they clearly use it. So yes and maybe no.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Well, let's delve into Bils now. So you've highlighted that it's northern Ukraine, but set the scene, the geography, the topography for us. Owen. So a massive settlement. Yeah, but why is it positioned in that area? Describe Bilsk to us what the archaeology seems to have revealed.

[Acast]

Okay, so in terms of where we are geographically, we're an amazing crossroads between the steppes as we kind of think about it. You know, there's large plains that go all the way east and you know, the Ukrainian steppe and then we sort of associate with sort of along to like Mongolia and all these kind of rages places we've already talked about. But there's also the forest steppe where it's sort of dense woodland and Bilsk is sort of around where those two points kind of meet. So clearly an important moment of where different lifestyles are blending. So the nomadic horse based life of the plains meeting the more pastoralist agro pastoralist life elsewhere. But it's also connected by the river systems that cut through what is now Ukraine. So in terms of transport, it is an amazing place to link north beyond Ukraine, east towards Siberia, west towards Central Europe and south to the Black Sea, which takes you to the Greek lands, which takes you to the west coast of the Persian Empire, which takes you down to Egypt. So in terms of a single place that links so many different ways of life, so many different markets and so many different trade cultures, it is just fascinating. And as a result it becomes this amazing melting pot of all of this going on at the same time. So that's the kind of location we're talking about. That's the significance of this location and in terms of the archeology and the history as a historian, it brings together cultures we don't read about coming together in the history books. So again it allows us to really fill out a picture of more global history beyond just the Black Sea, beyond just Greece and Rome and things like that. So it is an amazing insight into that in terms of the size of this thing. You cannot overstate how big this place is. So we're talking it's just wooden walls. Nothing particularly fancy in its design. But the wooden walls stand about 9 meters tall. So it's tall, we're talking large in terms of height. Surrounded by ditches, though ditches are like five meters deep. There's a massive undertaking to create this hill fort perimeter actually is the combination of more than one small fort that then gets connected and the overall perimeter is about 33 kilometers long.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

33 kilometers, wow.

[Acast]

It creates sort of like a triangle shape. It actually connects three smaller forts with one big wall. And so 33 kilometers, let's put that in context. You're like, that sounds big. How big are we talking? The Aurelian walls of Rome that we're looking sort of third century AD. The walls that got built around Rome are about 19 kilometers. Wow.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Yeah.

[Acast]

In terms of footprint, it's something like it's just under 5,000 hectares, which is like double the size of Imperial Rome, five times the size of Babylon. It's about the size of Manhattan island with a little bit of wiggle room.

[Tristan Hughes]

For one in London.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

For a London based one, the wall circuit by Septimius Severus in the early third century AD is just two miles long. So this in comparison or three kilometers long.

[Acast]

Five kilometers.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Well exactly, yeah. So that's three kilometers long. So compare that to Bilsk and you know Bilsk, absolutely gigantic. Compared to the area of the city.

[Acast]

Of London, let's say it is absolutely enormous. And this is why it's so unexpected. All right. And it's also why it's so important. And the most interesting thing for me is most of the center of it is empty. They've got all this space and there's nothing seemingly in it. It's not like they filled it with houses, they filled it with loads of buildings. They haven't built a city as such. This is why we're archaeologists are really trying to piece together like what is this space for? And one of the theories, and it is just one theory, but I quite like it, is one reason you'd have such a large space is to home a large nomadic group with their horses and everything with it for periods and then they move on. So whilst we have static life there as well, what you and I might think of as urban life, what we have with this massive gap is, you know, potentially is this to accommodate nomadism or pastoralism? Maybe that explains why there's such a large empty space. Because in terms of man hours, in terms of the effort to build this in terms of all these things, it doesn't make a lot of sense on its own.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

It's interesting though, isn't it? Because you've also highlighted though, although there are those great almost empty areas, so there are specific areas for industry, is there a specific area for agriculture, another one for ceremony. So within. You still have those specific areas within the larger emptiness within this Great Wall circuit.

[Acast]

Yeah. And this is, this is why scholars and archaeologists and the researchers looking at places like Bilsk are really trying to look at it in terms of not this is a one cultures place, this is their city, this is their fortification. They look at it in terms of different groups using it. So we do have evidence of the Scythian culture. So we have the triad I mentioned. So in the burials around Bilsk, we have the triad, we have proof of it. We even have evidence of industry there, making things as part of that Scythian triad. So they're making some of those artifacts on site, supposedly.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Okay, yeah.

[Acast]

So clearly they're producing for the Scythians as well. But we also have evidence that shows that the original forts were made by migrants coming from more central Europe who have come east and possibly from around maybe the northern Balkans. It's hard to entirely map out exactly where they've come from, but they seem to be coming from those sort of regions and have come and done it. And interestingly, it's one of the few Scythian groups that Herodotus describes as autochthonos, so indigenous. So he describes the group who built a city called Gelonus, which may be Bilsk, we don't know, could be Bilsk. Seems to sound a bit like Bielsk, but he describes the people who made it as autotunes, as of the earth. So they're born where they live, which of course goes against the whole idea of nomadism. So we do have evidence of that group. We have evidence obviously of the Scythians. We have evidence of Greeks possibly even living there. We have not just trade items, but what we might call quite mundane day to day items like lamps and just torches basically to help see around. And we also have evidence of the Hallstatt culture, which is sort of proto Celtic, which we associate with slightly further west.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

You preempted my question there because you mentioned before. No, absolutely, that's fine. Because we're on the right track with thinking parallel on this. You mentioned earlier the word hill fort. You immediately associate. And I was thinking somewhere maybe like Maiden Castle, with those huge ramparts and ditches. You can imagine a great wooden wall being atop Maiden Castle in Dorset, one of the biggest hill forts in Britain. But what also really interested me was when you mentioned the interior and large areas of it being empty and then special areas for manufacturing, industry, but then tombs outside. You can almost imagine the tombs lining up, you know, so people would see them on their way in. And that, weirdly, there seems to be big similarities with a particular place in Britain called Colchester. I'm not suggesting any.

[Acast]

Of course not.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

You know, kind of, they know Iron Age Camelouden and Iron Age Colchester and Bilsk. But this link there that I find fascinating is surrounding Colchester. You don't have kind of a wall circuit. You have these dikes, these great dike systems which seem to funnel traffic in. But the interior of Camloodunum, of our nature, Colchester, was the same. There was areas for industry, areas for agriculture, manufacture, but large areas of it was empty. So it's a fascinating parallel, and that was kind of the Iron Age British culture in the fact that it was a very different style of settlement to that which a Greek or Roman would define as a town, as an. As an urbanized center, as urbanism. So it's a fascinating example of how urbanism. It's different, you know, it's different in the minds of people beyond the Greek and Roman worlds.

[Acast]

Yeah, absolutely. And to. If you wanted to bring it back to the Greek perspective on all this. So, you know, we're talking about. This is. This is fascinating. There's an interesting, you know, what's actually going on here. You know, nomads with static fortifications. What's happening? Herodotus had the same problem, so he had the same question, which is, how can there be this massive city up in the north somewhere with nomads? So in his own explanation for it, he basically describes a wooden city that looks remarkably like a Greek one. He even describes Greek temples and pillars and things like this being built out of wood. And his explanation is, well, it's not possible that the Scythians did it, so they must have had Greeks with them. So the Greeks did it for them, and then the. The Scythians could live alongside them. So, you know, that's almost his way of explaining away this confusion. But of course we know. Well, we don't need to explain that away. But, yeah, it is absolutely fascinating. Of course, there is no direct link between these things. I know there is a radical conspiracy that the Scythians made it all the way to Ireland. There is no truth to that, but, you know, beyond exceptionalism, you know. But yeah, no, there is no connection here between them. So it is just an interesting thing where humans are doing similar things to solve problems when they're not connected, which is a major thing which I became obsessed with writing the Book of Bed, where human ingenuity solves problems as they come to a various society or a culture. Sometimes they solve it the same way, sometimes they solve it a different way. But what's so amazing, the reason why we love history so much is because humans are so alike and yet so different. And it's just fascinating to see how different people dealt with the same problems.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Well, let's move on to the far reaching contacts of Bilsk, when the Scythians are there, but Greeks seem to be there as well. So how far reaching were the contacts that Bielsk had with the outside world? Does it get to the Mediterranean? Does it get beyond the Mediterranean?

[Acast]

The most amazing discovery I came across in my research was a burial just outside Bilsk of a woman, presumably an elite woman. We don't know her standing, we don't know her role. She could be a priestess, she could be a leader, we don't know. But she's clearly an elite woman because it's a very ornate burial and she's buried with some amazing items and, you know, such as ornate headdress, bronze, mirrors, jewelry and all these sort of things that you can associate. There's even a sacrifice goat in there. So clearly there's rituals going on in the burial, things like that. But for us, the most interesting thing at this point is the decorative beads that have been found, which you wouldn't necessarily focus on when you're looking at it. It was part of a necklace made from faience, which is an item usually associated with Egypt. We also have an amulet in the shape of a scarab, an item and a design you'd associate with Egypt. The scarab. We don't have the blue glaze on it now, but you can still see the remnants of it. And on the bottom of it, it's inscribed with two hieroglyphs. Again, the written language of Egypt. And the two images are a cobra and a scorpion, two creatures that at this point were not indigenous to the region at all.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

So you have, you have ancient Egyptian script found in a tomb, in a rich tomb outside Bilsk in northern Ukraine.

[Acast]

2,000 km away from Egypt itself. Yes, we do. That's how interconnected the ancient world can be. It doesn't mean anyone in Bilsk is really aware of Egypt. It doesn't mean anyone in Egypt is particularly aware of Bilsk. What we've got is an interconnected marketplace and trade network that spans thousands and thousands of kilometers that allows Egypt to appear in Northern Ukraine. We don't even know how it got there. We don't know. It may have come via Greece, it may have come via Persia and their trade networks. It might come through another trade network we don't know anything about. What is just fascinating is one an Egyptian set of items appears there and two that someone who is not Greek living in Bilsk, presumably Scythian, wants this and wants that artifact of those items from Egypt. So they clearly hold some sort of prestige to it, probably because of how expensive they would have been.

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[Dr. Owen Rees]

And so if we got the Greeks stretching, you know, they've got cities and settlements in the Black Sea, you know, there are contacts with ancient Egypt. Let's say it was a Greek trader. If we focus on this particular object who was coming from the Mediterranean world or maybe from Egypt and he's got these Egyptian goods with him and he ultimately wants to reach Bilsk. How would a Greek trader get to Bilsk? I mean from the Black Sea? It still seems a long way from the Black Sea to reach Bilski.

[Acast]

Yeah, it's that river network I was talking about. That's how things travel so quickly and so effortlessly north through it. As I said, Bilsk is perfectly situated to combine so many different trade networks around sort of Eurasia. So it would actually have been quite simple, whether it be by boat or you know, carts. And I personally wouldn't do that. I would get on the water and do it quicker. And of course, you know, Greek traders are, this is what they do. This is all they ever do they know how to go around environments? They know how to find the best marketplaces, they know how to sell their wares to people. This is why we see Greek objects such as fine pottery, such as wine amphorae, much further beyond the sort of the cultural boundaries of the Greek world. Because, you know, it's very easy for us to kind of think, oh, well, it's because Greek culture is so enticing, everyone wants it. Whereas, you know, really, some of this has to come down to the fact that the Greeks are really good at pushing their stuff. They're very good at convincing everyone you want this. So it would not have been difficult for them at all. So, you know, we're obviously talking about the more foreign goods to the Greeks as well, with these Egyptian items, but also, you know, wine, the pottery. I was talking about, fine pottery. This is all found in and around what is now Ukraine. I mean, so much. So wine is a really interesting one because the Scythians don't produce wine themselves. So all the wine they have comes to them from Greece and possibly Persia as well. And yet the Greeks consider the Scythians heavy drunks. So they drink rock, they drink wine. Wrong. So they drink wine without water added to it. So the Greek wine is made to a particular strength, not. Not that strong. To be fair, we're talking maybe 9 to 12% as it is now. But in ancient Greece, you add water to that and the amount of water you're having kind of determines the sort of sophistication of what's going on. And the Scythians were renowned for drinking without adding water. And so you get this description in Greek writing as drinking Scythian wine, which is basically unwatered down. So you're going to be a drunken sod. You're going to basically get, for want of a better word in English vernacular, you're going to get bladdered. And I just find it really interesting that it holds this reputation as a society that, you know, they can't drink properly. They're barbaric. Look at them. And it's the. It's an item, it is a drink given to them by the Greeks.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Completely pissed. Scythians, look at that. I mean, it's. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because I know also with one of the key aspects of ancient Greek culture, isn't it? It's the drinking party, it's the symposium, and the person in charge of one of these drinking parties would determine how watered down the wine would be for the event Depending on what kind of event you want. You can imagine if some elite Scythians at Bilsk, they get the wine in and then they hear about the drinking party culture and then they try to reenact that, but they decide we're not going to put any water in this, any drinking party that they went to, they're just going to get absolutely hammered because it is full bloodied alcoholic wine that they're importing and they're not watering it at all.

[Acast]

Yeah, this is ultimately it. So this is also why we've got to make sure we're not looking at everything entirely through Greek eyes. So it might well be that they are drinking it without watering it down. But as I just said to you, this wine is not like 20% or plus we're not talking spirits and you know, we would be considered drinking a wine that was way too strong for the Greeks now. So, you know, context and you know, a little bit of realism into this conversation as well.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

I was going back to also what you were saying about how the Greeks, you know, there's a historical basis for much what they say about the Scythians, but then they kind of bring it up to 11 to define them as the antithesis, as the, as the opposite to civilized Greeks. So wine is something that evidently the Scythians buy from the Greeks. And as you say, it's replicated elsewhere in the world where the Greeks meet with barbarian peoples. I think in southern France with the Gauls is another example, isn't it? But what about the other way? What did the Greek traders come into somewhere like Bilsk, what goods were they after that the Scythians were renowned for?

[Acast]

I suppose the key ones is all the Scythian cultures, especially around the Black Sea, are renowned for their metalwork. And if you ever just google Scythian art, Scythian goldwork artifacts, and just look at what was being made. It is beautiful, intricate work. So precious metals, precious metal goods. Absolutely. Around the Black Sea that does seem to be one of the key areas for grain. Not the only one, but it is a key area for grain. So again they'll be trading in grain and food goods and things like that. But also they seem to be getting quite a lot of enslaved people via this trade group as well. So we see Scythians appear in like Athens as slaves and things like that. So there's clearly a trade link there via those routes. But we also get the blending of things. So you wouldn't necessarily say it's Scythian items, but we do see Greco Scythian art styles appear. So where you get the more naturalistic human forms of art, but with the craftsmanship and the skill of Scythian production. So we get this lovely blending of artifacts as well, or blending of artistic cultures going on throughout. So, yeah, those are the sort of things that you're getting from Scythia, predominantly.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

That blending of our cultures is interesting because. So are we talking if it's the animalistic art of Scythia, but the Greeks, it's like the pottery or wall paintings. Do you kind of see that kind of mix in artistic depictions? Are there more horses visible or kind of. What is that unique blend that you get with the Scythians and the Greek?

[Acast]

So from the region around the Black Sea, one of the things you get is a. Like I said, what we. What you might describe is more naturalistic art. So it's trying to look like the world as it is, rather than the fantastical world of the animalistic style I was talking about earlier with the swirls and the beauty and things like that, where it looks almost fantastical. So we have artifacts of like Scythian men just sort of sorting out their bows and arrows. So it has. I wouldn't describe it as mundane. I don't think that's fair. But that kind of normal life that the Greek art forms are really interested in depicting, that we kind of associate with the pottery of Athens and the like, where they're showing normal everyday things going on. So we have that. But it's in like gold. So like combs made of sort of gold plated and things like this. And it's just. It's just amazing to see flip side of that in Athens itself. During this period of exposure to the Scythian world, especially as Athens Empire is building in the fifth century, we start to see cultures from around the Black Sea starting to be depicted on Greek vases. And they're most notably identifiable by tattoos because tattooing culture is not an Athenian culture. They only tattoo for basically crime more than anything else. Or really the enslaved, that's who they're tattooing. Whereas north, the Thracians, the Scythians, they tattoo themselves culturally for very different reasons, for artistic reasons, but also for cultural reasons as well. And as the 5th century goes on, Greek art starts to depict these tattoos in greater and greater detail. And they go from bobbly lines on a leg that are clearly. Just look at this foreign person. Isn't it weird? And then by the sort of beginning of the 4th century, they painstakingly depict very different tattoos on a single body to show the variety of what's going on. So I also love the idea that not only are they trading with the Scythians for food and for slaves and all these things, they're also sharing artistic trends, and ideas are coming back and forth as well. And we see that in the art.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

So it's not just a movement of physical goods, it's also ideas as well, which is fascinating. So alongside furs, metals, enslaved people, as you say, there's also these ideas and people traveling as well. I mean, so was it not just enslaved Scythians who came back to the Greek world? Should we also be imagining mercenary soldiers, Scythian archers, philosophers? Do we know much about what types of Scythians venture to the Greek world?

[Acast]

We do have a few stories. You're absolutely right. So if we talk about Scythians moving into the Greek world, the most common thing we would think about is mercenaries and slaves. I mean, in Athens, there's the Scythian police force.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

Oh, the Scythian arches from, like, Aristophanes Lysistrata play and all of that kind of stuff.

[Acast]

So, you know, what that actually looked like, what that actually meant in terms of it, you know. But we've got Scythians in Athens being depicted. So they're clearly about. But we do have examples. We have one example of a guy called Anakasis, who is a Scythian prince who does come and travel the Greek world, and he is depicted very much as a philosopher, and he's traveling the Greek world to learn all the kind of knowledge bases that the Greek world have, but from the perspective of an outsider. So I mentioned to you earlier that sometimes the Scythians are depicted as this noble savage figure, and he is a classic example of that. There's one story where he meets Solon, the legendary lawgiver of Athens. And Solon is talking to him and explaining his new plan for his new laws that are basically going to create democracy in the long run. And it would become that foundation to the Greek mind. This is a pivotal individual who gave the very essence of Athenian democracy itself. Early shoots. It's beginning. Okay. Anacasis is beautifully blunt and he's beautifully laconic with his words, and he's told the laws, and he describes them as being like a spider's web, basically saying, what you're doing is you're creating a spider's web around the people of. Of what would be Athens. And he says they would hold the weak, that is, the web would itself would hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in them. So the weakest and the poorest would be caught up in these webs, but they would be ripped apart by those with power and money. So from the very early fledglings of democracy, an outside Scythian philosopher went, this is only going to control the poor, and the rich will always find a way to break through it. That's not a relevant story to today. I don't know what is, Tristan, but his. This individual's kind of legacy within the Greek world is he's often named as one of the seven sages of the ancient world. So this list of the great philosophers of the Greek world, alongside people like Solon, he sometimes appears on that list. That's kind of how he's remembered, but only through the Greek tradition. We obviously have no evidence whatsoever of a Scythian tradition of him. We don't even know if he's necessarily even real, which is quite frustrating, but I like to assume he is.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

I mean, what a nice story and a nice character, a Scythian character. To finish this on, Owen, I think that about wraps up our chat today. We've covered a lot of ground exploring the Scythians, the Greek view towards the Scythians, and touching a bit on the archaeology, too, whether it supports it or not. Owen, last but certainly not least, tell us a bit about your new book and how the story of the Scythians, and particularly Bilski, fits into this new book.

[Acast]

So Bielsk is a chapter from my latest book, the Far Edges of the Known World, and it sits within a series of chapters that looks at life at the edge or beyond the edges of the ancient world, as it's normally taught. So the world of Greece, the world of Rome, and the world of Pharaonic Egypt. I wanted to kind of look at what life was like for everyone else. So, you know, what was life like as a Greek living so far away from Greece? Places like Olbia, places in Ukraine, but also I wanted to get the other cultural perspectives as well. So actually, what is actually going on in Scythian land when we don't necessarily just listen to the Greeks, so it sits alongside other towns, whether it be Naukatus, a Greek city in Egypt, or Hadrian's War, and the Roman life up in Northern England, but also places like Taxila, which is in Pakistan, and Koloa, which I know you've had a fantastic podcast on as well, in ancient Vietnam. So it really looks at life at the edge and beyond the edge of the known world as the Greeks and Romans perceived it.

[Dr. Owen Rees]

It's an incredibly important book and one that shines a light on these often overlooked areas of the ancient world. So Owen, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back back on the podcast today.

[Acast]

Thank you so much for having me, Tristan.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Owen Rees talking you through the story of the Scythians and their interactions with the ancient Greeks. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to learn more about the archaeology of the Scythians, these various groups that roamed the Great step in antiquity, then you can listen to three further episodes we've done on the topic. Two of them have a particular focus on the archaeology of ancient Kazakhstan, Gold of the Great Steppe and Kazakhstan's Valley of Kings. The other episode is with the one and only military historian Mike Loades exploring horse archery by the Scythians. That was one of the first episodes I ever recorded, so if you want to listen to that one, well, you're going to have to delve deep into the Ancients archive. Do go and check out those episodes if you want to learn more about the Scythians. Thank you once again for listening to this episode. Please follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.

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[Acast]

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