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outsiders in the zone of wooded steppe to the south in the area of modern Ukraine, around the upper and middle reaches of the river Dnieper and its tributaries, which was the region of densest proto-Russian settlement 3,000 years ago. But the open steppe further to the south could be dangerous. This was where groups of nomads — incomers from the Caucasus and Central Asia — grazed their horses and their herds. Their interests were different from those of the agricultural settlers. Not only did they chase would-be colonizers
of
the open steppe off their grazing lands, they encroached on their areas of settlement.
    The first such nomadic group we know of arrived about 1000 BCE. These were the Cimmerians, who figure in the
Odyssey
and who are described by the Greek historians Herodotus and Strabo. The Cimmerians spoke an Iranian language; they swept over the whole region, from the northern Caucasus to the Carpathians, and extended their conquests into Thrace and Asia Minor. King Midas of Phrygia was evidently one
of
their victims. Archaeologists have concluded that for four centuries, until about 600 BCE, the agriculturalists in Ukraine traded food for Cimmerian copper and bronze goods, but otherwise kept themselves at a respectful distance. 14
    The Cimmerians fell victims to another aggressive people from Asia: the Scythians. The Scythians ranged even further afield than the Cimmerians had done, becoming a menace in the Middle East as far away as Egypt. They were to brush with both Darius and Alexander the Great, and with Mithridates, king of Pontus, and they were to influence the Slavs of what is now Ukraine. Archaeologists tell us that the Scythians were warlike, loved horses, imported goods from the ancient Greeks, and employed Slavs who provided them with food. These, presumably, are theScythian husbandmen to whom Herodotus refers to in his Book 4. 15 Later still the Sarmatians arrived, and both they and the Scythians left a mark on the imagination of the Slavs. Some latter-day Russians thought that the Scythians represented the quintessence of their supposedly Asian heritage, and the Polish gentry of the seventeenth century imagined the Sarmatians to personify the noble class, and even claimed to be descended from them.
    As we shall see, other predatory peoples were to storm into the area from Asia later, but we may suppose that the Cimmerians’ occupation of the open steppe stimulated agriculture in the forest steppe just to the north. Certainly it was on the forest steppe that plough technology, as well as a fallow system of land use, was developed — rather than in the forest zone or the open steppe. More than one kind of implement was devised. Some were fitted with iron parts which could cut through the tangled root systems in the comparatively shallow soils which predominated in the cultivable areas north of the Black Earth zone. The black earth itself is among the most productive soils on the planet and, once tamed for cultivation, promotes fast population growth and social development. However, the land there was heavy to work, and called for something more effective than a human-powered scratch-plough, which would have to be pushed over a field not once but several times. The more effective ploughs had the disadvantage of being heavier and difficult to propel, although in time ways were to be found to harness oxen or horses to pull them. 16
    Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of homes and artefacts more advanced than those found on the earlier site at Talyanky, and with iron and copper objects as well as pottery. These settlements consisted of typically fifteen or twenty dwellings, each equipped with a kitchen and living room, in which a variety of goods has been found - axes, sickles, fish-hooks, needles, jewellery and, not least, weapons: axe, spear and arrow heads, and daggers. Some of the artefacts had been made elsewhere. From this, archaeologists have deduced that the inhabitants had trading contacts