Astana Times

In the first century BC, the vast expanse of Eurasia from Ordos in China to the Danube was occupied by peoples who were mentioned in the ancient Eastern records as the legendary Scythians, Saka and Sarmatians. The Greek poet Homer called them Arimaspians or “the gryphons, guarding gold,” the Chinese called them yuezhi. References to this people are also found in the works of Aeschylus and Herodotus.

“When you have crossed the stream that bounds the two continents, toward the flaming east, where the sun walks… beware of the sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus that do not bark, the gryphons, and the one-eyed Arimaspian folk, mounted on horses, who dwell about the flood of Pluto’s stream that flows with gold. Do not approach them…,” Aeschylus wrote in his Prometheus Bound.

The Arimaspians mined gold in the Altai Mountains from which they produced magnificent jewels in the Scythian animal style. At Berel, the archaeologists found tiaras, pectoral jewelry, ritual objects, knives, swords, other jewelry, and a three-dimensional image of an elk’s head in its beak a griffin.

The pieces were made from wood, leather and felt and then covered with gold foil, tin and red ocher. The skilled craftsmen created numerous realistic and fantastic images of animals including cats, deer, horses, eagles, fish, wolves, camels, wild boars, mountain goats, sheep and rabbits. These ancient artists used their images of animals and birds to convey their properties: the rapacity of a panther, the vigilance and tenacity of an eagle and the gracefulness of a deer.

The archaeological record confirms the ancient historians who wrote that the ancient Arimaspians were great metallurgists, builders, potters, jewelers, woodcarvers and painters. The excavations have confirmed that they had mastered a diversified manufacturing technology. They cast metals, carved bones, in the form of flat bas-reliefs that were often inlaid and riveted.

Indeed, the technological masters of the Saka period produced gold jewelry through a sophisticated manufacturing technology that was lost through the millennia until it was rediscovered now. They could produce a white gold when gold falls on a silver base. Today, we do this through the advanced technology of electrolysis.

The Saka metallurgists could also carry out micro soldering: Today it can be done only with a magnifying glass and a special device. But 2,400 to 2,300 years ago, the Arimaspians didn’t use them, yet they still mastered the art of micro soldering to perfection.