Ancient Scythia covered a massive stretch of grassland and steppe running from what is now eastern Europe deep into Central Asia. Its core territory maps onto modern-day Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan, but Scythian-related peoples ranged even further, from Romania and Bulgaria in the west to Mongolia and western China in the east.
The Heartland: Ukraine and Southern Russia
The political and cultural center of Scythia sat north of the Black Sea, in the vast grasslands known as the Pontic-Caspian steppe. This region spans most of southern and eastern Ukraine and the adjacent parts of Russia. The so-called Royal Scythians, the dominant ruling group, controlled territory around the Dnieper River valley and further east into the Donbas region. Researchers have placed their likely capital near the modern city of Kadievka in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, an area with ancient mining and metalworking traditions that supported Scythian power.
Thousands of burial mounds, called kurgans, still dot this landscape. Some of the most famous, including Chertomlyk, Solokha, and Kul-Oba, sit in what is now southern Ukraine and Russia’s Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. The Stavropol district alone contains thousands of Iron Age kurgans. These mounds held elaborate gold artifacts, weapons, and horse burials that define Scythian culture in the popular imagination.
The Western Edge: Romania and Bulgaria
A smaller territory called Scythia Minor (or Lesser Scythia) sat along the western Black Sea coast. This was a Roman province located in the southeastern Balkans, corresponding to the modern Dobruja region split between Romania and Bulgaria. While it was a relatively small piece of the broader Scythian world, it became the area most formally labeled “Scythia” on Roman-era maps, which is why the name sometimes gets associated specifically with the Balkans.
The Eastern Reaches: Central Asia and Beyond
The eastern branch of the Scythian world was dominated by peoples known as the Saka, sometimes called Eastern Scythians. Their territory was enormous. The main Saka groups lived in the steppe and highland zones east of the Caspian Sea, stretching across what is now Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. One group, the Massagetae, occupied the lowlands between the Caspian and Aral seas, including the Kyzylkum Desert and Ustyurt Plateau in modern Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Another group inhabited the Pamir Mountains and Ferghana Valley, straddling today’s Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Other Saka populations ranged even further. Some lived in the Ili and Chu river valleys of modern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Others spread into the Altai Mountains, Tuva, and Mongolia in southern Siberia. The kurgan at Tunnug 1 in Russia’s Tuva Republic is one of the earliest known Scythian-era royal burial mounds, and the famous Pazyryk burials sit in Russia’s Altai Republic. North Kazakhstan also contains monumental kurgans built for Scythian-era elites.
Saka groups eventually pushed south into Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India, settling in Kashmir and a region that became known as Sakastan (roughly modern Sistan, straddling Iran and Afghanistan). Others moved east into the Tarim Basin of China’s Xinjiang region, settling in oasis cities like Khotan and Kashgar along what would become the Silk Road.
A Quick Country List
Adding it all up, lands once controlled or inhabited by Scythian peoples fall within these modern countries:
- Core territory: Ukraine, southern Russia, Kazakhstan
- Western fringe: Romania, Bulgaria
- Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
- Eastern range: Mongolia, western China (Xinjiang)
- Southern migrations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, Iran
Who Carries the Scythian Genetic Legacy
DNA studies of ancient Scythian remains have produced a somewhat surprising answer to the question of where their descendants ended up. A 2025 study published in Science Advances found that Scythian ancestry is predominantly present in medieval and modern European populations rather than Asian ones. Among living people, the highest genetic overlap with ancient Scythians appears in Eastern Baltic populations (Lithuanians and Estonians) and northwestern Russians. This doesn’t mean those groups are “the Scythians” in any cultural sense, but it suggests that Scythian genetic contributions flowed primarily westward over the centuries.
Where Scythian Artifacts Are Today
The physical legacy of Scythia is scattered across major museums. The largest collections of Scythian goldwork sit in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the Hermitage Museum. Significant pieces are also held at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the Neues Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many of these artifacts, particularly elaborate gold plaques and ornaments, came from aristocratic tombs excavated in the Maikop region of Russia’s North Caucasus. Ukraine’s museums also held major Scythian collections, though the status of some artifacts has been complicated by the ongoing conflict.