The horsewomen of the steppes, contemporaries of the ancient Greeks and known as Amazons, certainly prepared and drank fermented milk on a daily basis. What other intoxicating substances were known to the
Peoples of Scythia? Saka-Scythian groups in Central Asia used haoma/ soma, a mysterious plant-based Persian/Indian intoxicant. Persian inscriptions from the time of Darius refer to as Saka haumavarga, “haoma-drinking Saka-Scythians” (the Amyrgioi tribe of Sogdiana-Bakria, led by Amorges in the time of Cyrus; see chapter 23). The identities of the sacred plants haoma and soma are unknown; candidates include mead, cannabis, Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) mushroom, ephedra, and opium.11
There is ancient literary evidence that some Scythians may have fermented honey into alcoholic mead. According to Pliny, in Pontus a very special wild honey of the Black Sea area was made into mead. The bees of Pontus collect neurotoxic nectar from the poisonous rhododendrons that grow in profusion there. The dangers of Pontic honey were recognized in antiquity. On their march through Pontus in 400 BC, for example, Xenophon’s army of ten thousand Greeks feasted on the honeycombs and suffered the dire effects of “mad honey.” In the first century BC during the Mithradatic Wars, a tribe of Pontus used the toxic honey as a bait to ambush and decimate Pompey’s Roman army. Tiny doses were (and still are) traditionally used by local people as an intoxicant and tonic. Some nomadic pastoralists even feed small quantities to their herds to strengthen them. Although the women warriors of Pon-tus surely were aware of the effects of their local wild rhododendron honey, no ancient source links them to it, and so far no archaeological evidence of toxic honey use has come to light.12
World History
