During the first millennium BC, Iranian speaking tribes overflowed the steppes of Eurasia, from the Carpathian Mountains to the Sinic Walls, and created a civilizatiom common to all of them which is known to us as the Scythian. Works of art, astonishing in number and wealth, most of them in gold, have been found in tombs, fortified settlements and Greek colonies. Objects made of sensitive materials, cloth, wool and fur that would normally have hardly been kept from decay were kept preserved by the Siberian ice in the tombs of Altai.