The Scythians were famous for inventing a chariot with rotating scythes on their chariot wheels that could mow down solders in battle and wheat in peacetime. It was the first convertible car.
The Greek word for "scythe" was drepanon or drepane. Xenophon mentions the use of scythe-bearing (drepanephoros) chariots in the battle of Cunaxa.
Darius I campaigned against Scythians in southeastern Europe about 513 B.C. (the campaign is described at some length in Herodotus). Their language was part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.
Medieval Buddhist manuscripts have been found in Chinese Turkestan with two Indo-European languages, known as Tocharian A and Tocharian B, now extinct, that are closely related to each other and resemble the languages of Europe (the "centum" languages) more than the Indo-Iranian or Slavic languages (the "satem" languages) which were geographically closer to them.