More red-haired ancient tribes: the Budini

The Budini were an ancient Scythian tribe that lived in the valley of the Vorskla river (we’ll get back to Scythia in a following and more detailed post).

During the 6th century BC, the city of Gelonus was built in the country of the Budini, where the Gelonians set up an important industrial, commercial, and political centre. The Budini and Gelonians both lived in Gelonus, although each population lived in separate sections of the city: the Gelonians in the eastern earthwork, the Budini in the western earthwork. The Budini led a largely nomadic life and were dependent on hunting otters, beavers, and other animals, whose skin they used to make cloaks. It seems they engaged in ritual cannibalism.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus’s Histories is the main ancient source about the Budini. In Book IV, chapter 108 (or 109, depending on the edition) Herodotus mentions Budini’s red hair.

Here’s the Greek version along with the English translation.

Greek:

Βουδῖνοι δέ, ἔθνος ἐὸν μέγα καὶ πολλόν, γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς ἐστι καὶ πυρρόν.

γλαυκόν comes from γλαυκός (glaucòs) which means bluish green, blue, grey  This is the same root of a word like glaucoma.

πυρρόν comes from πυρρός (pyrròs) which means flame-coloured, red, tawny, yellowish red and it was also used for red-haired people  This is the same root of words such as pyromaniac or pyrotechnics.

English: 

The Budini are a large and powerful nation: they have all deep blue eyes and bright red hair.

Obviously, one could wonder how reliable Herodotus is, and, as a matter of fact, some historians claimed he never visited those lands, and that his work is based only on second-hand Greek sources.

However, according to this article, he was quite accurate. I quote from the conclusion:

“In summary, we can see that Hero­dotus gives relatively accurate descriptions of the way of life of the nomads who were in fairly close contact with the Greeks, as, for example, in his description of the burial process. But he is considerably more vague about details of tribes far away, where the evidence he had was hearsay and passed through many hands, as in his discussion of the Agrippaeans. He does, however, have a tendency to exaggerate, or to generalize from specific or unique observations. Nevertheless, from a comparison with currently available archaeological evidence, it is clear that Hero­dotus as an ethnographer was more often right than wrong.”

So, probably, not all Budini had red hair and blue eyes, but some of them did.

More posts about ancient redheads: The Yenisei Kyrgyz, More Red-Haired Ancient Tribes,  Did Genghis Khan and His Son Have Red Hair?, The Tarim Mummies, The Red-Haired Mummies of Peru and Chile, Pliny's Natural History and red hair (maybe).