Siberian and European hyperboreans as related by Herodotus - literary myth or echo of historical reality?

The information provided by Herodotus and Aristeas of Proconnesus suggests that the “Siberian” Hyperboreans did not participate in the waves of the steppe (and possibly forest-steppe) migrations led to the relocation-resettlement of the “Asiatic” Scythians to the Caucasian-Pontic areas. If to take the literary vision as a historical fact, the “Siberian” Hyperboreans must be regarded as a settled ethnos in the forest or forest-steppe zone or they probably dwelt on its fringes. Herodotus also mentioned legendary Hyperboreans (people from “beyond the North Wind”): the anonymous ethnos dwelled in the northernmost reaches of the known world, who offered, by the intermediary of the “Scythians”, their sacred gifts wrapped "in a straw of wheat" to the Apollo’s oracle of Delos. The only logical conclusion is suggestion that these “Scythians” were not Pontic (true) Scythians, but communities with a Scythoidal model (including “Median costume”) of from the Hungarian Plain (knows as Sigynnae), archaeologically represented as the Vekerzug culture. The European Hyperboreans were probably a settled people, agriculturalists neighboured with the “Scythians”. The route leading through the central Balkans to the Aegean Sea allowed transferring commodities and information. So, Sigynnae were regarded in Greece as “Scythians”. The cultural distinctness of the Central European nomadic enclave was evidenced by the images of an archer in a Median costume on a belt fitting from Molnik, and of pointed headdresses of Sigynnae chariots drivers in the racing scenes from the Kufern and Bologna-Arnoaldi situlas. The well-evidenced by archaeological and written sources communication route, crossed the Hallstatt communities lands in the south-eastern Alpine foothills and the Eneti/Veneti on the Adriatic coast, and which to some extent was also controlled by the Sigynnae, was used to send gifts from the Hyperboreans to Delos. The most probable identification of the Hyperboreans contacted with the Delos oracle is the communities dwelt to the north of the Carpathian Arc the Vistula and Oder area. Archaeologically it is the Lusatian culture. The communities subsistence based primarily on cereal farming (whose traditions were still deeply rooted in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield model) seems to fit the symbolism of the sacrifice to the remote Delos sanctuary. In the 6^th-5^th cc. BC they were connected with the Vekerzug culture bearers by the routes leading to the Baltic Sea. This implies not only the awareness of the existence of cult places of supra-regional status in the Mediterranean world inherent in the population of the Vistula and Oder Basins, but also the recognition of common religious values. The Mediterranean and "barbarian" parts of Europe then constituted a cultural unity with mutual dependence, which strength decreased with distance from the "centers". The state of geographical and cultural consciousness and the scale of the interpenetration of both worlds were probably much greater than can be judged by the quantity and cognitive potential of the preserved "imported" items - material archaeological traces of the mutual interest of these worlds.

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