Quote Originally Posted by Watchman View Post
IIRC the Persians picked theirs up from their nomad cousins in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Dunno where the Thracians came up with it and if they picked it up from the Scythians and others drifting down the western Black Sea coast or not, but given that there were also Thracians in northwestern Asia Minor the quite useful form was presumably soon picked up by their various neighbours. The peculiar takabara "crescent shield spearmen" and "crescent shield archers" the Achaemenids began using in Asia Minor at least after the Persian Wars (presumably because such mobile light infantry was better suited to dealing with hoplites than the somewhat static "archer-pair" system) have been theorised by some authors to have been pretty much straight copypastas of some local hill tribes' war gear, and for that matter, probably largely consisted of said hill tribes working as mercenaries.
Good theory! Suomalainen dude!