These date to the 6th-5th centuries B.C.E., the period of the major royal Achaemenid inscriptions and shortly before the time when Herodotus (q.v., ca.
490–425), gave us his unforgettable account of this civilization. This culture was a stable one, rooted in a well-defined, if not already clearly delineated, geographical environment and this aspect distinguished it from steppe cultures, although it was not yet itself wholly sedentary.