who drank from the skulls of their enemies
Skull cup According to Herodotus' Histories, Scythians killed their enemies and made their skulls into drinking cups. The oldest record in the Chinese annals of the skull-cup tradition dates from the last years of the Spring and Autumn period, when the victors of the Battle of Jinyang in 453 BC made the skull of their enemy into a winecup.[3] Later, the Records of the Grand Historian recorded the practice among the ancient Xiongnu of present-day Mongolia. Laoshang (or Jizhu), son of the Xiongnu chieftain Modu Chanyu, killed the king of the Yuezhi around 162 BC, and in accordance with their tradition, "made a drinking cup out of his skull".[4] According to the biography of the envoy Zhang Qian in Han shu[5] the drinking cup made from the skull of the Yuezhi king was later used when the Xiongnu concluded a treaty with two Han ambassadors during the reign of Emperor Yuan (49-33 BC). To seal the convention, the Chinese ambassadors drank blood from the skull cup with the Xiongnu chiefs.