Talk:Arimaspi

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"Perhaps the Arimaspians were early Huns, or steppe Indo-Europeans linked to Scythians, most likely." Fatuous. Perhaps this point in the article would be an opportune moment to restate the fact that we're talking about griffin-fighting Cyclopes here, folks. Huns and Scythians, Finns and Inuit have existed, but none were remotely Arimaspi. I do detect the urgency in this silly sentence; it is entirely contained in "Indo-Europeans", is it not? Soccer-stadium paleoethnology. -Wetman 21:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Wetman, similar statements proliferate in the articles about other northern tribes mentioned by Herodotus, e.g., Issedones. I removed the controversial assertion and added some interesting details. --Ghirla^-трёп- 12:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

We can't be selectively taking Herodotus' tall tales as ethnology in such cases, by the simple expedient of selectively reading out those details we find not to be credible: "one-eyed" and "griffin-fighters" are two essential characteristics of a wholly imaginary people, the Arimaspi. Identifying "Arimaspi" with some particular and historic people living in the same general area, exotically distant from the Greek perspective, is not sound methodology. The statement "perhaps the Arimaspians were early Huns, or steppe Indo-Europeans linked to Scythians, most likely, is unwarranted and empty. Your edits have rectified the issue; hope you'll think my minor tweaks are improvements: if not, re-edit! --Wetman 14:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Wetman, your edits are very appropriate, as usual. It is ridiculous to brand an obscure tribe mentioned by Herodotus as the ancestors of modern Hungarians, or Bashkyrs, or Turks. There is no lack of such claims, as you probably know. Faulty methodology inevitably leads to amusing results. Machinsky sounds as a crackpot when he links their only eye to the chakra ajna and proclaims the Arimaspi a stray Indo-Iranian tribe of Inner Asia! --Ghirla^-трёп- 15:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)