Talk:Scythians

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[edit] Language

''The Scythians (/'sɪθɪən/, also /'sɪðɪən/) or Scyths (/'sɪθs/[1]; from Greek Σκύθης), a nation of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who spoke an Iranian language... Should this be, "Indo-Iranian language...?" That is how I've always seen it referred to anyway. Just curious. Woland37 13:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] What needs to be fixed: an enumeration

I see that since I haven't written here for some days, Ali has decided that is grounds enough to accuse other people of being my double.

I'm going to start an enumeration of all the flaws of this article, which unfortunately are very numerous. I think it's worth starting by restating that paragraph from the Wikipedia NPOV guidelines: "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions."

1. "The Scythians spoke a ... language"

Even if one uses the narrowest possible definition of Scythians (the Pontic Scythians plus the Saka), and even if one accepts, despite the total lack of evidence, that all Scythians spoke related languages, they clearly must have spoken multiple languages, not a single common language.

2. "The Scythians spoke ... Indo-European language"

This is disputed, both by agnostics like myself and by proponents of other theories, but here is presented as fact. It is also given undue weight, appearing in the first paragraph although any identification of any Scythian language is inherently speculative given they are all extinct and there are no surviving texts. It is also unsourced.

3. "Scholars generally classify the Scythian language as a member of the East Iranian branch"

Most scholars, of course, work in unrelated fields and don't bother themselves with this question. The group we are concerned with here are : "Scholars who have studied the Scythians". Furthermore, it is not true that the members of that group "generally accept" that the Scythian language can be classified as East Iranian. Some reject the theory, and others are agnostic because of the lack of evidence. It is true that the most popular theory among scholars on Scythian language classifies it as Iranic.

4. "Scholars generally classify ... the Scythians as a branch of the Ancient Iranian peoples expanding into Greater Iran from around 1000 BCE.

This is an excellent example of how the Iranian nationalist activists who have hjiacked this page twist and mischaracterize the views of the very scholars they cite as sources. Most supporters of the Iranian Scythian theory believe the proto-Iranians originated in central Asia and that the Scythians represent a branch who stayed behind after the Iranians migrated south into Iran.

5. "According to Professor Sulimirski [3] , Herodotus provides a broadly correct depiction but apparently knew little of the eastern part of Scythia."

Sulimirski's views are not enlightening and are given undue weight.

6. According to Herotodus the ancient Perians called all the Scyths "Saca" (Herodotus .VII 64).

Persians.

7. (The Scythians') principal tribe, the Royal Scyths, ruled the vast lands occupied by the nation as a whole (Herodotus .IV 20); and they called themselves Skolotoi.

No, according to Herodotus, the Pontic Scythians (those living west of the Don) called themselves Skolotoi, and the dominant group among them were the Royal Scythians. Herodotus does not say or imply that the Royal Scythians ruled over the Saka or had any dominion east of the Don. Herodotus does not say or imply that the Saka called themselves Skolotoi.

8. "Professor Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymology of the word Scyth in his work "Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian - Skudra - Sogdian - Saka". [4].

This "etymology" is given very very too much weight, as it is completely speculative, which furthermore needs to be pointed out. The equation of Sogdian with Scythian and Saka is especially odd - no ancient writer suggested that the Sogdians were related to Scythians or Saka.

7. "The Scythians first appeared in the historical record in the beginning of the first millennium."

The earliest surviving *probable* written reference to the Scythians, to the Iskuza, is in the Assyrian chronicles from the reign of King Esarhaddon, 681-669 BC.

8. "According to some scholars they have been living there since time immemorial. [5]"

This appears to be another case of an Iranian nationalist activist distorting the views of the scholars he cites. It's not clear, but I suppose this is an attempt to suggest that there is a group of scholars who believe the Scythians had lived in "greater Iran" since time immemorial? I haven't read the one scholar cited, and I don't know who the others of the "some scholars" might be, but I feel pretty safe in declaring that no gainfully employed scholar believes the Scythians lived in "greater Iran" since "time immemorial".

Moreover, even if Szmerenyi's views were correctly represented, they are given too much weight here.

9. The Herodotus quote beginning: "The nomadic tribes of Scythians ..."

This quote is garbled. It deserves to be included, prominently and correctly.

10. There is no mention that the most popular theory among modern scholars of the Scythians is that they originated somewhere in the steppe areas of Central Asia or Russia.

11. There is no mention in the origins section that the oldest archaeological find credibly identified as Scythian (by the scholars at the Hermitage) is in Russia's Tuva region, north of Mongolia (the Arzhan site).

12. There is no mention in the origins section of the Pontic Scythians' legend of their own origins, according to which the Scythians were descended from the Dnipro river goddess, which suggests that in Herodotus's time the Pontic Scythians had no memory of living anywhere else.

13. "Around 770 BCE ... the (Ishkuza) (led by Ishpaki ...) in alliance with the Mannaens attacked Assyria."

The date is a century off, the attack occurred and was recorded during Esarhaddon's reign in 689-661 BC.

14. "... the Scythians (led by Ishpaki ...) in alliance with the Mannaens attacked Assyria. The group first appears in Assyrian annals under the name Ishkuzai."

This needs to be rewritten to make clear that the Assyrians were attacked by a people they called "Ishkuza", who can probably be equated with Scythians. It would be good to include the main evidence for this equation: the Assyrian text mentions that Esarhaddon later made an alliance with the Ishkuza prince "Partatua" against Medes, and according to Herodotus, about a generation later, a Scythian army led by a son of "Prtotohyes" invaded Medes.

15. "(led by Ishpaki — Old Iranian *Spakaaya)"

It is not appropriate to weave such speculative etymologies into the main text of the article, which implies that they are factual and gives them far too much weight. They can be included (sourced) in a section, but more appropriately in the "Scythian language" page

16. "Subsequent mention of Scythians in Babylonian ... texts ..."

I'm not aware of any Babylonian sources referring to Scythians and none are cited. I'd be glad to know if there are any.

17. "Subsequent mention of Scythians in ... Assyrian texts occurs in connection with Media."

The only surviving Assyrian text referring to probable Scythians (the Ishkuza) is the chronicle of Esarhaddon's reign mentioned above. The author is apparently referring to the mention of Esarhaddon's alliance with the Ishkuza prince Partatua against Media. I suspect this is more twisting by Iranian nationalist activists: instead of telling us the story, that the Assyrians made an alliance with the Ishkuza against Media, the author only wants us to know that "a mention of Scythians ... occurs in connection with Media" -- apparently he thinks this will help subtly build the case for an Iranian-Scythian community and not distract readers with the inconvenient (for him) truth that the "connection" referred to was of hostile neighbors.

18. "Herodotus ... classes the Cimmerians as a ... autochthonous tribe"

Herodotus does not say or imply that the Cimmerians were "autochthonous". He merely says the Cimmerians were living on the north side of the Pontus before the Scythians arrived. Herodotus doesn't say anything about how long he believed the Cimmerians had been there. Besides, it wouldn't matter much if he did - he wouldn't be a reliable source for something so ancient. Besides, this isn't the place to worry about how long the Cimmerians had been in the north Pontic steppes.

19. "Throughout his work Herodotus specifically distinguished between the nomadic Scythians in the south and the agricultural Scythians to the north.[citation needed]"

Corrections, not a citation, are needed. Firstly, to delete the words: "Throughout his work", as the distinction is made only once. Secondly, to clarify that Herodotus placed the Scythian cultivators in a pocket some way up the Dnipro river, not in a band along the Black Sea coast, as the version above implies. Thirdly, to add that, according to Herodotus, the agricultural Scythians "grow grain not for their own use, but for sale" - which is important, as it implies they had recently learned to farm specifically for the purpose of trading with the Greeks.

20. "When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor in present-day Romania and Bulgaria from a Greater Scythia ..."

No, the Scythia Minor south of the Danube did not exist in Herodotus's time. Herodotus refers only to Scythia, never to Greater Scythia, nor to Scythia Minor.

Whew! Twenty is enough to start. What a mess. To be continued, when I have time. TAWarner 20:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why Iranian?

It appears to me that the Wikipedia administration is not being objective by placing this article under the umbrella of "WikiProject Iran". The hypothesis that Scythians spoke an Iranian language is controversial and unproven. The only proven connections that Scythians have to Iran is that they lived nearby and interacted with Iran, and spent some time as subjects of the Persian empire. Since the main group of people known as Scythians lived in Ukraine, it seems strange that the Scythians page has been designated by Wikipedia as Russia-related, Central Asia-related and Iran-related, but not as Ukraine-related.

This bias toward hypothetical Iran connection has apparently encouraged a surplus of speculation about Scythians' possible links to Iranians and discouraged objective contributions about who the Scythians were and what their role was in history. I think an encyclopedia ought to be conservative in the main body of the article, and relegate any speculation to the end of the article. Trying to identify the Scythian language is inherently speculative. The first and most important thing to say about the Scythian language is that it is unknown (all we have are about ten alleged Scythian words translitered into Greek, which show no obvious similarity to Iranian or any other language). The hypothesis that Scythians spoke an Iranian language is surely popular enough to be included and discussed, but it should be a short section near the bottom of the page.

I think what was meant by Mr Fourteenfootnotesinarow was that the majority of scholars *who have attempted to identify the Scythian language* have identified it as an Iranian language. That is inherently a small pool as mainstream linguists do not attempt to identify languages for which there is no linguistic record. And please leave the vast majority of scholars out of this, unless you're proposing to poll a bunch of physicists, sociologists and professors of literature on the taxonomy of lost languages.

I suggest this page and the closely related "Scythia" and "Scythian language" should be reorganized into three separate pages.

1) an overview of Scythians in the broad sense. I think "Scythia" and "Scythians" should both link to this broad page. this would be an overview page that briefly describes most of the various peoples who have been called "Scythians" or something like it (the Ashkuzi of Assyrian sources, the Scythians who invaded Medea, the Massagetae, the Saka, the Scythians of Ukraine, the Sarmats, some others). Naturally this overview would link to the separate pages that already exist for Saka, Massagetae, Sarmats, etc. This page would also include a broad discussion of archaeology for these groups. It would also include a small section about the former use of the name "Scythia" as a geographical term roughly corresponding to Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia. The discussion of language should be greatly shortened, moved to the bottom and link for further discussion to the language page.

2) a separate page about the Scythians of Ukraine and southern Russia. These are the Scythians that we known the most about, which left behind the most archaeological data. The material in the current "Scythia" page that relates particularly to the Scythian kingdoms of Ukraine would be included in this page

3) most of the material that relates to language would be moved to the "Scythian language" page. this should be topped off with a short introduction that makes clear that we have nearly no information about the Scythian language but nonetheless there is a very lively debate about what it might have been like, and the most popular hypothesis is the Iranian hypothesis, and here's why. (By the way, I think the key argument has been left out: the tie-in with the Kurgan hypothesis. The main argument traditionally put forward for a Scythian-Iranian link is that Indo-Iranians hypothetically immigrated south out of Scythian lands). For fairness' sake the other hypotheses (Turkic, Uralic, Slavic, Tokhari) should be mentioned too, and in a fair way, but nothing more than a sentence or two. We don't want the Wikipedia entry to turn into a sort of discussion forum, which we should do here. User:TAWarner

Actually you can add wiki project ukraine. Linguistic identification of Scythians are pretty sound and are based on names (Aripharnes, Ariantes, Ariamanes..) as well Khotanese Saka materials. Amongst scholars there is no lively debate, but amongst amatuer nationalists I guess everything has to be a contention. But since Wikipedia follows scholarly based articles (Britannica, journals, books written by scholars who have published profusely in peer reviewed journals..) then the information is based on that. --alidoostzadeh 00:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree to the writer above this article flaws in giving a neutral scientific view. The ethnic identity of Scythians is not as certain as the writers of this article suggest, in fact this assumption is based on speculation and ambiguous evidence. This article adheres way too much to one point of view, flouting all other possibilities to prevail as the one and only truth.

For instance, in this phrase the existence of scholarly based articles is both admitted and scorned at:

"Although some scholars sought to connect the Pazyryk nomads with indigenous ethnic groups of the Altay, Rudenko summed up the cultural context in the following dictum:"

However, the dictum that followed merely places the archeological findings within a certain period and does not support the writers view concerning the identification of any specific ethnic group:

"All that is known to us at the present time about the culture of the population of the High Altay, who have left behind them the large cairns, permits us to refer them to the Scythian period, and the Pazyryk group in particular to the fifth century BC. This is supported by radiocarbon dating."

In my opinion this should be rectified throughout the article. Thanks! Rokus01 20:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Scythian language is pretty certain. Middle Scythian or Saka Khotanese has well defined literature. So archeology is not the only thing at work here. Names likes Aripharnes, Ariantes, Ariamanes ..mentioned by Greek sources for Scythians have their direct counter-part in Old Persian (the same basically). In Wikipedia we follow what scholars of the field who have published on the matter say. That is the neutral scientific view. (Check Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge history on Iran, Central Asian studies..) etc.--alidoostzadeh 03:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I checked the Britannica and indeed they are pretty explicit in their conclusions. However, I have read older editions of very sofisticated encyclopedia's with similar explicit statements that proved to be wrong. In reality there is a mix up between people and culture. I don't think it a very scientific custom to identify archeological strata with a homogeneous people, especially not where it involves such a huge area - from eastern europe to mongolia and south to Afghanistan and Iran - that has only been in contact with history on two edges. Influence of Greece and Persia was huge, like the Roman influence on Germanic tribes (resulting in Latin names like Claudius Civilis) and just the observation those Scythian names are almost exactly Old Persian should make us wary. So they spoke Old Persian and not even their own Iranian dialect or -language? At least a sound degree of heterogenity within the Scythian culture has been suggested by several scholars, a few remarkable non -Indo-European characteristics have been observed and especially more inside this vast area the picture becomes blurred. Few is known about the Pazyryk culture, but as long as local continuity can't be excluded full identification of something outlandish is tricky. Especially because we don't know enough about the previous Indo-European migrations towards the area, already represented with the far older blond mummies around the Tarim. The Indo-Europeans that passed there before were certainly more related to boring things like agriculture and small farming than horseriding, were not Scythian and eventually mixed with the locals. I don't mind the ten or twenty books or sources mentioned here that take for granted the Iranian identity of the Scythians, one aping the other (as far as we can speak of one political unity and excluding the posibility of a misnomer like "indians" or "tartarian" for a people that basically didn't relate to anything else known to the observers); I do mind the scientific base of such an assumption. This base is not as solid as assumed in this article, and the proof is not as abundant. At least the base of such an assumption should be outlined in a separate paragraph. Kind regards, Rokus01 18:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not true that there is no debate among scholars. The main debate is between supporters of the kurgan hypothesis of Indo-European origins, who tend to believe that Scythians were Iranian or at least Indo-European, and supporters of the Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins, who are generally agnostic about the language spoken by the Scythians. On the fringes, there is of course a much more lively debate between Iranian nationalists who believe Indo-European languages originated in Iran, and Turkish nationalists who somehow manage to trace their roots through the Scythians back to Sumeria. Unfortunately this latter debate seems to have dominated Wikipedia till now, and the Iranian nationalists are apparently celebrating their victory. Personally I'm agnostic.

The web edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica does indeed say that Scythians were "of Iranian stock", but on what grounds? I presume, on the grounds of the kurgan hypothesis.

I repeat, there is no surviving linguistic material for Scythian language(s), other than the handful of words reported by Herodotus, which are not similar to any language, and some reported names of Scythian kings, the vast majority of which are not similar to any Persian names and do not contain any obvious Persian word components.

If there's a "well developed literature" in Scythian than my name is Borat. There are no known texts written in any Scythian language, neither early, middle or late. Zero. None. There are a few inscriptions which *might* be in a Scythian language, such as the Issyk Kul inscription, but they have not been deciphered by any mainstream scholar. No one knows what language they are written in. There are also some 50 non-Greek words that appear in Greek inscriptions in Ukraine and Russia, which *might* be borrow words from Scythian languages, or *might* be Scythian names, but there is no way to know what they are, and certainly no way to decipher them. The only certain record of a language that might be considered Scythian is the 15th century Jasz word book, recording a language spoken by a steppe people who fled before the Mongols to Hungary in the 13th century. They spoke a language extremely similar to Ossetian (a mix of Iranian and Caucasian plus some Turkic words), indicating a likely origin from the north Caucasus region.

No linguist has identified any Scythian language in any peer-reviewed journal. That won't happen until somebody finds some linguistic material that would serve as a basis for identification. The sources cited by the author are either not peer-reviewed, or are not linguists. Many mainstream Indo-Europeanists believe Scythians were Iranian on the basis of the kurgan hypothesis of Indo-European origins, but none have put forward any direct evidence that Scythians were Iranian.

"Saka Khotanese" is an invention of a fringe academic (Harmatta), which he uses to describe the language he believes he sees in the Issyk Kul inscription. Although the short Issyk Kul inscription looks runeiform, he imagines that it is a version of the curvy north Indian Kharosthi script that was used by Indo-Saka kings on one side of their coins (to write a Prakrit language - all surviving Indo-Saka writing is either Greek or Prakrit). Even if Harmatta were right, one twenty-character inscription would hardly constitute a "well developed literature".

If the names cited (Aripharnes, Ariantes, Ariamanes) give support to the Iranian hypothesis, they should be in the article on Scythian language, with citations. But as best I know, Aripharnes was the king of the Thataeans living in the Kuban region c. 300 BC, who fought on foot and were routed by Scythian cavalry fighting with the Bosporan Greeks (see Diodorus Siculus). And that's about all we know of the Thataeans. They don't sound so Scythian to me, and one king with a Persian-sounding name is suggestive but not convincing. I don't know who Ariantes and Ariamanes were (sources please). TAWarner 22:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Funny, multiple user names just created.. Barefact, it won't work. Britannica is year 2006. If they are wrong, it is not up to you to wikipedia editors to decide. Sakanese Khotanese has tons of literature studied by Bailey [1] way before Hermatta!!!! [2]. And Hermatta is very well known unlike this world and that world web sites and psuedo-scholars there in. Thus you made a major lie/mistake here and claimed Saka Khotanese was invented based on the Issyk Kul inscription!! As per linguistics and Scythians, there is tons of articles from Western scholars and they are mentioned in the article. As per Ariantes and Aripharnes, you are wrong. As per Linguistic evidence there is sufficient amount of it and it is in the book of Zgusta as well as Saka Khotanese and Alanic (through the writings mentioned by Christian Priests). Ariantes [3]. Aripharnes (AriaFaran in Parthian) [4] (had recourse to the assist­ance of Aripharnes, king of one of the neighbouring Scythian tribes,). Note this is not a debate about Scythian origin. We quote major scholars and sources (britannica). If you are not convinced by these scholars and sources, then write in a peer-reviewed journal and criticize them and then if your arguments are valid, then they will change their arguments. And note settled populations have also given into nomadism in history as well, specially when cities were destructed. And right now I can name lots of nomadic Indo-European speakers in Iran for example Baluchis, Kuchis of Pashtu tribe, Bakhtiaris. One nomadic tribe of Laks is actually called Sakavand where vand is used for tribe in Iran.. And using multiple names is against Wikipedia..
Although not necessary and I do not need to prove anything, but for other users information. The etymology of such scythians words as Api is discussed by well known scholars (Rayevsky, Dumezil, Abayev, Nyberg..) etc. Enareis is directly the Middle Persian An-nar and it has the same meaning in Scythian. Herodotus says: The effeminate Enareis. Nar means Male in modern persian and also ancient Scythian. An-Nar/A-Nar means exactly effeminate where the A is used as negatation in both Middle Persian and other and Nar means masculine. Thus Enareis means exactly effeminate in Iranian languages(Herodotus 4.67). See the book: The Supreme Gods of the Bosporan Kingdom: celestial Aphrodite and the most high God By Yulia Ustinova by Yulia Ustinova (1999) where Scythian etymology of their pantheons and their religious terms are discussed and given clear Iranian etymologies. Note once you convince Britannica and all the scholars in the world, then you can convince in Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is not a debate club. --alidoostzadeh 02:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting what you say about facts and interpretation of facts by scolars, so why not mention these in this article? Just give an overview of facts and in depth (relevant)interpretations (from relevant sources you mention) and I'll be more than happy. What doesn't interest me is truth taken for granted. Proclaimed truth just isn't scientific enough and ugly to me. Worse, it might be politics. Moreover, I don't think any encyclopedia should be taken as a source to copy from. It's always better to go back to the primary sources and Britannica, however nice to read when in a hurry or searching for a quick reference, is no such thing. Rokus01 13:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Please review the Wikipedia neutral point of view page. I reproduce here the first paragraph:

"The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions."

The popular but disputed view that all the various peoples called "Scythian" all spoke Iranian languages is in this article both asserted as truth and given undue weight. This article gives the impression that there are surviving records of Scythian languages that allows them to be definitely identified, when in fact, there are only a handful of words of the Scythians of Ukraine and several dozen proper names from all the various "Scythian" groups, and these taken as a whole do not have any obvious affinity with any language. This bias needs to be corrected.

The other bias in this article is that it aims to present a picture of the Scythians emanating from Iran, which is not the popular view. The popular view is in line with the kurgan hypothesis, according to which the proto-Indo-Iranians moved into Iran and India from Central Asia, and the Scythians represent a branch who stayed behind. I don't agree with the popular view - personally, I favor something like the Anatolian theory, but I don't have any preference for Anatolia over Iran or India as the hypothetical urheimat. Nevertheless, the kurgan hypothesis is the most popular view, and it is essential to understanding the popularity of the theory that Scythians spoke Iranian languages.

On the question of "Khotanese Saka", I stand corrected. The term was indeed invented by Bailey, not Harmatta, and refers to the medieval Iranian language found in excavations around Khotan and Tumshuq, which others call simply "Khotanese". I give all due credit to Bailey for his work deciphering the language, but his belief that the people of Khotan were descended from Saka is unfounded. According to the Han annals, a part of the Sakas, under pressure from the Yuezhi and Hsiung Nu, migrated into the area northwest of Kashgar: "The Sak were scattered, and at times formed several kingdoms. Northwest of Soo-lih (Kashgar) the Heu-seun, Keuen-tuh, and consanguineous nations are all descendants of the ancient Sak". This would have been sometime in the first half of the second century BC, by which time the Khotan region was, at the very least, developed enough to be exporting jade (see the Guan-Zi). The areas northwest of Kashgar are inherently lightly populated mountain vales. The only other potential evidence of Saka contribution to the population in the vicinity of Khotan is the fact that a village near Niya was named Saka. Moreover, it is unlikely that the nomad Sakas would influence the language of Khotan. To this day there is a clear ethnic separation between the settled Uyghur and "Tajik" (Sarikoli) agriculturalists in the region's oases towns and villages, and the Kyrgyz nomads, who do not come near Khotan, as it is nestled between desert and barren mountains which do not support nomad life (see Marc Aurel Stein "Ancient Khotan"). The most logical assumption would be that Iranian-speaking agriculturalists migrated into the region from Ferghana and/or Kashmir at some date very much earlier than the 2nd century BC Saka immigration, and that those early agriculturalist immigrants formed the linguistic majority and passed on their language, in the case of the Sarikoli "Tajiks", to this day.

On the question of Aripharnes, king of the Thataeans, no, I am correct. I repeat, see Diodorus Siculus. You have pointed me to a summary of Diodorus Siculus by a modern author, who substitutes "one of the Scythian tribes" for Diodorus Siculus's "Thataeans".

Thanks for the source on Ariantes, I agree that name taken by itself makes a good candidate for being of Iranian orgigin, but it is only one of about twenty known names of Ukrainian Scythians, most of which do not appear Iranian. I'm sure at least one of twenty Iranian names could be construed as similar to Chinese, or Tamil, or whatever.

As for the other etymologies eg An-nar/Enareis, you are frankly starting to sound very much like the Pan-Turkists you so love to loathe. Does it really make sense to you that a person described as effeminate would have a name that meant "effeminate"? In my experience, real life is not so Dickensian.

Was it really necessary to accuse me of "lying"? And what is this hysterical claim that I'm actually another user named "Barefact" in disguise? TAWarner are my real initials and name, I'm a well-known journalist based in Kiev, I have never had any other Wikipedia user name. Regards, TAWarner 00:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You can make up all the stuff you want as I do not have time. Facts are that you are not scholar and wikipedia will reflect scholarly opinion. By the way read the above carefully, an-nar is not the name of a person, but an effeminate class in scythian society. --alidoostzadeh 03:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Strange, considering todays revert some people here seem to be keen on their outspoken point of view, without supplying any scientific explanation or distance. I don't know the person who did this, just that this Marmoulak reverted without discussion and - according to the complaints already filed on his own discussion page - probably out of habit. Since I supplied to the article some valid context information about the archeological identification of the Scythians, retrieved from a source already well known to the participants, I've undone the revert. If necessary anybody can discuss this here, or extend the information with relevant linguistic facts. Regards, Rokus01 11:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The article is sourced by 14 Professors and you have to refer to their article. If you do not have those sources, no one is responsible in wikipedia to expalin them to you to satisfy your curiosity. Go to a library and obtain them. You do not have the necessary background to make decision about origins of Scythians, since you are not a qualified academic to do so. The information is provided is in many sources, and it is not up to you to make a judgment about it since you lack the scholarly credentials to do so. As per linguistic facts, see the scythian language article, some of the information has been provided in the articles referenced (Zgusta, Oswlad Szemerényi..). If you do not have the necessary academic and linguistic background, you can not just make an opinion. If you do not have access to the sources provided, it not up to other users to take materials from there and put it here. Although in due time, this might happen, but it is not necessary. Multi user names will not help either. Also Tocharian is related to the Centum languages. And provide a page from mallory for any claims. I have his book right now.--alidoostzadeh 12:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ali, this is no way to discuss with people. There's no point in accusing me of crazy things like multi-user, like you seem to accuse TAWarner too. Ask Barefact, or administration, not me. Stick to the facts, to me you are wrong, you still didn't answer anything nor didn't you show scientific skills. Nice you have this book of Mallory in front of you, then read it instead of reverting first! Since you have a flawed way to read facts anyway and you didn't answer mine nor other calls, I will repeat my contribution below for a third party opinion. Rokus01 15:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a big bunch of doubts and suspicions in Indo-Iranian origins of Scythian and theory itself. First of all I can't understand why most of respectable western scientists with strong reputations are so inflexible & adamant-like in their assurance that Scythians & Sakae are Indo-Iranians. Rejection of new theories and hypotesises is not scientific kind of attitude. Second, why scientists and professors that disagree with this particular theory and that consider Scythians more likely to be turkic or at least somehow related to turkic rather than iranian are being labeled as "pan-turkists" or unscientifical fabricators. This is a big mistake, mistake that may have high costs for modern theorists.
I found Indo-Iranian theory unacceptable, this is why:
1 - If the Scythians and Sarmatians were Persian-lingual, then the Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Chinese etc. ancient historians could not fail to address it, in fact they knew well both the Persians, and the Scythians-Sarmatians. In the descriptions of these peoples they necessarily would somehow note the similarity or affinity of the Persian and the "Scythian" languages. But we do not find even a hint on it in the ancient writers? At the same time there are many cases of identification of the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans with various Türkic-speaking tribes. (M.Zakiyev)
2 - Why didn't Herodotus mention similarities between horse-breeding Scythians and civilized, settled Persians?
3 - How Scythians could have straight brown ('indo-european') and sometimes even ginger & blond hair and pale skins by living in such arid desert and steppe while all persians, according to archaeological findings were dark-skinned with curly black hair?
4 - A crucial role in the Indo-Iranian attribution is given to Veda. Everywhere, where the Caucasian remains are found, works the irrefutable logical chain of the site-artifact-Veda-Iranian language. The Caucasians are determined by their noses. A flat face produces a Mongoloid, and a flaring nose produces a Caucasian, invariably an Iranian/Ossetian speaking. An Iranian Caucasian, taking a Mongoloid wife, produces a Caucasian Iranian/Ossetian speaking male offspring, and a Mongoloid daughter of unattributable descent. The expeditions, investigating the Scythian territories, like a lasting Khoresmian Expedition, invariably discover a layer of the Caucasian Iranian speaking stock, proving over again the Ossetian nature of the Scythians. Never mind that Ammianus called the Persians subnigri. Never mind that the definitely Europoid Scythians were often depicted with thin beards (H. Schoppa 1933, 21-22). In 443 AD the Alans of Sapaudia (Lyon) showed a Mongoloid strain. Never mind individuals of the South Siberian type were among the Sarmatians at Kalinovka in the Volga region. There must be Iranian black subnigri and white subnigri, Iranian Mongoloids and Iranian South Siberians. They've got to fit the Iranian doctrine. And like in the other instances, most of the Slavic ends were frequently produced using non-Slavic people in the service of the Slavic-dominated state.
5 - Generations of scientists of all disciplines participated in the Russian Scythian studies. Initially, the Indo-European classification of the Scythians had a weak justification, and it had to develop against the accepted beliefs based on the evidence of the contemporaries. At the same time, it was fitting well into the German and Russian nationalist agenda, providing a pedigree of traceability extending beyond the Bronze Age. In the last 160 years, which passed since 1837, was developed the linguistical and anthropological evidence necessary to convert a maverick idea into a postulate widely accepted by the scientific community.
6 - In ancient sources we are finding the meanings of some Scythian words, sometimes there are attempts to etymologize them. However the comments of the ancient sources frequently do not give in to be explained from the viewpoint of the Iranian languages. Then the Iranists just save the face and simply declare that the ancient Greek historians, including Herodotus, ostensibly did not know the Scythian language. Here is a paradox for you: the contemporaries of the Scythians, who communicated with them directly, did not have an idea about the character of the Scythian language, but our contemporaries-scientists present it precisely!! Thus, recognizing Herodotus as an outstanding historian and ethnographer, they consider him to be a frivolous linguist [Boruhovich V.G., 1972, 482, 493]. There is no doubt that if the Herodotus' etymologies were subjected to the study from the viewpoint of polyethnicity of the Scythian tribes, the scientific diligence of Herodotus, and the soundness of his linguistic descriptions of the Scythian peoples, would surely prove to be true. (M.Zakiyev)
7 - Analyzing the archeological and modern materials, the works of other scientists, I.M.Miziev specifically unfolds 15 Scytho-Türkic arheological and ethnological parallels:
1) Method of milking mares with a help of a bone tubule like a flute;
2) Method of cooking meat in stomachs of animals;
3) In the first legend about the origin of the Scythians during the Targitai reign to the Scythian ground from the sky fall gold subjects: a plough, a yoke, a poleaxe and a bowl [Herodotus, B. 4, 5] which coincide with the Balkarian names of constellations;
4) Scythian method of a fortune-telling on willow rods and
5) Scythian method of a fortune-telling on linden loofah were both preserved at Balkarians;
6) Method of forming kurgans (barrows - Translator's Note) (even the word "kurgan" is the Türkic "structure");
7) Custom of sending almost the herds of horses with the diseased;
8) Use of felt;
9) Method of manufacturing of the shields;
10) Method of scalping the enemies;
11) Practice of embalming the bodies of the diseased;
12) Funeral ceremony, i.e. the practice of carrying the body of the diseased leader from one tribe to another, and of burying together with the diseased of his horses or their parts;
13) Presence of the funeral timber chambers covered with timber logs;
14) Burial of the diseased in special wells-sarcophagi hollowed from large logs;
15) Cleaning ceremonies after the funeral of the diseased, i.e. so-called Scytho-Türkic baths with incense of the seeds of the hemp heated on the rocks.
Why would iranian people share something in common with people who, according to Iranists came from Altay & Mongolia only in 10-11 centuries?
8 - Why indo-european theory supporters think that all turkic are or were mongoloid? Most of modern day turkic peoples aren't mongoloid at all. I'm turkic of kazakh ancestry and I don't have anything mongoloid or siberian in my and my father's faces.
This eight notes are only few of the weaknesses of iranian theory. Many indo-europeanists should know that there were many turkic folks with much-speaking names such as qıwsaq, quman and qužan that translate "bright (pale) saka", "bright (pale) me, myself" & "bright (pale) zhans (huns, süns, şaŋs)" respectively. The ethnonyms starting on 'qıw-' could mean that these people were pale-skinned or had bright hair (the russians called cumans polovtsy, from old russian word polova - straw, chaff), this compaires with archaeological findings that shows us blue-eyed kushanians (qu-žan). There were people called sarı-kipçak or "yellow kipchaks" this could identify them as blonds since yellow is not represented in traditional turkic geographical colors (golden - center, blue - east, white - west, red - south, black - north) though some would argue that their name could mean "golden" since it resemebles yellow but this is strange since golden will be altın in most of turkic languages and in such case their name would be something like altın-kipçak.
In genereal I heard very few explanations of ethnonyms and toponyms from iranian theorists. But investigations from turkic persperctive were more resultative. This why I doubt very much about Indo-Iranian theory concerning scythian origins.
Before you attack me with many words of criticism I must tell you that you shouldn't trust every encyclopaedia you find, especially Britannica. Britannica came to the world in the darkest time for Science - XIX century, archaeology worked for interests of colonial empires, creating myths of 'high indo-european civilisation'. We all must enter new century of science & facts. We shouldn't take uncientific, chauvinistic theories of higher-races that were created to justify colonialism and oppression of native populations of Asia and Africa as basis for science. Iliassh (talk) 22:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Origins (Third party review)

Anybody, please indicate what's not according to Mallory (until first note)or supply unambiguous linguistic evidence, otherwise the revert should be reverted inmediately. Rokus01 15:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Scholars generally accept Scythians to be an western offshoot of the steppe cultures that emerged around the second millennium or later in Central Asia, when most of its northern regions to south Siberia were occupied by pastural societies deriving, either from the eastern outliers of the Timber-grave culture, or the Andronovo Culture, the latter being a blanket term for a variety of steppe Later Bronze Age cultures. Inheriting attributes often demanded of any Indo-European culture, like domestic horse and base metallurgy, from earlier local cultures that were tied to the west by clear analogues in stockbreeding, ceramics, lithics, burial practices and physical type, but without clear connection to the local cultures to the north and east, the identification of those cultures as essentially Indo-Iranian seems fairly secure: even more so since by then the closely related Indo-Aryan branch had already emerged to the south. However, no exact correlation can be demanded especially between such a vague archeological culture and a single linguistic group. Even participation of less related groups can't be excluded, as can be attested by the survival of Tocharian to the east, probably also originating from there[1]. No unambiguous linguistic evidence to any extend is available. The general acceptance of Scythians being the speakers of an Iranian language and being classified as one of the Iranian peoples [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] is mainly due to their cultural context, expressed by for instance the archeological remains of chariots and sacrificed horses.

Some quotes from Mallory to sustain the above mentioned:

  • p22":Few, if any, archeologists would deny a general Indo-Iranian identity for most of the beares of the Andronovo culture"
  • p52:By the mid-second millennium BC, most of the northern regions of Central Asia were ocupied by pastoral societies deriving, either from the Timber-grave culture which was centered west on the Volga, or the Andronovo culture, a blanket term for a variety of steppe Bronze Age cultures hat emerged in Central Asia and south Siberia."
  • p53:The identification of the Andronovo culture and at least the eastern outliers of the Timber-grave culture as Indo-Iranian is commonly accepted by scholars. It is out of this steppe region that we derive the Scythians who pushed westwards..."
  • p53:As the eastern limits of the Andronovo culture extended all the way to the Yenisey river, Kirghiziya and Tadzhikistan, one might even be able to provide a not too distant source for the easternmost Iranians, the Saka." (note: the Saka being mentioned here as a separate tribe from the Scythians!)
  • p228: "The Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovans is founded on both cultural and geographical evidence...the major cementery at Sintashta in the south Ural steppe. Here the remains of chariots and sacrificed horses clearly presage the later royal burials of the steppe tribes such as the Scythians, or their easterly Iranian cousins, who buried their dead in the spectacular chambers recovered from the Pazyryk cementrery of the Altai"
  • p62: "But we need not be so perverse as to demand an exact correlation between an archeological culture, especially one as vague as Andronovans, and a single linguistic group, and it is entirely possible that the ancestors of the Tocharians lurked behind some of those Andronovo variants that appear in the southeastern area of its distribution"
  • p53:It is often reasoned that since the steppe cultures date to the second millennium BC or later, it is most probable that they are (Proto-)Iranian rather than undifferentiated Indo-Iranians. Justification for this derives from our knowledge that Indo-Aryan had already emerged by the second millennium BC among the Mitanni.
  • p62:Prior to the Latter Bronze Age appearance of the Andronovo culture across the Central Asian-west Siberian steppe, there appeared an Eneolithic culture whose boundaries were apparently confined to the Minusinski-Altai region...This Afanasievo culture , dating to the third millennium BC, possesses many of the attributes that we often demand of any Indo-European culture - domestic horse, basic metallurgy ...it stands without any clear connection with the cultures to its north or east yet possesses clear analogues in ceramics, lithics,burial practices and physical type with the west, especially with the Volga-Ural region.
  • p227:.. the Andronovo culture. This, in fact, is a cultural label that embraces a series of local cultural groups...Today the concept of a unified Andronovo culture has been seriously challenged

Overall conclusion: the cultural identity of the Scythians might be derived culturally from neighbouring tribes sharing the Andronovo archeological background, but can't be identified completely with the other Iranian tribes from the steppes. Linguistic proof derived from neighbouring tribes thus can't be conclusive to the linguistic identity of the Scythians. They might have spoken an Iranian language, most probably their language was different from the Saka, and given the variety of the Andronovo culture, even non-Iranian languages can't be excluded. Linguistic evidence would depend wholly on Scythian sources and information. Unluckily, this information is fragmentary and could point with equal right to Chinese, Zulu or Spanish.

Rokus01 22:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually you are making interpretations of your own and directly ignored the explicit statements of Mallory and are not even quoting full sentences. I am wondering why you chose to ignore it?! Well here it is for the readers: The current distribution of Iranian, however, greatly belies its earlier expansion which included a vast portion of the Eurasion steppe. Reading from west to east we can include as Iranians speakers the major Iron Age nomads of the Pontic-Caspian steppe such as the Kimmerians(?), Scythians, Samartians and Alans.. Again we go to page 50: Moreover, the proposed migration route is precisely that which is historically attested for Iranian-speaking Scythians who penetrated from north of the Black Sea through the Caucasus and on into Southwest Asia. So when Mallory is this explicit, you can not make your own over all conclusion and intrepretation. (note if you were actually pursuing an scholarly approach, you would have stated these two). Thanks for reminding me, I might add Mallory later in the entry if necessary. As for unambigious linguistic evidence, not the wikipedia criterion is not for you to be satisfied. It is sufficient to just quote scholars and then up to you to look at the works of these scholars and find satisfaction. [5]. Check the book by Zgusta. --alidoostzadeh 04:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

You base your (outspoken) point of view on conclusions made by scholars without understanding their reasons why. Mallory is careful to base his statements on archeology and geography, not on linguistics. Read carefully and note I don't oppose Scythians making part of an Eastern Iranian culture, including a place for Iranian language. I oppose your reliance on linguistics and historical indications. These are too vague to be conclusive, prone to popular mistakes (like Saka being identical to Scythians and using Scythians as a misnomer to steppe people) and idealistic, thus making your approach unscientific. I wonder why you painstakingly avoid any reference to the archeology so laborously described by for instance this same Mallory. Like this, the article might be "yours", but not encyclopedic nor wikipedian. Rokus01 06:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The linguistic evidence is more than clear as made explicit by Mallory also. Note he puts a question mark for Kimmerians and does not put one for Scythians. No one is arguing archeology, chariot and etc. Mallory has put Scythians in the indo-Iranian section of his book. The linguistic evidence is more than clear. Go read the book by Zgusta. If you don't want to read it, don't. But don't make up sentences and attribute them to Mallory. Overhwhelming reference makes it clear scythians are Iranians. Any attempt to connect to zulus or ... Andronovo culture and etc. as you said does not necessarily identify a group. Scythians are a branch of Indo-Iranian. Wether mallory thinks Andronovo is Indo-Iranian (which he does) or not, does not have an effect on the origin of Scythians. The linguistic evidence from Bistun, Herodotus, Alans (recorded by priests) and etc. makes it clear enough Scythians are Iranians. I understand some of the evidence after much time, but furthermore, I don't have to understand the reasons of scholars. I just need to quote them since their opinion is reflected in wikipedia. It is not up to you to make personal intrepretations of the opinions of scholars. Integrity actually demands that you quote all of what Mallory said about Scythians instead of cut and pasting what you like and then making a personal intepretation (OR). If you are not satisfied, it is not my problem since wikipedia reflects the opinions of scholars and not any POV. Also there is an archeology section in the article. You can write that some sites might reflect scythian culture , but you can not extrapolate from there that Scythians are not Iranians. That is OR and not Mallory's viewpoint (where he clearly wrote Scythians as of Iranian origin). Until you have not read the books by Zgusta and other sources I mentioned, you do not need to tell me why scholars consider Scythians of Iranian origin. Why don't you read it and find out instead of saying that the information could point to Chinese and Zulu or Spanish?? BTW Saka are Scythians as shown in Bistun inscription and Herodotus says the Persians call the Scythians as Saka. --alidoostzadeh 07:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

No, Ali, it's the way you read. In your quotes you overlook completely the hypothetical character of Mallory's statement, conveyed with the word "can". Quoting you miss the context easily, and this talk is about context. Here you make the very same unscientific mistake in translating hypothesis to fact, that bias this Scythian article all over. You can't write "THE Scythians ARE speakers of an Iranian language", using a source that formulates differently and explicitly builds up a specific context. Did you read the book? Are you aware of scientific articles that broadens the perspective to for instance the Uralians or the Slavic people, where they came into contact with Iranians that left their linguistic traces? Where did you leave the Indo-Europeans that already roamed the steppes to the east and to the west? Where did you leave everything else anywhere that wasn't Scythic? What knowledge do you pretend that is not even available? The word "is" belongs to pseudo-science. Your bias exclude what a serious investigator like Mallory would never exclude, even though it might involve off-topic facts or disciplines that he knows about or maybe vaguely suspect, not you nor anybody just reading him about this specific topic. My advise: don't funnel more than indicated by the writer, but you even scorn anybody who look around and so illegally contradict all other possible options. If you already have difficulties in transcribing one source, I don't want to imagine how this would extrapolate on 14. You just admitted one important thing: you can't know everything. That's the very reason why you can't take things so easily for granted, more so while reading badly and without understanding, and why you have to accept the contribution of others. This article should be reviewed completely, however (and even more so just because!) you reject. Rokus01 11:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Mallory was clear. The fact that you did not quote his statements on scythians shows it. --alidoostzadeh 13:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I want to express my support of the editors who address the lopsided tilt of the article and resent the belligerent policing methods used to enforce the Iranian doctrine, blanking referenced material and at best replacing it with a surrogate lip service. In the past, I have suggested to have an agreed upon table of contents that would facilitate non-prejudicial balanced and organized narrative much along the lines suggested by TAWarner. I would add here a suggestion for a clearing-house type of moderator, which would make the rv wars impossible to conduct, and would moderate extremistic and chauvinistic POVs. Any opposing POV's should have a place for expression and reference, either directly, or via a linked topic page. Is Mallory better than Gumilev? Who is a judge? I think that a balanced article should embrace opposing viewpoints and not be used as a podium for indoctrination. Barefact 02:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is based on scholarly sources and recent ones (within the last 30 years). So yes scholarly sources will be enforced, since you can not come up with one modern western scholarly source that claims Scythians were turkic. Such ideas do not exist in mainstream scholarship. TAWarner's username is gone and I wonder why? Multiple user names won't help anyone. Since facts speak louder. I could come up with 50+ mainstream Western sources that consider Scythians as Iranian. Mallory was another source and there is much more. --alidoostzadeh 13:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
you need to apologize for your incinuations and direct assaults that do not give credit to you or to your cause. Note that opposing editors try to reason with you as with a thinking person, no reason to go into rages. Use of demagogy like "modern western scholarly" where you are a judge of modernity, westernity and scholarity is what the participants are objecting to. Gumilev is too old? Ismaigulov is too old? G. Moravcsik is too old? Abaev is too old? This is precisely the reason why the article is lopsided and why we need a third-party objective mediator. Your funny 50+ mainstream Western sources somehow never read Abaev and his detailed analysis of the Ossetian, and in unison repeat that the language with non-IE Morphology, Lexicon, Semantics, Syntaxis, and Phonology belong to the Iranian type. It is not a problem that you (we) state that scientists class Ossetian as N.W.Iranian, because they do, the problem is that the opposing opinion like that by Abaev is censored out as though it does not exist or is irrelevant. WP may not be a democracy, but it is not a theocracy either, and opposing views must be presented if they are referenced and can be independently verified. So, lets go back to civility, find compromises, and be glad if we are kindly offered a third-party mediation. Barefact 20:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
You need stop your false intepretations.. Like stalin forced Abaev to claim Ossetic is Iranian!! Abaev clearly states Ossetic is Iranian and yet you disfigured his words.. I do not have to waste time with you. NO opposing views if they are not academic will be thrown out of wikipedia. Ossetic is not Iranian is not opposing viewpoint, it is psuedo-theory not even worth considering. Abaev clearly also states scythians, ossetians is Iranian. Your POV intrepreation of Abaev is considered OR. Note there won't be any compromise on the issue just like the Encyclopedia Britannica does not make compromises with every psuedo-theorist out there. --alidoostzadeh 01:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Racism, fascism and a discussion mysteriously gone

The statement that old sources are completely wrong in their preliminary conclusions should have been attested by scientific discussion and publications. Also, on this subject it has been claimed there is no discussion on the identification of Scythians as ethnically and linguistically (Eastern) Iranian. To me this two statements are irreconcilable. For instance, what Western scientist ever opposed the following once widely held and respected views:

In the book "The History of Civilization - The Aryans" from V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957 -Barnes&Nobles,New York,1993) it says on p38: "Many people hold that these Scyths were Iranian. The linguistic evidence, limited to a few proper names mostly of late date, is inconclusive. Archeologically, however, our people are well known. Undoubtedly Scythian art is strongly influenced by the Iranian - but it is not any specific Iranian art, Persian for instance, but has its own unique individuality.(...) The Scythian burial customs are, however, decisive. They are utterly different from those of the Iranians or Indians or any other Aryan people whatsoever.(...)On the other hand they find exact parallels among the non-Aryan Mongol nomads op Upper Asia throughout the ages as Minns (Scythians and Greeks, Cambridge, 1911, pp 88 ff) has amply demonstrated. This author treats the Scyths as Mongoloid forerunners of the Huns, Tartars, and Peschenegs, and that is no doubt right."

So if indeed nowadays "all" scientists (this excludes "of course" any scientist from Russia?! I wonder why this kind of racism is allowed here) oppose as violently against this view as here, why not even a Mallory mention these sources? In fact he does not mention the linguistic evidence at all. He mentions cultural, archeological and geographical context, but you have to be careful not to extrapolate this by yourself to the linguistic context. Why? Because language is independent of race and culture and can take prevalence or disappear by its own laws.

I want to be clear not to discuss the indo-european linguistic-, or even iranian linguistic roots. I repeat: Linguistic classification on linguistic arguments are less generally accepted or even available, unless understood as taken for granted (is this the real meaning of "there is no discussion?"). There are only a few indications to debate at all and Saka material can't be accepted (talking about the Scythians proper). Zgusta might be an excellent linguist, but his work on Black Sea inscriptions is rarely referred to. Ossetic inscriptions (and language) already show nordern non-Indo-European influences, that should at least cast some doubts on the Scythian pureness. Feel invited to convince the reader and me, obviously something is missing.

The steppes have always been in a transition process, eventually leading to the merging of Scythians into new identities. This process should be described, since it is vital to understanding the importance of the Scythians and their relation to the current situation, and vital to the understanding the Scythians did not represent the Indo-Europeans (and PIE) as much as fascism wanted (and still wants) to make believe.

Rokus01 06:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Using multiple users names won't work. By the way today is 2007, not 1957 or 1911. As per Scythians being mongloids, sorry, but I think the physical features are very clear by their art work. As per linguistic arguments, they are well accepted even by Mallory. If you are not satisfied by modern sources, it is not the fault of wikipedians. Don't throw around words like racism and fascism as if they are pokemon cards. Mallory is very clear by the statements I brought. It does not need your intrepretation or extrapolation. thanks--alidoostzadeh 07:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I think you are completely nuts - don't let me repeat things and don't accuse. Where do I look like anybody else, except in opposing your way of bullying about truth? By the way, you say that YOU think? I am asking for clear and valid sources here for your opposing the GENERALLY ACCEPTED CONCLUSIONS about the Scythian linguistic arguments being inconclusive to their linguistic identity! About the other thing, it took V. Gordon Childe a whole book to contradict pseudo-scientific bias about Aryans. I might come with a new chapter about this historical bias soon, as its actuality still seems to be amazingly high.

Rokus01 09:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

No that is not the generally accepted course or else you want not ask for trimming 14 sources (I can easily come up with 50+). As per linguistic evidence go read the scythian language article and sources within. I think just like the Enycclopedia Britannica 2007 does not compromise with psuedo-theoriest like yourself who even think Zulus and Chinese are possibility, no sane person in wikipedia will either. --alidoostzadeh 13:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Ali, this is getting tiresome. You lie, because I did not ask for trimming 14 sources. And now I see you were reverting again, and this is unacceptable after having received a third opinion. To me you are risking a regblok. Rokus01 14:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I am still waiting for evidence telling the investigations of Ladislav Zgusta in his book "Die Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste: Die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnis der Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung (Československá akademie ved. Monografie orientálního ústavu 16 ). Praha : Nakladatelstvi československé Akademie Ved 1955(!) changed the generally accepted view that the linguistic evidence about Scythians speaking an Iranian language is inconclusive. Who ever mentioned his work as a proof to the contrary, like Ali obviously does here? As far as I know the investigation involved the interpretation of some names mentioned in Greek inscriptions. Indo-Iranian roots to the Scythian identity can't be denied, but general statements about their ethnical or linguistical homogenity have never been made. To the contrary, the Scythians have been traditionally looked upon as being of mixed composition, so this still has to be corrected for in the article. Rokus01 11:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Scythians rose later than Androvo. Do not mix things up. I caught you ignoring Mallory's opinion of Scythians and deliberately not quoting the relavent portions about Scythians. That is sufficient enough. None of the pages you mentioned mentions Scythians as well. Scythian is linguistically considered Iranian . I have already mentioned enough sources and my job is not to convince everyone, but just users who are neutral. I have already brought some linguistic examples. Another reference: Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. R. Schmitt. BTW coming up all of the sudden with a new i.d. is interesting. It's funny as soon as I sent Hermatta to someone you claimed Hermatta made up the term Khotanese Saka. Then you attacked bailey.. All these scholars are well known. If you need further assistance also see: Historical, Indo-European, and Lexicographical Studies: a festschrift for Ladislav Zgusta where Scythian is mentioned as Iranian in many articles written by experts. I have also brought etymologies of some Scythian names accepted by scholars. Thus since you are not a scholar and do not have the credible scholarly credentials, I take it that you want to add your POV edits. It won't work since user dab and other admins know the facts very well and their knowledge of Scythians is excellent. --alidoostzadeh 05:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

You mean the Scythians just fell from the clear sky? Andronovo (not, "Androvo", mister scholar) has been archeologically established as the prehistoric culture where Scythians and other Eastern Iranian tribes originated, so this information is relevant. You can't compensate your claims to absolute truth without context and using vague sources that use an easy predicate to readers convenience and within a predefined context. Thus for your reasons your mentioning of the Brittanic and scattered phrases from a library is insufficient, you have to use primary sources to first delimit and then prove any particular view. Understanding this scientific principle is essential to any claim of truth, you just can't get away with some superficial statements without such understanding. I call it intellectual laziness, a pretext to pseudo-science and any kind of (political) abuse.

Try to convince me. You invalidate your point of view by trying too hard to avoid contextual information from circulating, like I discovered you do at the Saka subject as well. Start with delimiting Scythians. The Saka from Turkestan, and the Scythians/Sarmatians that according to the Classic Greek tradition roamed Ukraine, were genetically linked but not identical. On what do you base your assumtion they are identical? How mainstream are the sources you know? Where important scientists refer to this sources? Second, show me how convincing the facts are. Inscriptions? Where? In what language? What is the Scythian link? Most of their history Scythians (mostly on towards disappearance) did not have a written tradition and many "Scythian" inscriptions are Greek or Persian, so to start with we don't have enough primary material, for a language is much more than a collection of names. Many Americans are called John, or Micheal, or Danny, but it does not mean their language is Hebrew. Besides, not all Americans are called John, Michael or Danny, just like not all Scythians are called Aripharnes, Ariantes or Ariamanes. The Khotan literature is known for being Middle Iranian and received strong influences from Iran and India, the Scythian context is not clear nor established. The Ossetic inscriptions, or thought to be Alanic, are limited in geographical distribution and show foreign influences from the start, like Turkic and Uralic. Even though the Scythians are of Iranic descend and even though it is likely Iranian languages were used by them and important, everything points to a mixed culture. This point of view has been published by important scholars and is supported by archeology and cultural anthropology. No scientific publication of any importance exist that maintain the contrary. Your outspoken Aryen conclusions are not scientific, but rather politically suspect.Rokus01 08:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I do not need to convince you but Scythians being Indo-Iranian is scientific as it is mentioned in every modern source. Ossetian and Alanic do not have Uralic influence. I am just quoting scholars. If you have a problem with Brtiannica 2007 and dozens of scholarly sources, it does not mean I have to convince you. I just have to quote them and make sure your POV interpretation (like what you tried to do with Mallory) does not sneak in. You are not a scholar and probably another psuedo-name of a previous user. If you have a source from a valid scholar from the modern day era (and not yourself) that scythians are Zulu or Hebrew or Turkic or Uralic, then bring it. I am not going to engange in more discussions as I have already referred you to the scholarly sources and there has even been an RFIC for this article. --alidoostzadeh 00:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sarts vs. Saks

I have recently grown very interested in research on human population genetics, such as human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups, because of the potential it bears for resolving the prehistory of our ancestors and the evolution of the various ethnic groups and languages that we find in the world at present. I think that archaeology, historical linguistics, anthropology, and population genetics hold the greatest promise when they are used together to produce a higher resolution image of the history of the world's peoples.
In that connection, I have been wondering lately about the origin of the Mongolic and Turkic term "Sart," which seems to have traditionally been used to refer to sedentary agriculturalists in contrast to nomadic communities, and is also the autonym of a certain Mongolic-speaking minority group in western China. I have enough background as a student of history and an amateur linguist to know that it would not be difficult for a protoform like */sarmat/, */sarwat/, or */sarbat/ (c.f. Sarmatae) to change over the generations into a form like /sart/. Could it be that both the Turks and the Tajiks are not only descendants of Scythians, but descendants of particular subsets of Scythians?
As for the controversy over whether the Scythians were proto-Turkic or rather a branch of the Aryans, population genetics has certainly provided enough evidence to support a hypothesis that both the Turkic peoples of Central Asia/Siberia and the Aryan peoples of Central Asia/South Asia could share a great deal of recent common ancestry. Linguistic research into the histories and prehistoric origins of the various Aryan (Indo-Iranian), Indo-European, Altaic, and Uralic languages has also provided a basis for hypothesizing that all these myriad languages may share a common origin deep in antiquity. In fact, the emerging mainstream hypothesis among researchers who have been trying to reconstruct the prehistory of Homo sapiens sapiens is that all or nearly all the ancestors of modern peoples of Eurasia lived somewhere in India, Pakistan, Iran, or the Middle East as recently as 30,000 years ago. That is only about three times the age of the beginnings of Neolithic culture and perhaps a little under four times the age of the Indo-European language family. Actually, these results are not surprising at all when viewed in the light of archaeology: the inhabitants of Europe prior to approximately 30,000 years ago were all (or mostly) Neanderthals, and there is no unambiguous evidence for inhabitation of easterly places like China by anatomically modern humans prior to about 20,000 years BP (although there is, of course, the perennial controversy over the age of the Liujiang cranium), suggesting that early modern humans in East Eurasia might have kept to the southern coast and islands.
So, returning to my main topic, does anyone else think it might be possible that "Sart" and "Sak" derive from terms contrasting the sedentary, town-dwelling, ground-tilling and mercantile classes (Sart) with the nomadic, herding, hunting, and warrior classes (Sak), and that these terms might reflect an extremely ancient social division within the people of greater "Scythia"? Ebizur 14:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The Sarmats were nomads, not settled people. TAWarner 21:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] state of this article

I've finally gotten round to look through this article. And considering the amount of debate that went into it, it was in a horrible state. I've cleaned up the worst bits, ToC wise, removing redundancies, html comments and obvious nonsense, but this still needs a bit of work before it deserves its "B" status... dab (ᛏ) 17:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

alright, I invested 2 hours(!) cleaning up, and I'd give it its 'B' now. dab (ᛏ) 18:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Barefact

Looks like the user Barefact under an ip address is trying to again distort the article and take out 14 or more scholarly sources which he does not like. The composition and lack of sources and unscientific method of writing essays gives it away. There are many good online sources on Scythians [6] that I hope to bring information fromto into the article. But writing constant unsourced dribbles definitely takes its toll on the article. --alidoostzadeh 15:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Since you already involved me in a similar suspicion: Who is User:Marmoulak doing your dirty work of reverting while abstaining from this discussion? Rokus01 11:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Dont make personal attacks WP:NPA, I will report you next time. I dont participate in the discussion because there is nothing to discuss. I reverted removal of sourced material and insertion of POV, I am acting according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. - Marmoulak 15:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Mister nice guy, you'd better tell the truth: you removed my sourced material, I didn't remove anything and just added. Be careful, because assume good faith doesn't include lying. Rokus01 16:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I did assume good faith or else I would have considered your edits vandalism. the edits by Rokus01 that I reverted consisted of Insertion of sourceless material which is considered Insertion of POV and Removal of sourced material. You need to provide reliable sources (WP:V) for your insertions and stop throwing baseless accusations around. By the way I will revert your edits again if you dont abide by WP:V. - Marmoulak 20:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
calm down guys. I agree Rokus' outline of the archaeological situation was perfectly valid. The representation of the linguistic classification of Scythian as unsettled was however incorrect. dab (𒁳) 17:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Linguistic classification on linguistic arguments are less generally accepted or even available, unless understood as taken for granted. There are only a few indications to debate at all and Saka material can't be accepted. Zgusta might be an excellent linguist, but his work on Black Sea inscriptions is rarely refered to. Ossetic inscriptions (and language) already show nordern non-Indo-European influences, that should at least cast some doubts on the Scythian pureness. Feel invited to convince the reader and me, obviously something is missing.
Rokus01 07:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
your 14 scholarly references are all very well, but they are simply over the top. Of course you can pile on any number of references, because there is no dispute on the question. Just because there are some shoddy theories handed around on the internet, we shouldn't have to disfigure our articles by listing 14 footnotes in a row. The burden is with the "Turkic Scythians" side to present even one quotable reference, and then we'll discuss further. dab (𒁳) 11:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Somebody is speaking from both sides of the mouth. I would like to remind the participants that the article Scytho-Iranian Theory, that addressed history, literature, pros and cons of the theory, was deleted like a hot potato by a joint team of Iranians in a most bad faith fashion, without giving editors even a tiny chance to review, comment, or modify. In fact, there seems to be a need to have both Scytho-Iranian Theory and Scytho-Turkic Theory, which would present, in a balanced form, pros and cons, and get away from the doctrine-type enforcement. Targeted removal of archeological data, C14 dating data, genetical data, mentioning of alternate concepts etc. suggest that the doctrine is weak and can't sustain facing the facts of life. Barefact 20:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You need to stop OR in wikipedia.. --alidoostzadeh 00:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference to Ice Maiden

This link goes to an Incan mummy, not to any Scythian reference. Is there an article in Wikipedia for the proper ice maiden? --Eraticus 02:18, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Scythian-related peoples

I wonder if modern Gelae (people of Gil-an in northern Iran), Baluch (from Pahla?) of Sistan (Sagastan = land of Saka) and some other modern Iranic peoples linguistically closely related to the first two, are related to the ancient Iranic Scythians. They speak related languages different than Persian; their original languages may have been influenced under thousands of years Persian domination. Keyxosrow 03:17, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that noone in modern Iran is related to ancient Scythians. However, it is worth to mention that Scythians tribes, such as the Parni (founders of the Ashkaniyan dynasty) and Sakas (after whom the region Seistan is named), played an important role in the history of Iran, as very evident in Persia's national epic Shahnameh, in which Scythian heroes, such as Rustam, are the main characters. However, the Scythians - like all later Central Asian nomads, such as Turks or Mongols - were numerically a tiny minority. They had almost no genetical influence on the Iranian populations. Tājik 03:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Under `Descent-claims', should the Germanic tribe of Sicambri not be mentioned? They claimed a Scythian origin. The Sicambri later fused with other Germanic tribes to form the confederation of the Franks. (Hrothberht, 10 January 2007)

Hrothbert, the Sicambri should definitly not be mentioned, for it is not known they did claim a Scythian origin. As a matter of fact the Sicambri didn't leave written sources. Think about that. Johanthon, 02-02-2007, 10:20hrs —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.146.146.230 (talk) 09:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC).
I see I have formulated this wrongly. I meant that the Franks claimed the Sicambri were of Scythian descent. My bad. I have formulated it correctly in the article itself. If and only if you still disagree with what is written there, I am okay with you moving it to the talk page, since I think it should be at least discussed. Then, after hopefully some sort of consensus, it may (or may not, depending on the outcome of the consensus) be added to the article. Hrothberht 11:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
So did some of the Germanic Saxons (known as "Sachsen"/pronounced Saxen in German; note the similarity to Saka). There is some specualtion about a possible link between the terms Germani and Kermani (see J. Derakhshani). Tājik 22:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
that's all idle speculation, and rightly discussed under the header "descent-claims". dab (𒁳) 10:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Firstly "idle speculation" and "rightly discussed" seem somewhat contradictory. (Care to explain?) Secondly, these Germanic descent claims are not yet discussed under descent-claims, but since there are 3 of us that believe the link to be important enough, I presume this link may be mentioned? Hrothberht 22:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
The Saxons derive their name from a knife, the Seax. This seems to me to be fairly inconsistent with the etymology for the Scyths, since shooting and knives don't seem to have that much in common, unless the knife was named after Scyths. There might be a link, but there should be reputable sources for this to be mentioned.
As for the link between the Germani and Kermani, the idea is interesting, but the German(!) pdf didn't make much clear to me, so I'll stay out of that one.
I will the reference to the Franks in the article. Hrothberht 19:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
  • In Iran, Northern Iranian peoples in general (Gilaks, Mazenderanis, Talesh, some Azeris) have Scythian ancestry (linguistic evidences remain today). Some say even Baluchis and Sistanis, but that remains only "etymologically" today.

[edit] Polish and Ukrainian words

Nasz wrote:

Polish and Ukrainian folk song call stepe people sokoli which is coherent with sound law derivative of skolo'nti or skolo'ci

This is complete nonsense. Modern Polish derivation from "Skolotes", Greek name for Scythians would be probably **szołoci. Sokoli is probably Ukrainian plural of sokół "falcon". Scythian Skuδa would probably become szeda in Polish. You really can't derive sokoli from any name for Scythians.

Nasz was already banned from the Polish Wikipedia for propagating pseudoscientific theories about Slavs, Scythians and genetics. Please watch him.--Al-Bargit 10:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

---

Nasz wrote: "The highest frequency of R1a in Europe is encountered in Polish and Hungarian population and memorized in proverbial rhyme definietly known before era of genetic research."

Look R1a in Wikipedia. Ther you have a link secound link from top * Semino et al (2000), The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant Europeans, Science, Vol 290. In this published in Science paper, quite respectable, I belive, source exist "Table 1. Frequencies (in percent) of the haplotypes found in the examined European populations". You may read in rows Hungarian, Poles and in column EU19 respctively values 60%, 56.4 %. Highest value - yes.

If somebody may have a question what mean EU19 on the bootom of this table is lrgrnd "Eu19, M89-T, M9-G, M45-A, M173-C, M17(delG)". Consult Wikipedia R1a what it mean> In human genetics, Haplogroup R1a1 (M17) is a Y-chromosome haplogroup that is spread across Eurasia.

There are numerous other sources but the one is suficient to show that this grup of oponents dont know rather what they opose. Nasz 12:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Your word is not enough. I'll revert you for the second time. Please do not change the page until you show the sources about the alleged Scythian etymology of sokoli (not to mention the absurd Polish-Hungarian common ethnicity and other original ideas of your edits). --Friendly Neighbour 12:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll add that the word "Scythian" or "Scyth" is never mentioned in the Science paper. Therefore it seems irrelevant to this Wikipedia article. By the way, the paper says about the Eu19 haplotype that it has been also observed at substantial frequency in northern India and Pakistan as well as in Central Asia. Its spread may have been magnified by the expansion of the Yamnaia culture from the “Kurgan culture” area (present-day southern Ukraine) into Europe and eastward, resulting in the spread of the Indo-European language. As Yamna culture is often identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, it is no wonder that Indo-European Scythes could share it with any European nation (even if the language is not Indo-European as is the case of Hungarians) because of population mixing in during last millennium. The hight number of Eu19 in Poland or Hungary means simply that few of the inhabitants have ancestry other than Indo-European or Central Asiatic (which inhabitants also have hight Eu19 numbers according to the paper). It says nothing on any (true or false) Scythian ancestry. --Friendly Neighbour 13:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Nasz, you reverted my edit without replying to my arguments either here or on your Talk page (which you blanked twice since yesterday!). The edit you want to force here has no sources. To make it Wikipedia-worthy you would have to show, using respectable sources:

  1. that common Y chromosome haplotypes between Poles, Hungarian and Ukrainians have anything to do with Scythes,
  2. that the Pole, Hungarian, two good friends proverbial rhyme has anything to do with common ancestry of the two nations,
  3. that "sokoli" is an ancient name for the steppe people and not simply hawks in Slavic languages.

Neither of the three part seems true and neither has been proved by your sources, a Science paper which never mentions the string "Scyth" in its text and therefore proves nothing about any nation's Scythian ancestry. The paper seem to prove that the nations that were late entrants into central Europe - Slavs (5-6th century) and Hungarians (9th century) - lack some haplotypes common for peoples that lived longer in the area. What does that prove about the Scythiian connection until someone studies Scythain burials for chromosome Y DNA? --Friendly Neighbour 11:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outside Opinion

Hello all, I came to this page via your request for a third opinion. The 3rd party opinion works best when dealing with two disputing editors, however, this article appears to already have third, fourth, and maybe even fifth opinions. I would be happy to help find a way out of your current edit dispute if you so desire. That said, you would probably get a better result if you ask for help from the member's advocates, who would also be able to help you through an official mediation if one is needed. Pastordavid 18:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Whether or not mediation could solve the problem of some blocking all other opinions. Rokus01 20:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why everyone wants to have Scythian ancestors?

I really expect the moment when someone will try to add a section "proving" that the word "USA" comes from "Scythian" and "America" is an ancient Scythian term. We have already Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, Iranians etc. etc. as the true Scythian heirs.

I do believe it's time to finish with this silliness and entomb all those speculations in one section of the article about false etymology, urban legends and other non-scientific theories about Scythian heritage in the modern world. --Friendly Neighbour 07:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

that sort of Scythomania is in itself an interesting historical phenomenon. I've never felt the desire to consider myself a true-blooded heir of the Scythians, so I'm not sure I can follow the why, but I think the thing is fascinating the way all weird and irrational twists and turns of history can be fascinating in retrospect (a bit like Abba, Postmodernism or the hennin). dab (𒁳) 19:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of tertiary sources

In WP:OR it says clearly: "All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources."

Tertiary sources are publications, such as encyclopedias, that sum up other secondary sources, and sometimes primary sources. Since this article pretends Wikipedia:Verifiability (V) and NPOV truth, and considering the amount of primary and secondary sources already drawn upon, all references to Britannica should be removed asap. Rokus01 18:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Britannica is considered a primary reference source. And there is a lot of articles that reference it. You need to stop pushing your POV, ASAP.

Who told you this nonsense? I am not pushing POV, I just insist on the proper use of primary and secondary sources. In this you fail, as I pointed out already. Britannica is an encyclopedia, thus (as explained in WP:OR) defined as a tertiary source that should rather not be used or referred to, especially not at this stage of your POV pushing and warring against reason. There is no point in abusing tertiary sources. What's your point anyway? Rokus01 07:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Brtiannica is a prime academic source and is used in every university. And I do not need Britannica as I have 50 sources that Scythians are Iranians from specialists and I can easily insert it in. It is from 2007. Using sources from 1911 and another source from 1890-1957 (who knows when the person wrote the book but he died in 1957) and pushing them instead of sources from at least 1990 is a big time POV pushing. We have had an Rfic here as well. If you have problem with the way scythians are classified by scholars, then you need to prove those scholars wrong in scholarly journal magazines. Wikipedia will reflect the opinions of scholrs that have studied scythians and have written high quality academic journals. So I think you need check WP:OR. If you have a problem with this statement go see the user dab who is the admin most involved in Scythian issues. --alidoostzadeh 12:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Even though having all these sources you still fail to point out what it means to say "Scythians are Iranians." To what extend? Indepth information can only be retrieved from primary sources, and secondary sources referring to primary sources. The Britannica does neither and being a tertiary source contents itself to just using some general statements, that are supposed to be worthwhile but without serving a scientific purpose, as you say. Your superficial reverts assume a conflict between my edits and above statement, "Scythians are Iranian", that does not exist: Being Iranian, Scythians still can be of mixed culture, race, descend and even language. Worse, you turn sourced evidence upside down by suggesting any of your sources ever actually proved otherwise, or even intend to do so! No, I already pointed at an important current among scholars of those who agree about linguistic evidence being inconclusive and Iranian evidence being circumstantial. What's the big deal to you? If utterly untrue, like you claim it is: what prevents you from posting reliable and relevant sources that revoke all doubts about such Scythian Iranian purity? I'll tell you: such black and white thinking is not scientific UNLESS anyone could produce unequivocal evidence to the contrary. So why you refuse to serve truth and try at least to outline such an Iranian view? I'll help you:

  • Indo-Iranian influences on all Uralian languages point to an early common contact around the third millennium BC lasting to the first millenium (well before Scythian advent into the region).
  • Scythians inherited from Iranian and Indo-European culture. (although other influences have been noted and never been denied)
  • Scythian language probably was most related to Ossetian and "Saka" (but in this has not been sufficiently preserved to give a clou. Saka literature has been classified as Middle Iranian, as far as I know, what of course doesn't exclude Eastern Iranian identity, but such reasoning doesn't help much in describing the Scythians proper unequivocally at all periods of time everywhere. And above all: who does? Where?)
  • Scythian burials give a lot of information (but has also raised scholarly questions about local continuity that should not be denied)

Ali, if you try some effort and draw back this line of uncertaincy further I would take your reverts more seriously and your actions less disruptive. Notify me when ready for Talk and end this senseless deletion of sourced information. Rokus01 13:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Primary sources are Herodotus and etc. Primary academic sources are Britannica and what scholars write. Britannica is considered a primary source and it is in every university. You are quoting something from 1911 and I am quoting Britannica 2007. There is a big big difference. I do not have to quote Britannica 2007 and can quote equivalently 100's of sources. You still have not explained for the sake of fairness why you did not quote Mallory where he specifically says Scythians are Iranian. Again you are not a Scythian scholar. For the article I just have to quote scholars that have published academic papers and journals and books that Scythians are Iranian. I have already brought names and etymologies and all Scythian names and words have satisfactory Iranian etymology. Some very 100% clear even for a Persian speaker today. The sections you brought from Mallory previous did not say anything about Scythians. They are your own extrapolations. I have already referred you to enough sources. You are not going to be satisfied simply because I saw you call Hermatta (a world renown scholar) a liar and then also you did not quote Mallory's section on Sctyhians. If you have a problem with Scythians being considered Iranian by all scholars you need to write in academic journals making valid critism. Wikipedia is not the place. --alidoostzadeh 00:26, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I don't get the impression you are open to arguments, but I will answer your questions as well as possible because I consider myself civilized. Your question about Mallory: Why should I quote Mallory on things already quoted elsewhere in the article? Read my postings for once, like the previous one, where I explicitly agree on this statement "Scythians are Iranian". However, this is just not enough in an article read by people that are interested in some indepth information. To what extend Scythians are Iranian? Read my arguments above. Again, this article gives a point of view without a scientific argumentation, but I already discovered this is typical to articles concerning people in this very region and I can hear many intelligent and studied people moaning loudly on the Talk pages. To me this doesn't matter anymore, I think failure must be inherit to the ideal of Wikipedia, since nationalist people are involved that claim scholarly wisdom, contradict Wikipedia definitions about tertiary sources and boast knowledge about scholars like Harmatta they can't even spell, and above all lie about people giving arguments they didn't even utter (I already told before I didn't even mention Harmatta, but you just don't mind). Just because they want to let the world know, but without realizing the damage they do to the culture they love. Rokus01 08:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC) I am not here to argue and neither I am open to argumentation. I am just quoting relavent scholars on the fied. Your arguments are baseless since you are not a scholar. Had you any decency, you would have quoted Dr. Mallory in full instead of talking about parts that have no relationship to the Scythian era! If you are interested in indepth information, then you need to read sources by scholars and not put your own analysis since you lack the credibility to do so. Obviously you have not read the OR section. Let me spell it out to you.

Primary sources are documents or people very close to the situation being written about. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident is a primary source. The White House's summary of a president's speech is a primary source. Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it's easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a secondary source.

Examples of primary sources include archeological artifacts; photographs; newspaper accounts which contain first-hand material, not merely analysis or commentary of other material; historical documents such as diaries, census results, video or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; written or recorded notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations; and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs.

Secondary sources draw on primary sources in order to make generalizations or original interpretive, analytical, synthetic, or explanatory claims. A journalist's analysis or commentary of a traffic accident based on eye-witness reports is a secondary source. A New York Times analysis and commentary on a president's speech is a secondary source. An historian's interpretation of the decline of the Roman Empire, or analysis of the historical Jesus, constitute secondary sources. Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, verifiable, published secondary sources wherever possible. This means that we present verifiable accounts of views and arguments of reliable scholars, and not interpretations of primary source material by Wikipedians.

Tertiary sources are publications, such as encyclopedias, that sum up other secondary sources, and sometimes primary sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source.

Note this section carefully: All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. Thus a Tertiary source that sums a secondary source is valid reference.

Thus neither aprimary nor a secondary nor Tertiary source is considered original research. AlthoughEncylopedia Britannica 2007 is not needed in this case, there is absolutely nothing OR about quoting Enyclcopedia Britannica and many wikipedia enteries do. Since you are not a linguist knowledgable in ancient Iranian languages (Old Persian, Avesta, Parthian, Khotanese Saka) and since one (amongst many) of the major reasons Scythians are considered Iranians is linguistic affiliation, you can not keep pushing your intrepretation of scythians. If you have a PhD in the field of Scythian studies and have published in major journals about ancient Scythians and have written books about them and have showed for example that somehow Scythian is related to Zulu, then fine. I can bring lots of linguistic evidence. Thus you have no valid reason to make POV edits.


I'll be happy to provide many arguments outside of the article. Papaios which means Father in Scythian. This sets Scythian as an Indo-European language as this is a very basic word in any language. Anar (effeminate) with a clear Iranian etymology.. Thus by the fact that Scythian language is an Iranian language and they played a major role in Iranian mythology (Sakestan being the home of many Iranian myths) and many other reasons, scholars consider them Iranian. But if you find a serious modern era scholar that considers them Zulu or whatever, bring forth your source. We can keep going back and forth. In the end wikipedia will reflect the knowledge of the scholars of relavent field and that is the major message in the OR section that you have not carefully read. And please do not do an OR on OR. It is clear wikipedia is meant to reflect the knowledge of scholars. --alidoostzadeh 20:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I will give one example where in this response you are committing OR on OR:
Note this section carefully: "All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources." Thus a Tertiary source that sums a secondary source is valid reference.
"Thus" quoted is clearly your OR interpretation, (wrongly) cocktailed from the quoted texts on OR, and not directly based on what is actually written. Also, it is clear you don't fathom the Wikipedia definition of "Tertiary source", not even explicitly quoted by yourself: "Tertiary sources are publications, such as encyclopedias, that sum up other secondary sources, and sometimes primary sources". Tertiary sources like Britannica can be accepted on a ow level of understanding, but never fully grasped without knowledge or understanding of such underlying primary or secundary sources. My arguments you despise so much, are the result of just reading primary and secondary sources carefully in German or English, not OR (you should be able to prove such an accusation, but all your logic is a sham). "Thus" you don't give me any confidence you are able to retrieve or abstract such indepth information, since obviously your English, your scientific background and sense of logic are seriously hampered. Worse, you turn using tertiary sources into serious abuse.
Anyway, thanks for your examples about Papaios (father) and Anar (effeminate). I'll tell you these two words could be explained by any language using and abusing the words Papa and Anus and derivatives as referring to father and homosexual, like English, Spanish, Dutch and - indeed - maybe Zulu. Nevertheless, you are only interested in the opinion of scholars: you know very well Mirfatych Zakievic Zakiev published his alternative Turkish interpretations as recently as 1995 (M.Z. Zakiev, “Etnonimika i etnogenez” in M.Z. Zakiev, Tatary: problemy istorii i iazyka, Kazan, 1995). You are angry because this frustrates you. Well, such uncertaincy does not frustrate me at all. Iranians originated from the southern Ural region and obviously lost their Aryen blond purity soon because of their own inventions towards high mobility, to become swarthy because of mixtures in Iran and receiving mongolic blood in the eastern (Altay) regions. Such a view has been pronounced repeatedly in history and was never denied by any scholar. This subject deserves serious attention, since much about the eventual disappearance of Scythians and merging into the current populations remains unclear. The mixed race and culture in current Tartaristan, Turkestan and even China are extensive and "Caucasoid" enough to assume a gradual merging rather than the original Iranians being utterly wiped out or replaced. You are right, you will not read this in Britannia Online nor can't we supply the logic without risking OR. But you are wrong in denying this logic has been pronounced in any scholarly review, or revoked in any other. Therefore, your statement that Britannica pronounces the only and complete high and low level truth is utterly nonsense, POV and OR.
Rokus01 22:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I think you are talking about your own mental limits. As witnessed by readers: your logic, English and mental ability is very much hampered I remember the nice word you coined up racistic! Nice one. Also your reading ability is sub-par based on not being able to lookup the index of Mallory to find what he actually says about Scythians. Zakiev a tatar nationalist which you quote from your website [www.turkicworld.org] has no credibility in academia. Just like the other guy who tried to make a up love poem from the Issyk inscription and even he could not believe it and thus had to put it asterik mark after each word. None of them have any publications about Scythians in western academic journals nor is their name mentioned. Note in the OR wikipedia English highly prefers English sources and not Russian sources written by some tatar nationalists. Your lack of knowledge on etymological roots furthermore shows your mental inability to fathom the concept of comparative linguistics. You can not just connect A to Z in etymologically without showing valid sounds and proof such words exist. Although your etymological viewpoint about the body part of humans that is used for excretion is revealing with regards to your personal views, such etymological root is not supported by the scientific method of comparative linguistics and mainstream scholars. Also it is amazing you quote a source from 1911! and then have a problem with Britannica 2007. Your extrapolations and assumptions about Scythians are also worthless since you are not a scholar of the field. Thus by wasting people's time will not even 1% of your POV in the article. The subject of course deserves attention, but you are not an academic nor a scholar to be taken seriously and thus your opinion and extrapolations which are not based on academic scholars does not deserve any worth. I think the etymological connection you made above shows it for all of our readers. That is the complete definition of OR. Specially the opinion of someone who thought Hermatta forged the term Saka Khotanese right after I sent him Hermatta's reading of the Issyk inscription. As per Britannica it is an academic source and it can be quoted by many articles since it agrees with all primary and secondary sources. Its enteries are not written by your average joe, but by experts in the relative area. As per the issue of gradual mixing and scythians original features and etc.. this is already covered and we already scythians contributed heavily to Slavic and other types of people from China to India to Ukraine. That does not have a bearing on what language was originally spoken by Scythians. --alidoostzadeh 01:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Nationalist like you or not, this Zakiev certainly is a scholar with linguistic knowledge that can't be defiled so easily, especially not for political reasons only. Your repeatedly disproved accusations (do you remember Alzheimer?) won't help. BTW, your Zgusta didn't achieve much more western interest to his specific Scythian interpretations to Greek inscriptions and is hardly referred to, though his work predated Zakiev's about 40 years. The reason, and I insist you are so honest to recognize this at last, is bluntly the absence of suficient direct evidence. Only a few traces of their language are available, some scattered words and names as ambiguous as the human bodypart used for excretion. Don't confuse my cynical sense of humor with your own mental limits. Scythians happened to roam the ancestral lands of the Indo-Iranians, thus even the profound Iranian linguistic traces on the Uralian languages in that region are not as unequivocally and unanimously ascribed to Scythians. The bordering Ananino culture has been ethnographically and statistically described by Pál Lipták as having experienced an important mongolic domination and admixture between the 8th and 3rd century BC, long before historic Avar, Hun, Turkish or Mongolic appearance in the region and synchronic to the Scythian presence - and synchronic to thoroughly attested "Scythian" (or otherwise "Iranian") archeological influence. Considering this circumstances it is not scientific and OR to conclude Scythian traces represent anything more than the ultimate remains of an ancient Iranian identity in transition. The debate on Scythian ethnographics is existent, even fierce, and belongs to this very Scythian article. Rokus01 11:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Nothing from www.turkicworld.org is considered scholarly and from Sumerian to every single group is considered somehow altaic in that website. That fits the definition of OR. There is no debate on Scythian ethno graphics (not ethnografics). As per Zgusta just to show the respect he has in the scholarly world, in 1997 there was a book published: Historical, Indo-European and Lexicographical Studies (A Festshrift for Ladislav Zgusta on the occasion of his 70th birthday). Many top western scholars wrote in that volume and Scythians are considered Iranian throughout the volume. As per your suicient (you meant sufficient) evidence, all the evidences are considered enough by scholars to deem Scythians as Iranian. For the 100th time, your opinion on Scythians and similar opinion by nationalists who have not published in any major western journals and books are worthless. They are not in the domain of academia to be taken seriously. As per your cynical humor and mental limits, that is not the concern of the article. As per Iranian evidence on Uralian and etc. None of these has to do with what scholars Scythians to be. Let me repeat your opinion and extrapolations are worthless. They are not published in academic peer reviewed journal or any scholarly source like Britannica or by any Academic of a major university (just like Zakiev guy). Your mental inability to grasp this simple fact shows that you have not read wikipedia's OR policy. Since you lack academic credentials your opinion is not worth a dime neither are your interpretations and extrapolations. Thus if you have problem with the academic viewpoint on Scythians go write your own web-page (as you already have www.turkicworld.org). But it has no place in wikipedia. I would also take a course or two in linguistics. And please write better English if you are going to accuse me of not doing so: Absence (not absence), sufficient (not sufficient), ambiguous (not ambigious), body part (not bodypart), ethnographic (not ethnographic), Mongolic (it is not even a word), existent (not existent). Again your opinion nor either the opinion of Zakiev is worth dime. You are not published and referenced author and have not published anything of significant in any peer reviewed academic journal. Neither are you an academic in any major university that studies the classics. Thus your opinion on scythians and all of your psuedo-theories does not belong to wikipedia since they are not in any academically referenced published journal. If you have mental inability to grasp this simple concept, then it is your own problem. Further agitation on this issue and I will reveal your multiple suck-puppets (TAwarner and the other one) . --alidoostzadeh 14:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You pretend to know it all without making any research. Easily you could have verified the Wikipedia definition of primary source to understand primary does not mean superior, but rather proximity to the information. “Primary” does not even imply reliability and you need to apply primary sources with care or at least some experience with scientific research. For instance, Herodotus was close to the source but hampered by an amateuristic view. Likewise you could say Zakiev is close to his linguistic information, but hampered by his nationalistic stance. Archeologists normally make extensive reports about their observations, all primary sources, but restrain from making easy conclusions. Obviously you are not familiar with such scientific values, and not a scholar with access to all primary sources, able to value this information without bias. It is like meeting someone on the street covered with blood, shouting “People from Mars killed my wife!” Obviously this person has first hand information, but only a fool would take him on his words. In secondary sources such information is analyzed, verified and evaluated. To have some value those secondary sources should indeed be written by renowned scholars. To understand, you need insight into the context of the information and a good sense of logic. Generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of the events will normally yield to hypothesis, not new facts. Thus, Wikipedia should take care with amateuristic compilers abusing secondary sources without any understanding of such context, just to sustain their own views. Tertiary sources (note Britannica is even mentioned by name) should not be used according to Wikipedia:OR. Anyway, writing tertiary sources does not exclude the provision of commentary and analysis next to a “synoptic overview of the material available on the topic”. And you? You just copy the synoptic overview of the tertiary source Britannica to this article: a sheer violation of Wikipedia rules.

In other words, your point of view is completely wrong. Resorting to slander won’t help either to make yourself credible. First of all, come with better references to your sockpuppet–accusations. You rally a nationalist club of brainless reverters – obviously another kind of sneaky sockpuppetry, punishable by a couple of nice and sweet blockings - at least to the Dutch definition. Your arrogance is really baffling. You are not familiar to the word “mongolic”? Do some research, the word refers properly to the mongoloid race. You are not a scholar, you don’t even show any experience with research or academic thinking. You read tertiary material and verify secondary material just for some combinations of synoptic words to impose your peculiar views. You revert anything you don’t grasp or refuse to accept for giving indepth information that contract synoptics. You are cheap. You show bad behaviour. People like you should be blocked for life.

About this Zgusta-Zakiev thing, both rely on scanty primary material that doesn’t suffice to give a clou. I don’t mind any of them, though the existence of different linguistic interpretations is noteworthy enough to mention in a neutral tertiary source (like Wikipedia should be), even more so since the linguistic evidence on Scythians has been historically considered inconclusive. You quote Herodotes and accept his amateuristic accounts without any scientific reserve, but you react hysterical to an historical overview that shows your statements about consensus and no discussion on the subject are a sham. Critical commenty and analysis belong to a proper presentation of this article. Anybody is free to post contextual information and facts, even though it would contradict Britannica. It would be perfectly according to the ambiguous sources to summarize: Scythian traces represent an ancient Iranian identity in transition.

Rokus01 10:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

No need to repeat myself and take your interpretation of OR even remotely seriously. Read the OR: The prohibition against original research limits the possibility of an editor presenting his or her own point of view in an article. By reinforcing the importance of including verifiable research produced by others, this policy promotes the inclusion of multiple points of view in an article. . You need to understand this part: If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then — whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not — it doesn't belong in Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancillary article. Wikipedia is not the place for original research. Your opinion as long as not corroborated by scholars who have published in peer review journals on Scythians (and recently published not 100 years ago) simply does not count and fits OR and will be removed. Any hypothesis that does not have a shred of evidence and is your own extrapolation and not reflected in scholarly journals is considered OR. Your critical analysis and commentary is simply not worth a dime since you are not a scholar in the field of Scythian studies nor have published in the field. Obviously somebody who thinks Scythian can be interpreted as Zulu and relates the word Anus to Anar does not have the capability to analyze historical data. Zgusta is a well known academic and recognized by peers in the academic community and has dozens of publications in peer reviewed journals. That is why he is quoted. BTW Amateuristic just like racistic is not a word. Britannica is just one of dozens of sources that has been quoted in the article and it does not contradict any primary source (Zgusta) which is referenced by many authors. And if you want to contradict it, you must do so by other scholars in the field who are top academics and have published in peer review journals. That is the end of the issue, unless you have some serious modern scholars who are recognized, have published in Academic journals and are in a major accredited university that hold your wild interpretations, your opinion and extrapolations are not going to be placed in wikipedia since they contradict OR. That is the rule. --alidoostzadeh 15:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not my intention to contradict anything. It is you that contradict primary and secondary sources by tertiary sources, by copying synoptic phrases and then prevent the picture from blurring by flouting the nuances to be found in those same secondary sources, like I already visualized above. My protest is not directed against a certain view, nor intended to advance any other view as better. My protest is directed against the unscientific way of adhering to truth where only hypothesis exists. Show me any source where it says literally: Linguistic evidence concerning the Scythian people mentioned by Herodotus is conclusive (because of Zgusta?). Untill now your conclusions are nothing but OR to me. Or maybe also POV, but certainly unscientific. Rokus01 17:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. Just give it a bloody rest, Rokus01. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.242.5.38 (talk) 00:15, 12 February 2007 (UTC).


To rokus. You can repeat youreslf 100s of times but since you lack the academic credentials, it is up to you to follow the sources and not for me to explain to you what Scythian is not considered Zulu and Anar is not related to Anus. Your intrepretations and extrapolations is OR. Simple as that. If you have any peer reviewed publishing scholar from major universities in the English language from recent time that supports your claim explicity (and not your extrapolation of their writing as in the case of Mallory) then it is not OR. The article is not about amateurish (not Amateuristic) wannabe historians. If you have any knowledge of comparative linguistic (stable sound laws , proof of the existence of such word..) you might have understood. Britannica is used by enough articles in wiki and it is considered an academic reference and it does not contradict any modern source with regards to Scythians. (see the notes of the article). At worst case I can substitute 20 links that says the same thing from different well known scholars who you tried to discredit (Harmaata for example). Stop wasting people's time and this is your last warning or else it is obvious you had another idea and it is no coincidence that you jump into this article after mentioning an imfamous site. --alidoostzadeh 00:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I have been clear enough. Instead of giving me a straight answer to a straight question, you repeat your same empty accusations and still without even being able to spell Harmatta correctly. The problem is rather fundamental and involves your unscientific approach. You are unable to admit synoptic phrases and tertiary sources are no valid references to Wikipedia articles. You can't continue to prevent progress and nuance (from primary and secondary sources) by sheer amateurism. However, if this is your intention, you will continue to meet me on the battlefield. Let's go for a third opinion on this very detail. Rokus01 10:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like two other users totally disagreed with you. And again they are valid as long as they are from scholars recognized in the field and from widely cited academic sources (Britannica) that does not contradict the scholar's opinion. You need to read more wikipedia articles in order to see that wikipedia is not a discussion forum for amateurs such as yourself to disclaim or make judgments on the views of universally recognized scholars. (Doostzadeh).

Don't be so bitter about you not being a scholar yourself! Look around into the world you are living in. The third opinion just gave an answer to the first question: The Britannica is definitely a tertiary source, something you denied so vehemently. This means: Primary and secondary sources are to be preferred. If you had looked at my contribution you would have learned the tertiary sources where not deleted but moved from the notes to the references. This, because the footnoted information from tertiary sources was obviously ment to contradict nuance from other sources with higher prevalence. If this is not clear enough to you, we have to put the second question again very clearly: Do synopthic phrases, typical to tertiary sources but within a certain context also used in secondary sources, carry more weight than - or invalidate - nuance retrieved from primary sources and those very same secondary sources? Rokus01 06:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third opinion on tertiary sources.

Encyclopedias are tertiary sources. I find nothing in WP:OR that prevents citing tertiary sources, although a good mix of primary and secondary sources is better. However, it is not ok to draw new links between multiple sources. To be blunt, I think both of you could remember assume good faith, no personal attacks, and be civil. --Selket Talk 10:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

  • To me this answer supports nuance supplied by primary and secondary sources to be valued above synoptic phrases retrieved primarily from tertiary sources, or from within the same secondary source. Am I right?
  • Also, nuance supplied to the synoptic phrases within one source (like visualized in my above quotes on Mallory) will by definition never draw such new lines to other sources. Showing where evidence on a particular field is relative, lacking or ommitted is fundamentally different from cocktailing new evidence or views with OR, rather to the contrary: such nuance prevents the generalization of POV truth where only hypothesis exists.

Rokus01 11:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

That is your opinion and manipulation of OR but not the opinion of three other readers. Britannica as long as it does not contradict what major scholars in the field say is an excellent source. Thankfully the article is full of primary and secondary sources. Your hypothesis since you are not a scholar is not worth anything either and you can not take sources and then draw your own unbalanced hypothesis and extrapolations. As per your Mallory quote, Mallory clearly states Scythians as Iranians. Then you go on to talk about Indo-Iranian archeology which is way before the time of Scythians and then from that you try to make your weired explanations where-as Mallory does not do such a thing. (Ali Doostzadeh).

I don't think you took at heart the third opinion about being civil. This makes me suspect you did not take at heart anything. Besides, to think archeological details don't belong to the origins of Scythians is your personal point of view, thus completely irrelevant. I insist on you being so kind not to sabotage improvements any longer, since indeed - like my supposed "double" already made clear so extensively above - the article is serously flawed. Like this, it even deserves a NPOV tag. Rokus01 07:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Never Said Archeological views don't belong to Scythians. I said your extrapolations of Archeological views does not belong to wikipedia. --alidoostzadeh 00:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, willingness to include archeology in origins is already something. But now please be concise in pointing out those alleged extrapolations you reverted or give it a rest. All you removed is directly sourced and without extrapolations. Rokus01 07:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Again , if you want to quote Mallory do not make up quotes for him. And also do not remove Enyclopedia Briannica or Great Soviet Enyclopedia as other users have already pointed out . --alidoostzadeh 13:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Be specific. In the article I am not quoting Mallory, basically I summarize his views, which is generally considered better practice. You have to specify what elements you don't agree with in this summary, for instance for not being supported by the quoted text in Talk or for being otherwise incomplete or tainted (with the synoptic phrase about Scythians, being classiffied as being a people talking an Iranian language, already explicitly mentioned and preserved in the current text). The footnotes to tertiary sources I esteem overdone, having the synoptics already footnoted with secondary sources that should be preferred. I agree the tertiary sources could be preserved in "References", just to supply a general reference to the validity of statements, not to sustain explicit (possible NPOV) truth where only hypothesis and synoptics exists. Rokus01 18:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually that Scythians are Iranian is not hypothesis. It is accepted fact by all serious scholars in the area including Mallory. And wikipedia is not a discussion board to consider non-scholarly viewpoints. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with quoting Britannica which is a well known source. As per Mallory, your summary is your interpretation. I have already explained to you that Scythians are branch of Indo-Iranians and thus the archeology during the era of Indo-Iranians does not necessarily correspond to the archeology during the era of Scythians. --alidoostzadeh 01:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

You are still not specific. I can't take you seriously as long as you don't point out in what respect a summary of literally sourced quotes could possibly be deemed my specific interpretation. This looks like if you just don't agree in mentioning anything you don't like. There is no need in hiding any such information, so we won't. Your accusing me of non-scholarly viepoints is not specified either and still does not reflect any reason to your consistent reverts. Thus I still consider your reverts a result of your POV.

Can you please explain what you mean with: "Scythians are branch of Indo-Iranians and thus the archeology during the era of Indo-Iranians does not necessarily correspond to the archeology during the era of Scythians." This doesn't make sense. Scythians are a branch of the Indo-Iranians, thus necessarily the archeology of the ancestral (Andronovo) Indo-Iranians is linked to the archeology during the era of the Scythians. The way you put it does not agree with Mallory or any known standard in archeology and is utterly unsourced. Be aware of imposing your POV in such a statement.

About your statement concerning accepted facts we can continue talking untill the end of time, the only fact I know: it's unscientific to deem any scientific fact unshakable truth without proof. Certainly it would be even more unscientific to invoke tertiary sources to prove the unshakability of such a truth. This would be equal to begging the question. All I mean to say is it does not increase your credibility, since real proof here should be retrieved from primary sources, to be deemed conclusive by secondary sources, not by copying synoptics. You still did not deliver any valid source claiming the irreversible negation to the traditional and sourced common knowledge that linguistic evidence on the Scyhian language is inconclusive. This endless discussion is all about being scientific in your representation of facts. Without facts only hypothesis remains. Be angry at yourself for not being able to cocktail evidence that does not exist. And even less, don't try to curtail other information.

Rokus01 13:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Scythians, Persians, Parthians, Indians and etc. were not formed yet during the era of Indo-Iranians. They sprang off from Indo-Iranians. I do not care what you think about my credibility. As per me offering sources, once you connected Scythian to Zulu and Anar to Anus, it becomes clear to me you lack the proper understanding of comparative linguistics to understand these sources. Nevertheless your opinion on Britannica was refuted by other users and since Britannica does not contradict any of the scholarly sources I mentioned (more than 14) it is very fine to put it in. And your opinion on Scythians and other hypothesis does not count since we in wikipedia we only quote scholarly sources and scholars who have written in peer review journals and their work is recognized by other scholars and quoted. Scholars today are firm that Scythians are Iranians. We are not going to copy & paste their books here and then see some people with ethnic and not-scientific reasons not be convinced. Thus I do not care what you think about Scythians, since you are not a scholar, I will delete your POV opinion and I will quote the relavent scholars. What you may think is conclusive is 100% and totally and complete and uncompromisingly Irrelevant. On the article about the affiliation of Scythians we quote relevant and world recognized scholars and not from 1911. I am not here to have a discussion with you on Scythians as I do not think convincing you is relavent to this entry. What is relavent is simple. To quote scholarly sources and scientific references like Britannica. And these sources are conclusive that Scythians are Iranian. They do not have to convince you, but for the average person there is enough sources listed and they can easily look into them. --alidoostzadeh 14:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to convince me, but you have to be careful not to convince anybody about being a liar. I'll quote you two times: "Britannica is considered a primary reference source." (signed Ali doostzadeh) and: "Primary academic sources are Britannica and what scholars write. Britannica is considered a primary source" (signed Ali doostzadeh). So tell me how you think to convince anybody "my" opinion about Britannica being a tertiary source was refuted? Rather come with primary and secondary sources instead to prove your point of view and don't bore me with repeating unscientific nonsense and personal attacks. As long as the only "linguistic proof" you manage to gather about the Scythians talking an Iranian language is synoptic and deductive from tertiary sources, I'll urge you to stick to traditional and sourced common knowledge that linguistic evidence on the Scyhian language is inconclusive. Note linguistic evidence does not include other evidence, like cultural, archeological or whatsoever. Be concise! Anyway, I don't see any link between your hysteric and baseless accusations (again you are confusing my sound sense of humor with your own shortcomings) and arguments in favor of your reverts. The Scythians, being classified as being East Iranian, have been traced back archeologically to the Andronovo culture. Since Wikipedia aims at supplying relevant information this should not be excluded.

In the meanwhile my patience in reasoning with you is running out. You don't bother WP:AGF and you are acting like a troll. You deliberate and intentional attempt to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors. You are far more interested in how others react to your reverts, than in the usual concerns of Wikipedians: accuracy, veracity, comprehensiveness, and overall quality. Rokus01 16:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Again you are the lying one who made up false accusations against such well known scholars as Harmatta. Britannica alongside 14 other sources clearly state Scythian is Iranian. Brtiannica is a primary academic source and also it quotes primary and secondary source. So it can not be compared to wikipedia with this regard. Your opinion that Britannica is not a valid source and your attempt at removing it was refuted completely by everyone here. That scythian is Iranian language is quoted in primary and secondary sources. It is a fact agreed upon by scholars. Any other hypothesis only holds ground amongst nationalists thus not relavent to wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a place to convince you, if you have a problem with the statements of scholars in the field who are recognized as world scholars, it is your problem. And either you are simply blind (since you do not see the statements of 14 other world recognized scholars in the article clearly stating Scythian is Iranian) or you simply cannot accept the scholarly opinion. Either way wikipedia will reflect the scholarly opinion and is not a discussion board to convince ideological non-scholars. --alidoostzadeh 03:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe what I am reading here. This is insanity. You - or some kind automatic reply program - repeat false accusations about me mentioning Harmatta and insisting Britannica being a primary source. This is not real. This is an ugly attack on everything Wikipedia stands for. This is not reasoning, this is trolling. Rokus01 08:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I am too ignorant to contribute with any knowledge about the Scythians, but this unsigned text (please type AltGr+"4" two times) caught my eye:

Your hypothesis since you are not a scholar is not worth anything either...

1. Scholars should know that ad hominems reveal weak intellectual positions.

2. There´s no way for identity checking at Wikipedia, so the claim "I am an scholar" can not be supported, i.e., it is a flatus vocis.

3. I respectfully suggest you to stablish your scholarly position not by you asserting "I am an scholar", but by the quality and relevance of the sources you cite. In my honest opinion, that´s the correct way to gain respect here as an scholar. Randroide 09:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A second third opinion

Encyclopedias and dictionaries are tertiary sources. There is nothing prohibiting people from citing these sources, and in a pinch can be quite useful. I would suggest that they still be used, but sparingly. Primary and secondary sources should be preferred, but if nothing is found for a certain source, it would be much better to use a tertiary source than leave a {{fact}} there. The best place to look for sources is your local library, from my citation experiences. bibliomaniac15 00:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks another common sense opinion. --alidoostzadeh 01:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Clear example of Hypocrisy by user Rockus01 removing Britannica and inserting Britannica when it suits his agenda

A clear example of this users hypocrisy. He removes the Britannica link from Scythians for dubious reasonsand yet calls it source info here and puts it back in another article. [7]! Where as in that link there is no other sources to corroborate the Britannica statement in this article we have brought 14 of the latest sources. Unfortunately this ideological users have a problem with Britannica 2007 and tens of other scholars who have clearly stated Scythian is Iranian. The user does not like the words of scholars so he tries to either dilute it or subvert it with phony words like unscientific , flawed..--alidoostzadeh 16:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Let me also mention that RFC was held in Scythians [8]. This user clearly thinks that wikipedia is a discussion board where he can put any sort of opinion even his own non-scholarly one. Also here is one more link where the user simply again inserted a Britannica link: [9]. Yet he wants to remove from Scythians when 14 other references besides Britannica were provided by published and world recognized scholars in the field. --alidoostzadeh 16:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
That Scythian is Iranian is a fact accepted by scholars of today. Any other opinion from non-scholars specially from ideological websites does not room in a wikipedia article. As wikipedia clearly rejects OR. --alidoostzadeh 16:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Your assumptions just show a tremendous lack of knowledge concerning the real scientific discussion, far beyond the importance of Wikipedia and nothing to do with little Wikipedia things like OR or low level discussion boards like this Talk. This scientific discussion is what you want to exclude from this article. You try this by false pretexts like as if any consensus has already been achieved, defiling scientific standards, Russian scholars and sources. Your "evidence" is teinted and far from conclusive, who are you to say anything is considered conclusive? You are not able to show any source that support your outspoken opinion on consensus, even less supported by other sources. Since your erroneous, unscientific and not-Wikipedian (endorsed by third opinions you don't seem to mind) opinion in thinking tertiary source Britannica carry more weight than anything else, seem to be unshakable, I will answer your misinterpretations by Britannica evidence.

  • Britannica clearly states Scythians where "originally" of iranian stock.
  • Britannica clearly states the Scytho-Sarmatian languages were distinct to all other Eastern Iranian languages, including Saka.
  • Britannica clearly states the Scytho-Sarmatians lasted untill the 2nd century AD
  • Britannica clearly states few words are known in all eastern Iranian languages up to the 4th century AD, when Scythian was already extict
  • Britannica clearly states Ossetian does not equal a direct continuation to the Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions.
  • Britannica clearly states Russian anthropologists have recently expanded our knowledge on this subject

So, why are you boring me and other people with your peculiar and outspoken interpretations and exclusions? You are not a scholar, and if you were your university level system is thoroughly corrupted. You don't seem to understand the impact of scientific research or realize what scientific approaches you are ignoring. There is no such thing as an established fact about this subject. To the contrary, a lot is in dispute and needs further investigation. So please, since you don't have a valid view and obviously are trolling around in order to propagate our ridiculous shortsighted and unscientific nationalist "Greater Iranic" POV, I ask you kindly to restrain from further vandalizing on this subject. Rokus01 14:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

First fix up your grammer and spelling and stop the long boring diatribe and personal attacks which has no bearing on the discussion. The last thing you are is scientific with your anus and anar etymological connection or claiming Harmatta made up the word Saka after the day I sent barefact an e-mail which includes parts of Harmatta's article on Issyk! Secondly bring the relevant Britannica links (they are online) with proper date and reference! Third as shown above you wanted to remove Britannica so don't try to fool users as they are not stupid as you think they are. Third it is good to see that you back off from your weak position that Britannica needs to be deleted. Looks like many readers including me did not agree with your two-way tactic of deletion and insertion of Brtiannica when it suited your needs.
Now lets just analyze some stuff you said which contradicts Britannica. For example: Ossetic is the modern descendant of the language of the ancient Alani, a Sarmatian people....[10] which already contradicts one of your assertions. So bring proper links and don't make Britannica speak in your image. I have access to all the Britannica article through and I can access them next week. I will copy and paste all the ones relevant to Scythian here on tuesday. Despite your claim that there are multiple hypothesis, there are none by scholars which is what counts. By the way Alans were direct continuation of Scythians according to Britannica. Note this article from Britannica: Not long thereafter, tribes speaking an Iranian language, whom the Greeks called Scythians, conquered the Cimmerians. [11]
Also Britannica says: member of a nomadic people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 8th and 7th centuries Bc . Centred on what is now the Crimea, the Scythians founded a rich, powerful empire that survived for several centuries before succumbing to the Sarmatians during the 4th century BC to the 2nd century AD. Much of what is known of the history of the Scythians comes from the account of them by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who visited their territory. In modern times this record has been expanded chiefly by the work of Russian anthropologists.. [12]. Thus it does not say Russian anthropologist are recently expanding, it says the works of Russian antropologists have expanded knowledge on the topic. Two different things! Furthermore of course Scythians like any other group mixed with locals. They ruled from India to Ukraine. And finally Scythian language branched off to Alanic, Khotanese Saka and etc. Just like Sanskrit branched off to various languages. I invite you to be civil and stop the personal attacks.--alidoostzadeh 14:06, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, I hope your expertise on Britannica includes the famous 15th paper edition. The date does not matter, because the reprints did not yield different versions or corrections to the subject, not even, reprint 2007. Therefore, date is irrelevant and demanding Britannica online is not necessary or at issue and insisting on the online version would even imply the impplementation of double standards. Please surprise me with you next argument in favor of reverting the truth you hate so much. Didn't I tell you already I have the complete Britannica in my possession and in front of me? It is a little silly you are reverting in advance of your private investigation and ask me to wait until tuesday, while I can already tell you what Britannica says.

Your additions to my observations are irrelevant. Your statement "Ossetic is the modern descendant of the language of the ancient Alani, a Sarmatian people....[10] which already contradicts one of your assertions." is a clear example of WP:OR. Note "Alani, a Sarmatian people having Ossetic as its modern descendant" doesn't mean "Ossetic being the modern descendant of all Scythians." Please do not resort to extrapolations or irrelevant deviations and stick to the unambiguous text. Russian anthropologists, whether already having expanded or still expanding knowledge on this subject because of their work, does not change the Russian anthropologists being recognized as leading experts on the subject.

Rokus01 18:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually I will bring all the sources from Britannica 2007 edition (the newest edition available online through any decent university) soon and then we can discuss their merits. Obviously this supercedes any obsolete text version. I have access to the full edition also and I am on travel. Users can decide then about who is extrapolating. The best way is to simply quote the sentence without any commentary.. --alidoostzadeh 23:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Genes

If i interupted tu much continue and ignore.

  • The ethnic origin is best to analyze by genetic markers. Words can spread as wind for genes - ethnic relationship is required. Do somebody oppose for R1a1 as main Scythian marker? The linguistic stuff is pre-genetic research stuff. The linguist just get hypothesis. But can’t confirm them. Did they think that by molecular biology, we will be able to precisely measure ethnicity in 100 k years depth? The other people who do not have the high % in gens was perhaps good allays of Scythian. Especialy if they have similar languages. We should honor that fact and allowed them to belong to this group. There is also possible another tragic scenario, that years before, thy get more the common genes, but they was left somehow isolated, abandoned by us, unsupported and finally the genes was diluted by outside influence(?). Sometime it was terrible time and experience. Do not reject those who fill historical affinity. There is always limited number of people on earth. With mutual respect we can share common inheritance real or just symbolic. The inclusion to history may be done by will. Will be it truth? If no fact say otherwise we can always find an common idea, common ideals, and common understanding 24.13.244.169 05:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The R1a1 marker is too old for being a valid marker to distinguish Scythians from neighboring people. The marker is rather linked to the early kurgans and Yamna culture. The Scythians were certainly linked to this cultures, but so are a lot of other people. Rokus01 08:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC) _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ The Ossetians are most certainly not the last of the Alans by any means. The last as a collective people, perhaps, but given that the Alans spread clear down into Northern Africa and into the UK, it cannot be said that they are no more. I speak as a descendant of these people with a clearly Anglicized version of the surname "Alan" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans We're everywhere.

[edit] whats going on

I intending to add sorce text of litopys Nasz 05:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't you have a translation? Rokus01 09:01, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] britannica

I have copied the relevant britannica articles about Scythians for anyone who is interested. --alidoostzadeh 22:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Why should anybody argue with someone who even flouts a third opinion. I can hardly take you serious. So now I have to prove to you Britannica's 15th edition is a valid source? So now I have to ask another third opinion about your collection of copies, to tell this copies don't contradict the original Britannica, nor any of my statements above? You are wrong in all possible ways, but Wikipedia does not have any defense against trolls, nationalists and personal desires or determination to destroy information. Wikipedia is a public source that can be disrupted by people like you. This article is teinted, abused, unscientific, superficial, naïve, ignorant and in need a peer review very badly. Be happy and buy yourself a drink. Rokus01 14:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Please end the personal attack. If you want to quote Britannica quote it directly without adding any interpretations. --alidoostzadeh 00:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

You are not giving any answer. Probably you think it is easier to revert and get away with it. In this, you definitely have an edge to serious users. Rokus01 18:36, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I said that when you quote Britannica do not add your opinion. --alidoostzadeh 02:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Straw Poll 1

Should the text read "Scholars generally classify the Scythian language as a member of the East Iranian branch, and the Scythians as a branch of the Ancient Iranian peoples expanding into Greater Iran from around 1000 BCE." or "Scholars generally classify the Scythian language as a member of the East Iranian branch, and the Scythians as a branch of the Ancient Iranian peoples expanding into the steppe regions north of Greater Iran from around 1000 BCE.--Natl1 (Talk Page) (Contribs) 16:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Version 1 (the first one)


Version 2 (the second one)

  1. Rokus01 16:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


Comments

"Greater Iran" is the area once covered by Iranian empires and has no bearing with the Scythians nor the attested origins of the East Iranian languages, thus does not even need to be mentioned at all. My vote just involves the correctness of the geographical location. Rokus01 16:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

  • versions are not identified clearly --Rayis 10:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] the Atestation of Scythian languge

Please show a Scythian language literature is all attestation based on one inscription which may be Scythian. Ops sorry there is another inscription butt nobody have an idea what it mean ;) Look into Scythian language my question is who knows unquestionably Scythian literature? Nasz 20:41, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Personal names, deities, rivers.. are attestation of language. There are verifiable, scholarly and sourced items in this article and they should be looked into for further details to satisfy your inquiry. --alidoostzadeh 20:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
your editing behaviour at present is unacceptable, Nasz. You are wildly inserting nonsensical stuff in broken English, forcing people to waste time cleaning up after you. Uploading vandalised images without attribution like here is the last straw. dab (𒁳) 08:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
i dont think so or even soo. From previous discusion with you Dab i know you are dogmatic. Answer me - Do you cary for truth ? Nasz 10:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
the image i say is more corect. What do you say ?
I am dogmatic about quality, not content. Edit encyclopedically and grammatically, and you won't have a problem with me. dab (𒁳) 14:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Nasz, your edits are not clear at all and people will start thinking you are a vandal. Won't it be better to propose your changes first at Talk? I think you are trying to say that Scythians in reality roamed a much more extended area including areas to the North West and to the far East, and that it is not sure what language they spoke. An argument in favour to the first are traces of Iranian languages in Slavic, Uralic and Turk languages, however, this would be in contradiction to your second assumption (although it has to be clear the Scythians were not the only Iranian people roaming the steppes: the Iranian presence has a long history here). An argument in favour of your second assumption is that nobody has ever sufficiently and convincingly sourced statements to the contrary. I am convinced this items will continue to pop up and be a source of discontent at this very page, and to irritation and warfare as well, as long as this elements are not included, even shunned or banned. It should be cristal clear that Scythians from the moment they first mounted their horses were exposed to international contacts, extensive mixture and absorption into Slavic, Turkic and whatsoever cultures until they ceased to exist as a people with a separate language: just like what happened to the Franks and the Normans. So to all: Archeological evidence is straightforward, but linguistic evidence is poor: I don't think it is prudent to insist on an unequivocal Iranian identity, especially not in the later stages, and would like to plead for inserting indications that Scythian tribes probably had merged with Turkish tribes at an early stage, and also had settled within Slavic territories to merge with the people living there. Rokus01 15:57, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I think only scholarly sources should be mentioned and there won't be a problem with people's intrepretation and etc. There are remnants of tribes called Sakavand in Persia still and there are some Iranian dialects in China that deserve a closer look. Anyways if people have sources, they should bring them, but intrepretations should not be allowed. I agree scythians merged with slavs, germans (through Alans), turkic, uralic and even Tocharians and etc. But these people came later. Turkic groups appeared in central asia much later. Slavs also appeared much later. Germans too. There is no group that is not mixed really. There could be a section on Scythian diffusion amongst other people (we even find Alans in France and England), but it should be properly sourced and the references from the begining about the original scythians and their language and etc. should not be removed. Every once in a while we get someone here claiming the original scythians were Slavic or Turkic or Uralic or whatever. Scholars today base on very clear etymology plus physical looks (with the exception of Slavics who are caucasoid) have more than enough linguistic and archeological evidence for Iranian claim. Also groups like Sogdians and Chorasmians were either scythians originally (Sogd is actually cognate of scyth) or spoke very close dialects to these two. So a small subsection on groups that Scythians effected is more than welcome and I have some information actually with regards to both Slavic and Turkic and Uralic groups which I might bring later on. --alidoostzadeh 02:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Herodotos transliteration

Gentlemen. I know at least one group of people who have never claimed to be of Scythic origin. They are all Finno Ugrian peoples who lived in the vast plain of Eastern Europe by the time when Herodotos wrote his history c. 450 - 430 BC. The Scythic influence has been discovered in many burial sites and they had large trade connections with the Scythians who lived south of Finno Ugrian (Rha - Permian - Uralic) tribes. The fur trade between the coniferous forest zone via steppe zone to the Greek colonies located in the north shore of Black Sea was mainly carried out by ethnic Hellenic Gelons who have settled to the lands of Budini (Vudini). And it was a big business by that time. Rha was the main trading route toward Caspian Sea and beyond. However, at least according the Finnish transliteration of Herodotos: Historia Gelons were not Scythians. They came from Hellenic trade posts and settled to the coniferous forest zone to the place named Gelonos. This place was surrounded by wooden wall. Each side 30 stadion (one stadion = 192 metre) long. Their houses were built from wood, also their temples, altars and Hellenic Goods statues. Peharps nobody here has heard of ancient Finno Ugrian habit called Trade Peace which allowed dealers and traders of other nations to settle in specific trading places among the original people. In this case Budins which were tall, mainly blue eyed and fair heared. They lived east of Androfags (Mordvians) and Melanklains (Meris and Maris). About seven day trip east of Budins lived Thyssageths (Magyars) and Iurkis (Jugras) which correspond Ugrians living at western Urals area. Herodotos Thyssageths may origin from Tshus (Tsusovaja) River which is known to be inhabited by riding Magyars tribes by that time, before moving further south. And as Herodotos clerarly pionts out the list of peoples living behind the Scythians are based what Greek traders in Black Sea Greek colonies told him. Persian King Dareios I started war against the Scythians and his army marched here and there after the Scythians who avoided the battle with the Persians. Dareios managed to capture and burn Gelonos 513 BC. The Finno Ugrians in the area seems to have been allied with the Scythians in this war against the Persians. Thus Budins were pre Udmurts (Permians) who lived north of Kama and Rha (Valgia / Volga) confluence in forest zone. However, only part of this 30 stadion walled square of Gelonos was used as settlement. It was a place where wild fur animals were collected (as wild reinders) for next year sales inside the walled area (compare Reinder palings) for the southern customers Scythians from Kuban and Greek city of Olbia which was under Scythian protection.

Large quantities of furs, honey and other products were obtained through barter from the tribes of central forest zone. Finnish tribes of the upper Volga and the Kama valley acuired bronze toos from the Scythians in exchange of furs. Enourmous heaps of bones from fur-bearing animals neat the Finnish settlements suggest that the Volga was already a trade -Route between forest amd steppe.

Belsk theory is interesting but it is located in too southern location to be Gelonos. May be this was the Scythian capital but not named Gelonos. As far as I know the Scythian capital was at first Panticapaeum at the mouth of Istros (Danube) and moved c. 300 BC to Neapolis (close to the modern town of Simferopol) in the Crimea. Neapolis was forty acres in area and surrounded by a stone wall, eight to thirteen metre thick, surmonted by towers. It contained many stone buildings, with tiled roofs. In the residential quarter of the town, the houses were built around courtyards.

It has been said that Scythian King Scylas was the first nomand to live in house, in the trading and manufacturing town of Olbia.

As an interesting small little known detail, Eino Kuussaari in his "Suomen Suvun Tiet" p 62 shows the most southernmost Finno - Ugrian settlements inside the Scythia as Harkova, Mereva, Poltava, Kotelva, Sumi, Sudzha, Peni and Objan. All just inside the steppe forest area (Arometsiköt).

JN

I've read some material that says they are related cultures, but there is already a Wikipedia article for Finno-Ugric peoples. In the article, these people are defined by their languages. There are a lot of questions left to answer regarding the Scythian/Scytho-Siberian/Central Asian Steppe peoples, and much research needs to be done before these connections can be safely made. TeamZissou 18:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Franks and Scythians

The text considering the possible relations of Franks and Scythians is worth reconsidering.

The text now says: "The Merovingian kings of the Franks traced their ancestry to the Germanic tribe of the Sicambri. Gregory of Tours documents in his History of the Franks that when Clovis was baptised, he was referred to as a Sicamber with the words "Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti."'. The Chronicle of Fredegar in turn reveals that the Merovingians believed the Sicambri to be a tribe of Scythian or Cimmerian descent, who had changed their name to Franks in honour of their chieftain Franco in 11 BC."

This has several diffeculties.

  • First of all primary sources like Julius Caesar himself - in line with Strabo and Ptolemeus - gives us his account that makes very clear that Sicambri were at the Rhine delta before Franco.
  • Secondly this myth comes in variations that are not consistent with each other.
  • Third - and most important - Archeologist confirm ongoing settlements at the Sicambri area at the Rhine.
  • Scholars like Wallace-Hadrill, Edward James and Ian Wood use strong words on this myth like "This myth is quite without substance" and "nonsensical".

I have tried to make the link between Scythians and Franks more real, but it was reverted. johanthon 12:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember, we aren't here to argue the veracity or falsehood of these myths, only to give them the most accurate documentation possible for historiographic purposes. Also, the wording has already been changed from what you wrote above to make it more accurate. Til Eulenspiegel 12:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
This change does not improve the phrases at all. On the contrary, for Fredegar is not a Carolingian at all. So this change obscures the older version. But if you agree that we must give the most accurate documentation, than why don't you add to the current version the points that I make? Wallace-Hadrill sais that those myth of Fredegar are "quite without substance". Obviously that should be in the text in a meaningful way. johanthon 12:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I have no problem with your adding that as a secondary source, just please don't take the mentions of any of the other (primary) sources away, if you do so! Til Eulenspiegel 13:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I do dispute the way you seem to interprete these primary sources and so do main scholars. johanthon 13:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Please don't assume anything about what I "seem", I am all about letting the actual sources speak for themselves wherever possible, instead of re-interpreting them, or telling people how they should interpret them. Til Eulenspiegel 13:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
The primary sources contradict with each other. Caesar, Strabo and Ptolemeus give an other account, that also is confirmed by archeologists. johanthon 13:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
That can all be mentioned too, as long as it is properly sourced. It is important that we not draw any novel conclusions for the reader; all we can do is accurately tell what various sources say. Til Eulenspiegel 13:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Than the text will be 3 times as long and we have an academical dispute on Franks in a text on the Scythians. That wil not please the reader. Let's keep it reasonable. johanthon 13:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright kids. I've been watching the building edit war. What's the argument here in the most succinct terms?--There are sources online that suggest a Frank-Scythian link, but I haven't found one that demonstrates a transition from a Scythian tribe to a Frankish one. It is true that elements of the mythology claim (among other things) Scythian roots and/or origins in the land of Scythia. The Frankish sources, however, come hundreds of years after the last "bar-bar" speaking Scythian, and the medieval sources are as reliable an accurate source as Geoffry of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. So, if there is a mention in the mythology AND there is no hard connection between the two eras of people, then why can't it be mentioned. How should it be mentioned in the article--maybe a "Scythians in mythology" section? TeamZissou 19:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear dad, ;-) I don't see anybody objecting against mentioning a link, and a section "Scythians in mythology" would be a very good idea, I think. However this dispute is first of all about what we mention: I think we should emphasize that modern scholars use words like "this legend is quite without substance", and even "nonsensical". Secondly Til Eulenspiegel seems to deny this is mythology. He attacks me for stating that this is mythology, allthough he admits he did not read the primary and most relevant secondary sources. Anyway, thanks for your thinking. johanthon 19:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Please do not put words in my mouth. I have never stated any such thing. I have indeed seen the primary source LHF, though I admit I do not have access to your favorite secondary sources, you know as well as I do there are plenty of others. Once again, you are attecking me for what I "seem", I believe I asked you on another page not to make assumptions about what I "seem". Just take my words at face value, please. I do not deny this is mythology and have no objection whatsoever to labelling it as mythology, nor do I have any objection to your quoting your secondary sources who have the POV that it is "nonsensical". Feel free to do so. What I have objected to is your repeated removal and blanking of the historiographic information that tells the reader / researcher what the specific primary sources are, eg. Gregory of Tours, Chronicle of Fredegar, Liber Historiae Francorum, et. al. We are not endorsing these myths by mentioning the sources, even if they are utterly devoid of historical value, it is still of historiographic value. Til Eulenspiegel 20:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

So, why can't we have a "Scythians in mythology" section and cite the ancient and medieval sources? Then, if we are to expand on that information with insights and/or supporting data, etc., we cite current findings of archaeologists/linguists/geneticists in short? If there is no evidence to support the claims of the ancient and medieval sources, then we say so. If there is a debate in academia regarding this or that claim of the ancient and medieval sources, then we say so. If there is some correlating evidence that agrees, or refines what the ancient and medieval sources claimed, then we say so. Huh? What do you think? It sounds like you two have an argument that's overshadowing some pretty simple solutions to whatever started the argument in the first place. I even made a copy of the article for both of you (and whoever else would like to contribute) can edit-it-out until an informative and encyclopedic compromise is reached. Here: Scythians in mythology Parts of the article might be better folded into this proposed section, or maybe a "mythology" subsection can be added to existing other-culture sections of the article if relevent. In any event, this might be a better place than the mainspace for a cage fight. TeamZissou 21:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Genetics

I edited the genetics section ( a month or so ago now) because it was too simplistic. I think it is a bit more plausible now. Hxseek 12:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

well, we are saying R1a1 and G2 have high coincidence with Scythian presence but cannot be used for one-to-one identification. There is no need to harp on the questionable validity of concepts of "ethnicity" here. What we want are genetic studies directly addressing the Scythians, not unreferenced hand-waving about the likelihood of R1a1 or G2 descending from a Scythian ancestor. dab (𒁳) 13:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur Hxseek 00:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen "as in" used synonymously w/ also. It's really an equating expression as they are equating SE Eurasian steppe land w/ Iran. If they really meant "also" then I'd suspect they just would have left out "as in" altogether. Also I don't think N1a is found that far east in Asia at present. According to "mtDNA Haplogroup Specific Control region Mutation Motifs" reference it's not found there at all which can be obtained from the following site: http://mtmanager.yonsei.ac.kr. The study in question itself also dosen't provide any stats for an N1a frequency in lands that would fall under the category of "SE steppe land" which further leads me to conclude they made a mistake here. Geog1 (talk) 16:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)Geog1

I agree this sentence is confusing, since "as" [13] could be read either way, as "to the same degree, amount, or extent; similarly; equally", or as "for example; for instance".
Haplogroup N1a is, however, more frequent in the populations of the southeastern region of the Eurasian steppe, as in Iran and southeastern India
In the first meaning "as" would be a comparison rather than an equation. I don't think the autor meant anything else, for then indeed this would point to a geographic error. I would not go as far as to insinuate the utter absence of data for making such a statement in a scientific publication. However, if you have other publications at your disposal that uphold other information then you could add this separately to the article. Rokus01 (talk) 17:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually they say this a line or two below the table:

The N1a haplogroup was not observed among the native American, east Asian, Siberian, Central Asian, and western European populations.

Again it appears they have in fact made a geographical error of sorts. Geog1 (talk) 18:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)Geog1

It all depends on the definition of Central Asia. By common "modern" (?) definition I figure it would not include the southeastern region of the Eurasian steppe: like Afghanistan? Rokus01 (talk) 21:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

For the territorial extent of the Eurasian steppe belt see Britannica's map:

http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-3658/Extent-of-the-Eurasian-steppes

Afghanistan would not be steppe land at all according to the map. South eastern steppe land would be parts of Mongolia and Manchuria. These two places are often lumped into the East Asian category but sometimes Mongolia will fall under Central Asia categorically as well.

For what "commonly" is considered Central Asia refer to this map:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/central_asian_common_2002.jpg

Note that Afghanistan is not considered Central Asian but occasionally it is included. Sometimes it is lumped in w/ the Middle East but more traditional maps (like the one in my World Book) will designate Iran as the most eastern extent of the Middle East. Regardless it's not steppe land and if it were it certaintly wouldn't be south eastern steppe land either.

Geog1 (talk) 06:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Geog1

[edit] Late Antiquity, Vigilius

Attila ordered the execution of Vigilius.

This statement should either be removed (I believe that it's irrelevant) or explained more deeply. According to Gibbon, Vigilius bought his life for two hundred pounds of gold. From The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III - Chapter XXXIV:

But the rashness of Vigilius will appear still more extraordinary, since he returned, conscious of his guilt and danger, to the royal camp, accompanied by his son, and carrying with him a weighty purse of gold, which the favorite eunuch had furnished, to satisfy the demands of Edecon, and to corrupt the fidelity of the guards. The interpreter was instantly seized, and dragged before the tribunal of Attila, where he asserted his innocence with specious firmness, till the threat of inflicting instant death on his son extorted from him a sincere discovery of the criminal transaction. Under the name of ransom, or confiscation, the rapacious king of the Huns accepted two hundred pounds of gold for the life of a traitor, whom he disdained to punish.

[edit] The scythians came from the East of the Iranian plateau.

R1a* the direct ancestor to R1a1, is found in fair frequency among North Eastern Iran, while nearly absent in modern day Ukrainians. This certainly contridicts the Euro-centric claim that scythians came from the steepes. In, fact the diversity of r1a* is clearly higher in Iran and northern pakistan. Also, r1a1 is in higher frequency (AND diversity) in the 'south-east of iran', not the north-east. This is in conflict with the proposed migratory path into the plateau..

The fact that the scyths did not have any form of writing (if this is indeed the case. It has recently been questioned), does not necessairly contridict the idea that they were indigenous to iran. One has to wonder why a group such as the scyths would need to utilize a writing system to begin with.

In general, none of the proposed cultures ('Kurgan', 'Andronova', 'BMAC') share meaningful similarities with the early Iranian cultures. As the adminastrator of RacialReality blogged, "There is about as much evidence to claim the Plains Indians were the Proto-Iranians".


Oh well. You live with the best of the west.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Zadeh79 (talk • contribs) 20:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] #($I$

"The other bias in this article is that it aims to present a picture of the Scythians emanating from Iran"

No. The biased view, commonly upheld in the west, is that the ALL Iranian's (and other Caucasoids)originated in central Asia (or the steepes). There is simply no evidence for this. It's just a guess. The sheer amount of caucasoid haplogroups associated with the area surrounding the plateau, (YHG: Early R- likely R itself (Reguiro 2006), Haplogroup J (Quintana Murci), Haplogroup IJ, Haplogroup Q, Haplgroup G, Early I - MTDNA: n1a - found in scythian skeletons), autosomal phylogenetics (like the Cavalli-Sforza tree, "The History and geography of Human Genes"), and LGM climate maps suggest quite the opposite scenario. Specifically, that West Asia (particularly Iran) was a major(if not only) site of LGM Caucasoid evolution (cold adaption) . And that more than 85% of European genes can be attributed to a neolithic influx.

Why would the hordes migrate from north to south, when the climate was warming from south to north? When population densities in West Asia were approaching limits?


But with regards to the Scythians, The healthy R1a* frequency and deep diversity in Eastern Iran should alarm even the grandest of deludes, they were just earlier nomads of the plateau whom migrated northwards in search of land. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zadeh79 (talk • contribs) 20:27, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Haplogroups R1A, G, and Alleged Scythian connections

I noticed there has been alot of speculation as to which Y chromosome haplogroup was the predominant Scythian male lineage. Its worth discussing but I notice that there is some rather peculiar POV pushing, slighty implicit at times, though quite blatant at others. For instance why is G pushed a bit harder in the body of the article than R1a especially since its present day distribution does not in reality actually mirror historic Scythian settlement all that well. This can be seen from the fact that R1a is found at about 50% among present day males of the Altai Republic, an area which was a MAJOR settlement zone for the Scythians and home of the Parzyryk culture. G on the other hand appears to be virtually absent here. Also R1a IS found among modern day Ossetians though certainly at a severley minute frequency while G is in fact the dominant. Still couldn't there be a possibility that the Alan remnants who were probably small in number and sought refuge in the Caucasus were primarily of R1a though due to the proverbial genetic "role of the dice" had their lineage severly reduced by indigenous males from hg G who say may have adopted Alan ways and language? After all, as I understand it, G is actually a fairly distinct male marker of the Caucasus region and its spatial distribution outside this area is relatively minute. Therefore can it really even be considered Scythian at all (especially in lieu of the Altai Rep. observation)? But also compare and contrast for yourself:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=56946 (Well's "Eurasian Heartland" paper)

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf (The "World Haplogroup Map")

Really though I question the overall validity of keeping the Y chromosome DNA discussion in the genetics section since neither R1a or G have explicitly been asigned to the Scythians based on modern population sampling or even via extraction from remains found in a Scythian cultural context by geneticists. Consider all this food for thought.Geog1 (talk) 20:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Geog1

[edit] The late neoliths of West asia

Considering n1a is far more prevalent in west asia, and the r1a* diversity in eastern iran, I'm not sure how they find the central asian hypothesis remotely plausible anymore. Even haplogroup G appears West Asian. Without a doubt, the scythians were an independent late neolithic population, as were the associated YAZ, BMAC, and Andronovan's.