Scythians - The Greatest Warriors of World

[Gothic]

depiction of a scythian fighting proto gerco-roman foot soldier

depiction of scythians on a greek art piece

 

[vostok]

I realize my ignorance - until recently I thought that the Scythians were Mongolian tribe. Now I know that the Scythians were Caucasoids, there are much of Scythians genes in the genotype of the Russians.

 

[Gothic]

I realize my ignorance - until recently I thought that the Scythians were Mongolian tribe. Now I know that the Scythians were Caucasoids, there are much of Scythians genes in the genotype of the Russians.

well technically they were not caucasoid , cause they didn't come from the caucasus where georgia , armenia and azerbaijan today are . i recall even in our history books they used to teach us that Aryans came from somewhere east of the caspian sea . the ancient residents of the west of the caspian sea were are called Sarmatians , as opposed to well Scythians

what i understand reading online sources about scythians they were to a degree mixed with all their neighbors but they eventually gave way to the current sino-mongol residents of central asia either due to war or the teachings of buddha .

One thing is for sure , the grey steppe wolf did not come from turkey . it's the scythian wolf . eastern iran i think is a continuation of the scythian desert to an extent . a country like kazakhstan itself has diverse landscapes : deserts , steppe , forest and else .. much like eastern and north eastern iran.

Scythian
ANCIENT PEOPLE
WRITTEN BY:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
See Article History
Alternative Titles: Sacae, Saka, Scyth

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Scythian, also called Scyth, Saka, and Sacae, member of a nomadic people, originally of Iranian stock, known from as early as the 9th century bce who migrated westward from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries bce. The Scythians founded a rich, powerful empire centred on what is now Crimea. The empire survived for several centuries before succumbing to the Sarmatians during the period from the 4th century bce to the 2nd century ce.

• 
  
  Scythian gold belt buckle with turquoise inlay, from Siberia; in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
  Novosti Press Agency

Until the 20th century, most of what was known of the history of the Scythians came from the account of them by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who visited their territory. In modern times that record has been expanded chiefly by Russian and other anthropologists excavating kurgans in such places as Tyva and Kazakhstan.

The Scythians were feared and admired for their prowess in war and, in particular, for their horsemanship. They were among the earliest people to master the art of riding, and their mobility astonished their neighbours. The migration of the Scythians from Asia eventually brought them into the territory of the Cimmerians, who had traditionally controlled the Caucasus and the plains north of the Black Sea. In a war that lasted 30 years, the Scythians destroyed the Cimmerians and set themselves up as rulers of an empire stretching from west Persia through Syria and Judaea to the borders of Egypt. The Medes, who ruled Persia, attacked them and drove them out of Anatolia, leaving them finally in control of lands which stretched from the Persian border north through the Kuban and into southern Russia.

The Scythians were remarkable not only for their fighting ability but also for the complex culture they produced. They developed a class of wealthy aristocrats who left elaborate graves—such as the kurgansin the Valley of the Tsars (or Kings) near Arzhan, 40 miles (60 km) from Kyzyl, Tyva—filled with richly worked articles of gold, as well as beads of turquoise, carnelian, and amber, and many other valuable objects. This class of chieftains, the Darius Iabout 513 bce.


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The Royal Scyths were headed by a sovereign whose authority was transmitted to his son. Eventually, about the time of Herodotus, the royal family intermarried with Greeks. In 339 the ruler Ateas was killed at age 90 while fighting Philip II of Macedonia. The community was eventually destroyed in the 2nd century bce, man’s household, including wife, servants, and a number of horses.

Despite these characteristics, their many and exquisite grave goods, notably the animal-style gold artifacts, reveal that the Scythians were also culturally advanced. Further, some gold ornaments thought to have been created by Greeks for the Scythians were shown to have predated their contact with Greek civilization. See also Scythian art.

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[vostok]

well technically they were not caucasoid , cause they didn't come from the caucasus where georgia , armenia and azerbaijan today are . i recall even in our history books they used to teach us that Aryans came from somewhere east of the caspian sea . the ancient residents of the west of the caspian sea were are called Sarmatians , as opposed to well Scythians

what i understand reading online sources about scythians they were to a degree mixed with all their neighbors but they eventually gave way to the current sino-mongol residents of central asia either due to war or the teachings of buddha .

I want to say that I did not know Scythians were Europeoids, light skin, light eyes - at least part of them were.

 

[Gothic]

It is about the ancient world and how different things were back then. not that the light bulb wasn't invented yet , but rather the current sino-mongol afghans of central asia didn't simply exist back then !

 

[vostok]

It is about the ancient world and how different things were back then. not that the light bulb wasn't invented yet , but rather the current sino-mongol afghans of central asia didn't simply exist back then !

I once read that in the ancient Chinese manuscripts there was a mention of the golden-haired pale-skinned people living north of China.

 

[Gothic]

I once read that in the ancient Chinese manuscripts there was a mention of the golden-haired pale-skinned people living north of China.

there aren't many sources regarding the scythians , not books neither online sources .. but what i assume is that the scythians then lived westward to china .. even in the "shahnameh" that you know about , there 's a part that says "from this tribe i have not heard , nor i have read in the books.." something like that , suggesting that even the iranians don't know much about scythians.

expansion of people has always been like the phenomenon of america , so the scythian theory is not all irrational

چو کوتاه شد شاخ و هم بیخشان

نگوید جهاندار تاریخشان

کزیشان جز از نام نشنیده‌ام

نه در نامهٔ خسروان دیده‌ام

 

[django]

I once read that in the ancient Chinese manuscripts there was a mention of the golden-haired pale-skinned people living north of China.

I believe those folks were of Kushan origin.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

I once read that in the ancient Chinese manuscripts there was a mention of the golden-haired pale-skinned people living north of China.

According to some European anthropologist forum

this is the Proto-Iranic phenotype

this is the Proto-Slavic phenotype

Proto-Iranic and Proto-Slavic look almost identical because the duo blood brothers were both the descendant of the Corded Ware culture in Russia, hence both are Satem people from genetic and linguistic point of view.


This is the original Satem people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture

 

[vostok]

By the way, such names as London, Don, Dniester, Dnieper come from the Scythian word "danu", which means the "river".

 

[Gothic]

this thread is not political it's historical , it's about how different the ethnic composition of the steppe has been before the sino-mongol afghans arrived . that once the aryans lived there .. right there .

----------------------

and it's not an all irrational theory , america for exmaple was populated by indians before the white hords came .

scythian social caste's

The real reason for the fall of Sassanid kingdom :


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Persia


With conflict erupting between Persian and Parthian factions, the empire was no longer centralized.

When Western academics first investigated the Muslim conquest of Persia, they only had to rely on the accounts of the Armenian Christian bishop Sebeos, and accounts in Arabic that were written some time after the events they describe. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen, and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen and Paris in 1944.[9]

However recent scholarship, both Iranian and Western,[citation needed] has begun to question the traditional narrative. Parvaneh Pourshariati, in her Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, published in 2008, provides both a detailed overview of the problematic nature of trying to establish exactly what happened, and a great deal of original research that questions fundamental facts of the traditional narrative, including the timeline and specific dates.

Pourshariati's central thesis is that contrary to what was commonly assumed, the Sassanian Empire was highly decentralized, and was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians, who themselves retained a high level of independence.[10] Despite their recent victories over the Byzantine Empire, the Parthians unexpectedly withdrew from the confederation, and the Sassanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against the Muslim armies.[11] Moreover, the powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the kust-i khwarasan and kust-i adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and made peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sassanians.

Another important theme of Pourshariati's study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline. Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in the years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III (632–651) to power, but in the period from 628 to 632."[12] An important consequence of this change in timeline means that the Arab conquest started precisely when the Sassanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over succession to the Sassanian throne.[12]


d Parthian (later Sassanid) empires had been the Euphrates Rive

-------------------------

the key word is parthian , it emphasizes that if parthians indeed fought arabs , it might have been all different today .

 

[Intsar Ahmad]

Scythians are the forebears of most Indo- European nations today, and yet we know so little about them. A list of nations :

In Europe

Celtic - lived in Scythia, as per ancient Irish annals; the Tuatha de Danann even brought back a contingent of Scythians with them

Germanic tribes - descended from Scythian tribes that wandered over into Europe from little Scythia, which was near the Black Sea; prior to that these Scythians had lived in what is today Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but after fighting the Scythian tribe of Massagetae (i.e. 'great getae'), they migrated west. They were chasing another mysterious people,the Cimmerians, from whom the Welsh(Cymru) claim, and certain Germanic tribes (Sugambri) trace, their descent.

Scandinavia - most of the pantheon worshipped by the Svearna (ancestors of the Swedes) were people called the Aesir. They came from the East and fought with the extant Vanir. Odin (Wotan) and Thor were from this family. Additionally the Gotarna of Southern Sweden were Goths and related to the Getae of Thrace, the Visigoth and Ostrogoths and the Massagetae of Asia.

Saxons - a tribe not mentioned by name in ancient history of tribes but evident that Sakson could be another spelling ie sons of Saka (the ancient and proper spelling of Scythian). Even Saxon historians described the men sent back to mainland Europe to get more men for the invasion and settlement of Briton as returning to Scythia

Sarmatians - the lands of the Poles and Russians was ancient Sarmatia; Sarmatians were the product of Scythian men and Amazon women, hence the cultural and language differences between Germanics and Slavs

In Asia

Parthians - originally united around the Pars tribe, Iran was also ruled by a Scythian dynasty in the form of the Parthians, who were a clan from the Dahae tribe. The Dahae are linked to the Goths, as per a strange paragraph in the the Annals and Deeds of the Goths.

Jat & Rajput tribes - of northern India, especially the Punjab have been linked by British ethnographers to Scythian origins, although heavily mixed with the pre-Indo European Dravidian population; probably have Kushan, Chionite, & Massagetae blood.

Afghans - still settled in the area where the Sakas (i.e. Scythian) migrated; probably more likely to be descended from the Massagetae, Scythians and especially the Hephthalites (another Scythic nation), a brutal, warlike people that savaged both the Persians and the Turks till the two united and destroyed their kingdom.

In essence, the nation of Scyths (Sakas) spread from the western coast of Ireland to the bay of Bengal.

Misconception - central asia was exclusively turco-mongol in ancient times

Reality - the nascent Turks (Gok Turk back then) and the Mongols were living near the Tien Shan and Altai range. This is not to say that populations did not mix. The finding of red-haired mummies in the Gobi proves this, but it is clear that central Asia, especially between the Oxus and Jaxartes river and most of Afghanistan was Ancient Scythia, and that the Scythians were nomadic caucosoids.

Gujjars are also Scythians. General Cunningham identifies the Gujjars with Kushanas (Indo-Scythian people) of eastern tartars. He explains that Korso and Kushan written on the coins of Kushana King Kanishka is same as Gorsi and Kusane clans of Gurjars respectively. He further adds that Gujars came to India in the 3rd wave of migration around the mid third century CE. Ibbeston also supports Indo-Scythians descend of Gurjars. K.S.Singh also support the theory on the basis that beside Jats, Gurjars are the only race of foreign origin in north west part of Indian subcontinent who are known to have been powerful during early centuries of Christian era Thus, it is believe that they entered Indian subcontinent from North-west Indian Frontier and established themselves in the Indus region, Hazara, undivided Punjab, Kashmir and Rajasthan It has been suggested that the Gurjars and along with people from northwestern India, merged with the Hephthalites and formed the Rajput clan.