|
Post by sarmat on Mar 24, 2010 23:53:09 GMT 3
I am very sorry for rising this question again. But, recently, I have been thinking again and again about the real ethnic affinity of Scythians. I've been rereading Herodotus story and also historical accounts about Turks. And still, I can't understand. What definite proofs we have that would give an unambigous support that Scythians were Iranic? I mean, when I read Herodotus accounts of Sakas religion when they burned horses for sacrifice its practically the same as the description of Turkic & Khazar religion by the Byzantine historians. When you look at Scythian names, like Targitai what immidiately comes to my mind is Targutai - evil uncle of Genghis khan (I mean Targutai isn't exactly Turkic in this regards, but it's clearly Altaic). Also there are 15 parralels in archelogical culture of Scythians and Turks. Material culture and ways of life are almost exactly the same. So, based on what can we claim that Scythians were Iranic? A dozen of names, which, in fact, also have Turkic ethymological explanation? I ask more knowledgable members to excuse my questions which might seem stupid. But can somebody, perhaps, Ihsan is the best candidate for this role to summarize for me clear and definite arguments that Scythians were of Iranic stock.
|
|
|
Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Mar 25, 2010 19:50:17 GMT 3
I actually also don't have much knowledge on this subject, I just keep reading that they were Iranic, but with no real evidences so far I really wonder what makes them "Iranic"
|
|
|
Post by sarmat on Mar 25, 2010 20:19:03 GMT 3
So, what should we do now? Isn't this one of the most important questions in the Steppe history?
|
|
|
Post by Temüjin on Mar 25, 2010 21:12:33 GMT 3
you know what's really freaky, particularly in connection with the discussion on Steppe influence on Germanics? according to Jews, Germans = Scythians: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenaz
|
|
|
Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Mar 26, 2010 11:34:09 GMT 3
I had always wondered how come the Ashguzai (Scythians) of Assyrian tablets looked so similar to the name Ashkenazi By the way, İlhami Durmuş's book İskitler ("Scythians") has a list of Scythian words recorded in the Assyrian tablets, and he has identified some of the words with Turkic vocabulary; I can post the examples if you want
|
|
|
Post by Subu'atai on Mar 27, 2010 10:32:16 GMT 3
Some Turanists believe that the official western 'Iranic' theory is more propaganda then anything due to the points you have put forward. Turkic, Iranic, Europid scholars all have their hands on this somehow.
EDIT: One strong link is a burial writing on a Scythian warlord which when translated with Iranic - it turns out to be bibberish compared to an Altaic translation. I posted it somewhere on this forum, but I can't find it.
Personally I believe them to be all to be right but at the same time also wrong. Confirming the ethnicity of an entire steppe confederacy is pointless, people simply don't want to be believe we 'barbarians' had an multi-ethnic culture while the 'civilised' still struggle with it to this day.
|
|
|
Post by sarmat on Mar 27, 2010 19:46:27 GMT 3
Too bad we still don't have clear and convincing arguments...
There are some indirect indications that they may have been Scythians. Like there are some Ancient Slavic goods who have Iranic names and features. So, it means that they could have inherited them from neighboring Scythian tribes. But there are only three names of those Gods survived in the Russian chronicles.
What else is there?
|
|
|
Post by Temüjin on Mar 27, 2010 22:37:34 GMT 3
those could come from much earlier tribes/cultures whose names remain unknown probably forever. i mean no one questions the general Indo-European link between most european languages and Iranic languages.
|
|
|
Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Mar 28, 2010 0:52:00 GMT 3
Yes, some people insist too much on the "Iranicness" of the Scythians-Saka, and that makes it suspicious for me. Turkic scholars won't easily accept the Iranicness of Scythians-Sakas, because it's very hard for them to imagine a non-Altaic steppe people On the other hand, most of the European scholars tend to have a weird obsession to link everything Central Asian to Indo-Europeans, which is clearly a remaining from the "Aryan pride" period of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any established and commonly-accepted readings I totally agree. Personally I wouldn't care much about the ethnicity of the Scythians and Saka, because after all, they were steppe nomads and shared a common way of life, plus a very similar culture with the Turks and other horseback-riding nomads. Plus, it is clear that they were made-up of tribes with different backgrounds. There are some Iranic loanwords in the language of "Proto-Bulgarians" and in Hungarian, they might have come via the Scythians or Sarmatians, but who knows?
|
|
|
Post by sarmat on Mar 28, 2010 7:53:05 GMT 3
Yes, some people insist too much on the "Iranicness" of the Scythians-Saka, and that makes it suspicious for me. Turkic scholars won't easily accept the Iranicness of Scythians-Sakas, because it's very hard for them to imagine a non-Altaic steppe people On the other hand, most of the European scholars tend to have a weird obsession to link everything Central Asian to Indo-Europeans, which is clearly a remaining from the "Aryan pride" period of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Actually, many European scholars of the 18th, 19th centuries belived that Scythians were the same people with Tatars and other Altaic nomades. And they believed that was very "natural." But, for some reasons that has changed. And I wonder, why? I totally agree. Personally I wouldn't care much about the ethnicity of the Scythians and Saka, because after all, they were steppe nomads and shared a common way of life, plus a very similar culture with the Turks and other horseback-riding nomads. Plus, it is clear that they were made-up of tribes with different backgrounds. But that would significantly change an important part of the world and, particularly, European history. If Scythians were Turkic, than Turks are one the most ancient autochthonous peoples of Europe. There are some Iranic loanwords in the language of "Proto-Bulgarians" and in Hungarian, they might have come via the Scythians or Sarmatians, but who knows? It also could be a borrowing from Central Asian Sogdians
|
|
|
Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Mar 28, 2010 13:52:32 GMT 3
I was talking this issue with my lecturer Prof. Dr. Özkul Çobanoğlu and he said the European scholars started defending the Iranicness of Scythians-Sakas after they started excavated their kurgans, where they found many well-made artwork (some foreign, such as Greek, and some Scythian/Saka-made). They thought the "primitive" and "barbarian" Altaic peoples could not produce such stuff. I thought they came to Europe in a rather late time, around 9th-8th centuries BC Isn't it a bit too late to label the Scythians as one of the most autochthonous peoples of Europe? But on the other hand, if it's prooven one day that the Scythians were largely a Turkic people, that would take back Turkic presence in Europe several centuries before. We know that Turkic names were used in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe during the Roman period, because the name of River Ural is recorded in Greek as Daikh, which is Turkic Yayïq ( d and y can easily change in Turkic). A single word is not enough to proove which language the Sarmatians spoke, but it shows us that Turkic as a language did exist in the region. By the way, Herodotos wrote that the Scythians and Sarmatians spoke the same language. Are there linguistic evidences to proove this? Maybe. But did the Soghdians have that much of contact with the Oghurs and Magyars? Hmmm, thinking of the Soghdian-Oghur connection, that is possible. I know that the Soghdians had a colony in Crimea (Sudak) By the way, regarding the Iranicness of the Saka, there is actually one evidence: the language of Pre-Turkic Khotan was Iranic as we know from the Khotanese documents found, and we know that during the Han Dynasty of China, the Saka did live there. I don't know any population change in Khotan before the 11th century, so the that's why linguists call the Khotanese language "Khotanese Saka". But that language was used only in Khotan, and that's not enough to proove that all or most of the Saka were Iranic speakers. Khotanese can only tell us that only some of the Saka were such. For the rest of the Saka tribes, I have no idea.
|
|
|
Post by Azadan Januspar on Mar 28, 2010 16:47:17 GMT 3
Of course it's hot debate " the ethnicity of Scythians' as popular inhabitants of wide region of Steppe Zone, Central Asia especially in Turkey, other Turkic speaking countries and some other places of world and to much less degree in Iran and. Of course it is obvious that there should be something in it for someone. And I think also some foreign hands also have their position in raising such debates deviating from the correct course of studying the steppe people. I myself am convinced to pay attention to what recent archaeological and linguistic findings in this field are and learned not to take serious any biased work (hopefully many biased works are quite distinguishable from their lacking shape of scientific work and one may notice that in the way of reading it) regardless Pan-Turkic, Pan-Iranic, etc actually historical revisionism exists, and I am interested to read what they say, maybe some good points. After almost a hunderd year the way people in some countries have insisted on their "Turkicness" is also suspiscious, even more when Russians step in. Yes I guess we heard more of that from some of the above-mentioned. But yet still this matter rests vague and surely there will be reasonable answer to it. But we can't forget that at least there were findings that related them to eastern IE and Old Iranians so far more than Altaic people. There however might be obsessions to link them to either IE or Altaics and we all see it today. As it is not accepted in archaeology or historical ethnology in narrow sense and in history in wider sense to believe anything as total true, it won't be right to accept or deny by hundred percent. But I agree that ethnicity in such sense was not so important amongst the steppe people. Yes, archaeology is still unable to track how far east and west the periodical waves of IE migration took place. "so who knows?" it is the best motto in reading history of the steppe. Interesting I'd like to have a look on these names. Yet Roman period is very long we have to be specific. Could you provide me with more of the Turkicness of the language of the Sarmatian. I think "Saka" taken the meaning of Old Iranian "Wanderer" can be also a good start cause it actually fades to describe some certain ethnonym. But the Khotan findings actually don't seem to show that the language of more northern nomads of the time was the same. I think one of the further reasons to attribute them to Old Iranians are their same lifestyle, looks , customs with the contemporary Iranian tribes of Central Asia and Iranian plateau who certainly migrated southward from steppe zone. But we also have Pazyryk culture and even further east examples of mixing of IE wanderers with the Altaics.
|
|
|
Post by sarmat on Mar 28, 2010 19:03:42 GMT 3
I was talking this issue with my lecturer Prof. Dr. Özkul Çobanoğlu and he said the European scholars started defending the Iranicness of Scythians-Sakas after they started excavated their kurgans, where they found many well-made artwork (some foreign, such as Greek, and some Scythian/Saka-made). They thought the "primitive" and "barbarian" Altaic peoples could not produce such stuff. If that is true that "barbarism" argument has very little to do with the reality I thought they came to Europe in a rather late time, around 9th-8th centuries BC Isn't it a bit too late to label the Scythians as one of the most autochthonous peoples of Europe? In my mind Scythians are one of the most ancient people of Europe. After all, they are described by the European "farther of history" Herodotus. By the way, Herodotos wrote that the Scythians and Sarmatians spoke the same language. Are there linguistic evidences to proove this? Hmmm... If we had enough linguistic evidence we probably wouldn't discuss this question now. Maybe. But did the Soghdians have that much of contact with the Oghurs and Magyars? Hmmm, thinking of the Soghdian-Oghur connection, that is possible. I know that the Soghdians had a colony in Crimea (Sudak) By the way, regarding the Iranicness of the Saka, there is actually one evidence: the language of Pre-Turkic Khotan was Iranic as we know from the Khotanese documents found, and we know that during the Han Dynasty of China, the Saka did live there. I don't know any population change in Khotan before the 11th century, so the that's why linguists call the Khotanese language "Khotanese Saka". But that language was used only in Khotan, and that's not enough to proove that all or most of the Saka were Iranic speakers. Khotanese can only tell us that only some of the Saka were such. For the rest of the Saka tribes, I have no idea. Yeah, I also raised this argument once in a discussion with a Czech historian of Turkic studies once. I already don't remember all the details. But he said that "Saka language" of Khotan has nothing to do with Nomadic Sakas. And he also mentioned that only Turkic tribes preserved the name "Saka," like for example in Sakha (Yakut) case. I'll try to retrieve the details of that discussion. But it was the time when I started to doubt "Iranicness" of Scythians. In fact, I tend to be very conservative about history and I'm very sceptical about all those new hypos etc. But "Iranicness" of Scythians just makes me ask more and more questions than usually. Actually, even the language of Ossetians that is usually used for "reconstruction" of Scytho-Sarmatian language might be even not Iranic. It seems that there are more Turkic words in it than Iranic and typologically it's not that different from other Caucasian languages at all...
|
|
|
Post by Temüjin on Mar 28, 2010 20:00:12 GMT 3
By the way, Herodotos wrote that the Scythians and Sarmatians spoke the same language. Are there linguistic evidences to proove this? nah he didn't said that, he said that Sauromatae spoke a related language, not the same. that means if we can trace either one language, we can say that the other one belonged to the same group. one ancient author said the Massagets moved west and after meeting the Sarmatians became the Alans, which survived quite some time in the Northern Caucasus. that Ossetians today have a lot of Turkic words could come from their neighbours. definitely i wouldn't take ossetians as a reference for anything. there's as always also a third option, that is like the Magyars, they might have been something else entirely.
|
|
|
Post by hjernespiser on Mar 28, 2010 23:07:33 GMT 3
I haven't commented on this thread yet because I'm not so familiar with the details of this time period. The early historians used the same names for different peoples out of ignorance. Huns were called Scythians by Europeans because the ancient Greeks wrote about the Scythians in that same area centuries earlier. That didn't make Huns into Scythians. The scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries had only this information to go on. As the 20th century progressed, methodology improved and new information came to light so theories were refined. Or at least that's how I'd explain the change. I think the idea of Scythians as Iranian goes back to Herodotus and some linguistics. But I'm in agreement that the identity of a name can hide the multi-ethnic composition that was the nature of steppe confederations. It is possible that just the ruling class of Scythians were Iranics. Regarding Iranian loans into Magyar, we've actually touched on that here before ( steppes.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=board20&thread=1137&page=1#22395 and steppes.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=board20&thread=1137&page=1#22414). There's early Iranian influence during the Old Magyar period (~5th century BC) when they supposedly were living somewhere around the Urals then later influence about 1000 years later from Alans. Let's not forget that the Cimmerians preceeded Scythians in European historical memory.
|
|