User:Codex Sinaiticus/Ethnicity of Scythians

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Scholarly consensus since the 19th century identifies the Scythians (Saka) of Antiquity as an Iranian people, and their Scytho-Sarmatian language (the predecessor of the Ossetic language) as a Northeastern Iranian language. It should be noted that this does not hold for times after the 5th century AD, as, with the expansion of the Göktürk empire and Turkic migration, Central Asia came under Turkic dominance, and the Sakha of medieval times are undisputedly a Turkic nation.

Contents 1 Classical definition of Scythia/Scythians 2 History of the Scytho-Iranian classification 2.1 Agathyrsi Scythians 3 Objections to the Iranian hypothesis 4 Bibliography

[edit] Classical definition of Scythia/Scythians

Strabo defines all Central Asian clans inhabiting east of Caspian Sea as Scythic or Scythian in culture (See: Lib.xi, p 254; See also: Annals and Antiquities, I, p 49, fn 6, James Tod).

Diodorus further improves upon this definition and makes Mt. Hemodos as the dividing line between Scythia and India proper (See: Indika, Fragment 1, Diodorus II.35; See also: Annals and Antiquities, I, p 49, fn 6, James Tod).

Mt Hemodos of the Greeks is stated to be Himalaya (Qv: Nonnos Dionysiaca 40.260).

Mt Hemodos is also known as Himaos, Imaos and Paropamisos, but Greeks generally called it Kaukasos i.e Caucasus, which was Greek designation for Hindukush (Qv: Fragment IV, Strabo XV.i. II, p 689).

Himalaya of ancient Sanskrit/Pali texts extended from eastern ocean to western ocean, and thus included the Hindukush and Karakoram ranges as well (Ref: Sumangavilasini, I.1; Geographical Data in Early Puranas, 1972, p 65).

This Scythia of the classical writers was known as Sakadvipa in ancient Sanskrit texts.

It is therefore clear that the Central Asian tribes living east of the Caspian Sea, north of Hindukush/Karakoram and west of China, extending as far as Siberia, all fell into the Scythic or Scythian category of the ancient Greeks.

[edit] History of the Scytho-Iranian classification

In the pre-1700s, the Scythians were known from the works of the ancient writers, principally Herodotus. At that time, the accepted wisdom was that the Herodotus’ Scythians were the precursors of Trks^{[citation needed]}, with the Türks branching into Slavic, Mongol, Finnish, Baltic, Ugrian, and unspecified other variations^{[citation needed]}. There was a millennia-long string of historical references specifically linking Herodotus’ Scythians with various Türkic tribes, e.g. Huns, Türks, Khazars etc., so there was no need to question this postulate (Zosimus "a barbarous nation, which till then had remained unknown, suddenly made its appearance, attacking the Scythians beyond the Ister (Danube). These were the Huns. It is doubtful whether they were Scythians, who lived under regal government, or the people whom Herodotus states to reside near the Ister, and describes as a weak people with flat noses, or whether they came into Europe from Asia." (Historia Nova IV, 104) [1]; Menander Protector "Türks, in antiquity called Sakas"^{[citation needed]}; Procopius of Caesarea "peoples called in antiquity Cimmerians, now are called Utigurs"^{[citation needed]}; Theophanes the Confessor "Scythians, who also are named Unns^{[citation needed]}", "Türks, in antiquity called Massagets"; Rus Primary Chronicle "from Scythians, i.e. Khazars, came so-called Bolgars")^{[citation needed]}.

That is, until young Russia expanded its control to the N.Pontic belt, kurgans and their contents became known, and the question of their attribution came to the attention of the Western scientists. Archaeological discoveries in the 19th c. showed that Herodotus and other historians had faithfully recorded specks of the history of the Eurasian peoples.^{[citation needed]}

Around 1805, a Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki in Russian service assigned Julius Heinrich von Klaproth (1783-1835) for an ethnographic journey to the recently-seized N. Caucasus. Von Klaproth who published a work "Reise in den Kaukasus und nach Georgien unternommen in den Jahren 1807 und 1808" (I-II, Halle and Berlin 1812-14); in an appendix, entitled "Kaukasische Sprachen", for the first time formulated a hypothesis for a Scytho-Sarmatian origin of Ossetic language. In his later work, "Memoire dans lequel on prouve 1'identite des Ossetes, peuplade du Caucase, avec les Alains du moyen-age" (Nouvelles annales des voyages 16, 1822, p. 243-56), von Klaproth completed the sequence Scytho-Sarmatians > Alans > Ossetes.

The Scytho-Ossetian hypothesis was furthered by K. Zeiss in a work published in the 1837 in Munich with the suggestion to identify Scythians with Persian speaking tribes based on religion, the territory of the Persians, and Scythian and Persian words in common. By the efforts of Vs. Miller and V.I. Abayev, these results were finally narrowed to exclusively the Ossetic language as a successor of the Scythian language. More than that, the Iranian attribution of the Scythian language has been confirmed by research of M. Fasmer and V.I. Abaev (Abaev V.I.,1965). In the development of the Scytho-Iranian hypothesis, it was noted that the "concept about Iranian language of Scythians dominates unconditionally. Anything that does not advance this thesis is excluded beforehand from the area of Scythian studies" (Petrov V.P., 1968).

The Scytho-Iranian hypothesis met a stiff resistance^{[citation needed]}, including from prominent scientists, not only because it belittled the classical authors and their testimony, but also on more fundamental bases. Until the publication in 1949 in the former USSR of V.I. Abaev's seminal work, "Ossetian Language and Folklore", the Scytho-Iranian-Ossetian hypothesis had been contested from many angles, but in the 1950s discussions faded, and the Scytho-Iranian hypothesis became a mainstream scientific concept in the Western Europe, and the only one in the USSR. The USSR Academy of Sciences' publication by V.I. Abaev, which declared Ossetian language to be a Northern branch of the Persian language, came at the crest of the Stalinist campaign against the “ancientization” of Türkic history, decreed in 1944, at the time when the USSR Academy of Sciences was a subservient department of an autocratic state apparatus.

After the demise of the USSR weakened the compliance enforcement, the previously hidden results of the dissenting studies started to be published, opposing the Scytho-Iranian hypothesis with new converging observations and insights^{[citation needed]} born by scientists with close familiarity with the language^{[citation needed]}, culture and traditions, like the work of Zaur Gasanov, "Royal Scythians".

[edit] Agathyrsi Scythians

Agathyrsi is one of the two Scythian tribes that can be traced in literary sources from the 6th c. BC to the present. Herodotus provided a description of the 6th c. BC great Scythian nomadic empire and Agathyrsi Scythians, and elaborately recounted the expedition (516 - 513 BC) of Persian king Darius Hystapes (522-486 BC) against Scythians in the N. Pontic (Herodotus 4.10, 4.48, 4.49, 4.78, 4.100, 4.102, 4.104, 4.119, 4.125). Herodotus mentioned the Agathyrsi together with another tribe, the Geloni. The Agathyrsi, who were noted for their love of jewelry, refused to join a fight against the Persians unless directly provoked, which highlighted the autonomy and voluntary association of the members of the Scythian confederation. The 2nd c. AD writer Claudius Ptolemy places Agathyrs and Savars, another easily traceable tribe, in the N. Pontic. Ca. 380 AD, Ammianus Marcellinus in Res Gestae Ch. 22, 8 writes that beyond the Palus Maeotis (Black Sea) together with Geloni live the Agathyrsi, among whom there is an abundance of adamantine stones. Further, he writes that over the border from Geloni are Agathyrsi, who tattoo their bodies and dye their hair blue, the common people with a few small marks, but the nobles with many large marks (Amm. 31, 2, 1-11). Ammianus also describes the Alan empire that the Alans cobbled together before the end of the 2nd c. AD, that by repeated victories the Alans incorporated under their own national name, the Geloni, Agathyrsi, Melanchlaeni, Anthropophagi, Amazons, and Seres.

According to Servius (Aenid 4.v.146), around 300 AD the Agathyrsi sent across a sea a contingent to Scotland, where it became identified with the Picts, who were formidable warriors and seriously fatigued all who stood against them. Traditionally, the Picts are depicted as wearing conical hats and speaking a language incomprehensible to the local Indo-Europeans.

Next we find Akatziri mentioned by Prisco di Panion in Vol XI, 823, who encountered Agathyrs leading a nomadic life north of the Black Sea during the 5th century, and reported them as being Hunnic tribes. A bit later, Priscus in his Byzantine History finds Agathyrs as Hunnish subjects in pre-Attila time, and a main force of the Hun army in Attila's time. Attila appointed Karidach as the Akatzirs' Khan. Jordanes, who quotes Priscus in Getica, described the European Agathyrs as extremely brave people.

After the death of Attila and the fracture of the Hunnish empire, a coalition of the Bulgarian tribes defeated the Agathyrs in a battle for supremacy, and incorporated them in their empire, known in the 7th c. as "Great Bulgaria". In the following centuries, the N.Pontic steppes were dominated in turns by Khazars, Badjanaks, Oguzes, Kipchaks, Mongolo-Tatars, and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the Middle Ages, the Agathyrs poped out again in Seljuk Anatolia. In the 15th century a branch of Agach-Eriler (Türkic pl. of Agacher), who lived in the region of Marash-Elbistan in Central Anatolia, immigrated to Safavid (Azeri dynasty) Persia. This branch of Agachers has survived until now in Iran.

[edit] Objections to the Iranian hypothesis

Iranian classification of the Scythians is still occasionally objected to in favour of classification as a Turkic people, in particular in the context of Pan-Turkism or Turkish nationalism. Detractors claim to base their objections on a number of disciplines, including methodology and linguistics.^{[citation needed]}

The methodological criticism is of the most fundamental nature, questioning the provenance of the lexical lists, inability to re-examine artifacts, an absence of independent confirmation, and complete absence of paleographical studies, graphological analyses, expert confirmations, and instrumented dating of the artifacts. The research methodology is criticized for absence of any systemic approach, ignoring alternatives, nonexistent statistical analyses, and total absence of critical peer reviw. Some of the criticisms directed at the founders of the hypothesis extend to the contemporary works that scrutinize the sources only from Scytho-Iranian or Scytho-Ossetian positions.^{[citation needed]}

The linguistic criticisms, other than the general objection to randomness of the targeted searches and absence of any criteria to evaluate suggested candidates, address those few documented Scythian words with translation recorded by ancient sources. The nomadic Arimaspi, living above Issedones and south of extreme northerners Boreas, have a transparent semantics for squinted-eyed peoples, "Arim + spu", in Türkic "Half-(closed) + eye", versus semantically senseless etymology tied to an islet in the Sea of Marmara. The derogative nature of the term Arimaspi indicates its exonymic nature. Timewise, this term concurs with the documented penetration of Far Eastern tribes into Central Asia.

Herodotus 4.110 explains two words, "Oior" being Scythic for "man," and "pata" for "to slay"". These are straightforward Türkic words, "ar/ir/er" for "man, husband" and "pata" for "kill". The "ar/ir/er" with a meaning “men, people” is a component of such compound ethnonyms as Suar, Bulgar, Azeri, Khazar, Akathyr etc.^{[citation needed]} In the Germanic language group, the semantic unit "er" also has the same semantic meaning "man" in forming verbal nouns, like "teacher". The same straightforward etymology was offered for the ethnonyms named by the classical sources: Ashkuza/Ishkuza is As-guzes^{[citation needed]}, a transparent ethnonym for As tribes, where "guz" is Türkic "tribe", Budini is an appropriate exonym, from Türkic "budun" for "folk, people", for ethnically different Finnish tribes, putatively the ancient Mordvinians^{[citation needed]}. The systematic nature, simplicity and precision of Türkic etymology versus mind-boggling randomness of Scytho-Iranian etymology provide ammunition for sound linguistic reproof.

The other, non-linguistic critique generally belongs to the ethnological field, combining literary, archeological, and ethnological sources. A line of these arguments include the use of conical hats, composite bows, portable homes, horse husbandry, tamgas, kurgan burials, sour horse milk, a peculiar milking device in a shape of a flute, meaty diet, leather boots, meridional coaching, central cemeteries, religious rites associated with prominent trees and mountains, wrestling traditions, bridegroom wrestling, identical dress style between sexes, last rites procession around a country for a deceased leader, Scythian animal art, belts and harnesses essential in nomadic life, cauldrons and utensils, voluntary confederation type political structure, equal rights for women, and eternal mercenaries in all surrounding states. Even though some elements of each of these traits were found between peoples historically interacting with Scythians, none of the Indo-Iranian peoples is documented in historical times to have even a small fraction of the typical Scythian ethnological traits. Instead, the Indo-Iranian tribes are documented as agricultural, sedentary, grain-consuming, never mastering long-distance horse husbandry, non-meat eaters and non-milk drinkers, never mastering composite bows, with distributed cemeteries, forced political autocratic society, forceful male domination, positively not wearing conical hats, and employing mounted mercenary armies. The ethnological argument of the critics points to the fact that, instead of the Indo-Iranian tribes, these ethnological traits are inherent to Türkic history and culture.

The integrity of the chain of logic in the Scytho-Iranian hypothesis depends on a stand-alone integrity of each logical link. The opponents of the hypothesis point to these broken links:

1. Before the Russian conquest, the name “Osset, Ossetia” did not exist. The etymology of the Kartvellian “Ovs” is not known to have anything to do with the historical Ases. The association of Ossetes and Ases was a product of von Klaproth's slanted vision.^{[citation needed]}

2. Historical records indicate that As tribes were at some time members of the Alan-led confederation, and the Alan-As symbiosis may have continued after dismemberment of the Alan confederation at about 360 AD, but equating literally the Alans and Ases is not supported by historical records, and is a product of unencumbered interpretation.^{[citation needed]}

3. A postulate that Sarmatians were one of the Scythian tribes, and the Alans were one of the Sarmatian tribes, describes cultural and linguistic links, and not a political unity of differing linguistic groups, is uniformly recognized and not disputed.^{[citation needed]}

4. A presumption that the words collected by Teutonologist Müllenhoff (1866) actually belong to the Scytho-Sarmatian language is highly dubious. The best that may be known for a fact is that these are unknown words in unknown languages. Until at least a meaningful portion of the sentences is deciphered, any linguistic attribution has a hoax character.

5. Ossetian is an agglutinative language with phonetics, morphology, lexicon, semantics and syntax of the Kartvelian-Adygian languages (Abaev, V.I. "Ossetian..."). V.I. Abaev’s proclamation of the Ossetian language as an Iranian language, of which it has only 10%, or 400 word vocabulary, with an additional 10% of its lexicon traced to non-Iranian Indo-European languages (V.I. Abaev p.103), had nothing to do with the linguistic properties of the Ossetian language, but as an unforeseen consequence assigned the ancient Altaic tribes to speak an Adygo-Kartvelian type language. If an 80% Adygo-Kartvellian language was spread from Baikal to the Alps, and from Persia to Urals, as is stipulated by the Scytho-Iranian hypothesis, it has magically vanished without a trace.

6. The Zelenchuk inscription, reported by Vs. Miller and V.I. Abaev as inscribed in poorly written and broken Ossetian and belonging to Alans, turned out to be a common Türkic epitaph composed in Türkic traditions of the time.

7. The Scytho-Iranian hypothesis, taken literally, would predict some genetic continuity from the ancient Indo-Iranian Scythians to their modern Indo-Iranian descendants. But archaeological and genetic studies performed to date consistently fail this test^{[citation needed]}, and instead consistently point to a Ural-Altaic genetic make-up (Voevoda M.I. et al. "Reconstruction ..."), detested by Iranist proponents for its Mongoloid/Lappoid component unbecoming for pure "Aryan" Indo-Europeans.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Bibliography

• Abaev, V.I. "Ossetian Language and Folklore", USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow-Leningrad, 1949 (description of Ossetian language and foundation for Scytho-Iranian theory)
• Amanjolov A. "Genesis Of Türkic Runic Alphabet", Almaty, "Mektep", 2003
• Elnitskiy L.A. "Scythia of the Eurasian steppes", Historical Archeological Notes, Novosibirsk, 1977.
• Fattakhov F. "Zelenchuk epitaph", Language of casual and poetic stiles of Tatar literature monuments. Kazan, 1990.
• Gasanov Zaur "Royal Scythians", Liberty Publishing House, NY, 2002
• Petrov V.P. "Scythians", Kyiv, 1968
• Kafoev A.J. "Adygian monuments" Nalchik, 1963 ("without 8 additional letters the reading of Zelenchuk inscription by Vs.F.Miller would not find any Ossetian words whatsoever").
• Kyzlasov I.L. "Writings Of Eurasian Steppes", Moscow, "Eastern Literature", 1994
• (Voevoda M.I. et al. "Reconstruction of genofond peculiarities of ancient Pazyryk population (I-II millenium BC) from Mountain Altai according to mtDNA structure"
• Zakiev M. "Problems Of The History And Language. Who Are the Alans? Ethnic Roots Of The Tatar People" Kazan, 1995