Scythians

If you have any contribution other than "They are Turks!" or "No, they are Persians!" of course you can write. But hurry up, time's marching on

Enough about the Persian or Turkic character of Scythians. If no contribution other than this issue comes in 24 hours, I'll lock this thread...

Edited by kotumeyil

Originally posted by Akskl Paul Nazaroff "Hunted Through Central Asia - On the run from Lenin's Secret Police"  Oxford University Press 1993, 2002. First published in 1932. p.87 "...In the history of the Turki peoples such women of marked personality have played a very important part. There is not the slightest reason to cast suspicion upon the story of Herodotus about the Queen of the Massagetae, Tomyris, who beat the conqueror of Asia, the Persian Emperor Cyrus him­self. Historians regard the whole story as a myth, but it fits in perfectly well with everything we know about these nomad peoples of Asia. There is no doubt, as Professor Mischenko thinks, that the Scythian tribe of Massagetae were nothing more nor less than the ancestors of the Kazakh of to-day in the Turgai Province, where the name survives in the River Massagatka and the mountain Mussagat. But for our great superiority in armament, who knows but that our great hero General Skobeleff would have met the fate of Cyrus. The name of Tomyris, like other Scythian names, is of Turki origin. This name, Tomyris, means "crush iron' or 'bend iron,' from temir, iron; and recalls another famous warrior out of Asia, Temir-leng, Temir the Lame, or Tamerlane, a remote descendant of his famous compatriot Tomyris. If one carefully reads Herodotus's account of the Amazons and their origin, the inevitable con­clusion is that these Amazons were the wives of just the same Turki nomads whose menfolk had gone off on some military expedition to some remote district. The first syllable of their very name is a Turki word, conveying the idea of woman. In the same way his remarkable description of the Scythians, their manners and customs, does not leave any room for doubt that he was describing the ancestors of that same people which is to-day called Kazakh, and from the most remote dawn of antiquity has inhabited the steppes of Southern Russian and Western Siberia."

 

"A pan-Turkic theory has recently eminated from Turkey that seeks to find a Turkish origin for the Scythian language. The vast majority of scholars in the field disagree with such theories, and have concluded Scythian was an Iranian language."

From: http://www.ipedia.com/ipedia/s/sc/scythia.html

Paul Nazaroff "Hunted Through Central Asia - On the run from Lenin's Secret Police"  Oxford University Press 1993, 2002. First published in 1932.

p.87
"...In the history of the Turki peoples such women of marked personality have played a very important part. There is not the slightest reason to cast suspicion upon the story of Herodotus about the Queen of the Massagetae, Tomyris, who beat the conqueror of Asia, the Persian Emperor Cyrus him�self. Historians regard the whole story as a myth, but it fits in perfectly well with everything we know about these nomad peoples of Asia. There is no doubt, as Professor Mischenko thinks, that the Scythian tribe of Massagetae were nothing more nor less than the ancestors of the Kazakh of to-day in the Turgai Province, where the name survives in the River Massagatka and the mountain Mussagat.
But for our great superiority in armament, who knows but that our great hero General Skobeleff would have met the fate of Cyrus. The name of Tomyris, like other Scythian names, is of Turki origin. This name, Tomyris, means "crush iron' or 'bend iron,' from temir, iron; and recalls another famous warrior out of Asia, Temir-leng, Temir the Lame, or Tamerlane, a remote descendant of his famous compatriot Tomyris. If one carefully reads Herodotus's account of the Amazons and their origin, the inevitable con�clusion is that these Amazons were the wives of just the same Turki nomads whose menfolk had gone off on some military expedition to some remote district. The first syllable of their very name is a Turki word, conveying the idea of woman. In the same way his remarkable description of the Scythians, their manners and customs, does not leave any room for doubt that he was describing the ancestors of that same people which is to-day called Kazakh, and from the most remote dawn of antiquity has inhabited the steppes of Southern Russian and Western Siberia."



Edited by Akskl

Where do they originate from? the Scythians?

Kurgans (also called tumuli or mounds) are not just Scythian, they are a key finding of early IE cultures. Scythians are just one of their offsprings. 

Reconstruction is tricky. The soft parts of the face can't be reconstrcted but with a lot of guesswork. Normally they take local people to do that. Anyhow the lady doesn't look particularly East Asian to me (though the pic is not very clear). 

Kazaks of Western Mongolia

A reader pointed out that the Kazak woman illustrated at the beginning of this article bears a striking resemblance to the reconstruction of the Sarmatian woman excavated from Cemtary 2, Kurgan 7, Burial 2 at Pokrovka (Russia) in 1995. This woman is known as 2-7-2 in the National Geographic International andthe PBS documentaries Secrets of the Dead "Warrior Women"

http://www.csen.org/Linked%20Sites/LinkedSites.html

Edited by Akskl

That is a good point Anbalan.  Also Scythians were reputed to be very big on body decoration such as tattoos and piercings, the latter being popular with Parthians, an Iranian nomadic people from Central Asia who took over the sovereignty of Iran from the Seleucids, famed for their abilities on horseback.  Many even consider them as a Scythian branch.

That is how "royal" Scythian would look like

according to authors of article [ http://osradio.ru/2005/11/08/da_skify_my_no_ne_aziaty/#cut1 ]. Article is in Russian.