Scythians

http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2004/07/will_the_real _k.html

...Yes the sarmatians were living in eastern europe but it been proven by Dr.Jeannine Davis-Kimball that their descendants are the kazakhs(who still live in sarmatia-ukraine even up to this day).That meant they were turkic(mixture of tocharians,huns, and some persians), not pure persians. That have also been verified by genetic researcher Dr.Tom Gilbert of university of arizona. His paper was called, I believed, "Unravelling migrations in the steepes: Ancient mitchrondrial dna sequences of ancient central asians". The scythians and sarmatians were already mixed as far back as 8th century b.c(at least in central kazakhstan). The idea that the sarmatians were persians came from biased russian historians who wanted to link the russian people with them.What baloney.

Posted by: tich tran at March 7, 2005 08:25 PM

Even the forensic evidences such as facial reconstruction of scythians and sarmatians were done by biased russian scientists who have every thing to lose. Don't believe me? Check encyolepedia britanica about how hippocrates descripe the scythians. The encyolepedia describes them as looking like the way the "mongols" were seen by "franciscan monks" in, I believe the 13th century A.D. Now I know that the idea of asians in europe might seem farfetched but remember Attila was born in europe. I also know that women would be repulsed by the idea of lancelot as a "mongol" but so what?

Posted by: tich tran at March 7, 2005 08:38 PM

dr. gilbert is from the department of evoluntionary biology

Posted by: tich tran at March 7, 2005 09:27 PM

http://sophistikatedkids.com/turkic/64%20Pazyryk/Pazyryk_gen sEn.html

...Ever since the first investigations in the 1920es, the Irano-enthusiasts labeled the Pazyryk people and their Scythian culture as invariably Iranian-lingual, building a variety of conjectures to fit the facts into their Indo-European schemes. Lately, however, the Iranian label tends to melt away, turning a glorious expression "Iranian-lingual Scythians" into a bleak and un-IE-patriotic simple "Scythians", and the its vestiges, scattered everywhere, and carrying very pronounced overtones, serve as a reminder of the past centuries' scientific anopia. Even now, in their scientific quests, investigators still manage to "get surprised" at every corner, discovering along the way that the eternal truths they were brought up with were conjured at odds with unpretentious reality...

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.

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.

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"