Who were Scythians?

it doesnt matter what your people believe. i showed you other examples of people believing that they are descendents of something without evidence.

i dont really understand what your asking, but i think i got the idea.

well, some iranic people like the bactrians and the sogdians settled down and created nations early in history, so yes, some iranians did settle down.

persians, parthians, medeans, etc... did not settle down till later. if you are asking if they mixed with local populations than the answer is probably yes.

well, i was raised in the USA.

I am reading a book on the peoples of the steppe but it is mostly about the Scythians.  Here is what i know so far.

The Scythians before they became horse riders they lived in small semi settled villages like most of the rest of they world. 

Once they figured out horse riding they combined it with thier archary skills and in so doing became one of the most powerful forces of that time.

Once they became horse men they went away from settled life and became nomads and traveled with thier horses sheeps etc.

As thier power grew they soon began to raid near by greek colonies near the black sea.  The settled Greeks were so awe struck by the fighting ability of these horse men that soon they began paying them with gold and grain so that they would not attack them.

As time went on the Scythians became allies of the Assyrians and helped them conqure the cities of southern Iraq. 

Latter the Scythhians fought against Darius the Great before he went to Greece with his army of 700,000 men.  Thier was no clear winner but the Scythians angered Darius by constantly harrasing his army and buring fields as they went to starve Darius's Army. 

Even Alexander the great sent his army under command of one of his local leaders to punish the Scythians and he was easily destroyed.

Only Phillip the Great Alexanders father defeated the Scythians show to history that he was one of the Greatist leaders in the ancient world by defeating the skilled horse archers of the steppes.

Eventually though the Scythians began to settle down into villages agian and lost thier power.  Leaving the Sarmations with a chance to take the reins.  And so the Sarmations surrounded the Scythian villages.

Although i agree that the Scythians left alot of valueable beutiful golden items  for us to uncover.  They were not the ones who built those items.

Almost all of the golden treasures that the Scythians owned were made by skilled Greek smyths.

As far as the religion of the Scythians they seem to have shown alot of respect to dead people of high rank in thier society. 

Many times when a King or Queen or noble man died the scythians would put arrows, throught thier hands cut thier ears, bleed themselves  etc.

They also killed several animals and buried them with thier owners and even killed relatives and servents of that person most of the time by strangulation and buried them as well.

most of not all the scythians left central asia thousands of years ago.

do you have any proof of this opinion?

 its more likely that the scythians and the turkic tribes mixed. that wouldnt make any of the modern turkic tribes descendents, becaus they wouldnt be directly related.

 good, now you  are become  getting closer the truth ,but you did little mistake here .  im an Uyghur, i tell you little about Uyghur history, the modern Uyghurs formed of two groups:  one group is a nomadic people --ancient Uyghurs who migrated from Mungghul steppe ,they were turkik people,another group is the local Tarim basin people who were iranic people ,such as scythian,and later Tocharian .   we  are all beliving that the two groups of people are our ancester .  we are directly related to our iranic ancester as much as our turkik ancester . 

and another one thing that, ancester of ancient Uyghurs who lived in Munghul steppe were a people was called in chinese history as Dingling (2000--3000 years ago)who once lived around the Baykal lake and south Sibiria . according to chinese history books and archiologic evidence made by Russian scintisits ,the Dingling people were  I-E people,they were tall ,blue eyed, yellow or brown haired people . and it is still dont known to us which language the Dingling people spoken.   but later the Dingling people mixed up with Mongghuloid people bacame turkik people and allied with other tribes ,and calles themselves as Uyghur .

thats why i belive that we have same origon .

one question: i read in some books that modern iranian people formed two group people  , one of them nomadic people who came from centeral asia, another group was the local people who apperance similar to Darwi people in the south India . is that right ?

where do you live? did you take english courses in school?

im now living in Kashghar , east Tukistan . yes,i did take engilish course ,but only one year when i begin to learn engilish , thats the reason why my grammer is so bad .so    im studing  engilish grammer now .

I have never read here a such evidence which was scientifically proven, so no evidence at all.

@Barbar, Scythians were assimilated by many races and tribes. They are not dissapeared, and today Ossetian people are the descendants of scythians.

iranic people are the people who speak or spoke an iranian language, such as kurds, persians, aghans, tajiks, etc...

well, as i pointed out earlier, many different people claim to be the descendants of scythians. we can just believe people because they say so. there is no way know if someone today is a descendant because scythians died out thousand years ago.

no, no one provided any evidence, they just provided their own opinions, like you did.

to provide evidence, you need to site sources.

no, iranics are an indo european people. germans and other such europeans are also indo european, just like iranic, but of another sect.

your basic english is very good, however, you do have a lot of grammatical mistakes, but you will learn over time. where do you live? did you take english courses in school?

ok, again, you are making the same mistake that other turks are making.

you are assuming that central asia has always been turkic. persians, parthians, medeans, etc... also came from central asia. indo europeans are also central asians, were also nomadic, were also horse riders, etc...

central asia is not only home to the turkic peoples. it is today, however, thousands of years ago it was mostly iranic.

you are assuming that just because they came from central asia that they must be turkic.

and everything herodotus says about the scythians points to them being iranic, especially the words herodotus wrote down that were scythian.

and saka and sak are used by many different people and mean different things in different places.  socrates and i made that clear on the top of the page.

and you also are using names and words that have "sak" in them to justify your claims.

other words with sak and saka sounding combinations:

Sacagawea- Shoshone Indian who assisted the historic Lewis and Clark expedition

saka-saka- Congolese for casava leaves.

i can show you thousands of examples like these.

are the native americans scythians? are the congolese scythians? no.

and the domestication of wolves/dogs happened before the central asian tribes:

Dogs: from 12,000 years ago The earliest known evidence of a domesticated dog is a jawbone found in a cave in Iraq and dated to about 12,000 years ago. It differs from a wolf in that it has been bred to have a smaller jaw and teeth. Selective breeding affects a species quite rapidly, and is a natural process for man to initiate - probably at first by accident rather than intention. A particular puppy in a litter is favoured because it has an attractive coat, barks well, is unusually friendly or obedient, noticeably large or small. This is the dog which is kept and in its turn has puppies. Its desirable characteristics become perpetuated.   bom Images in Egyptian paintings, Assyrian sculptures and Roman mosaics reveal that by the time of these civilizations there are many different shapes and sizes of dog. To use the word 'breed' may be anachronistic, though there is evidence that a dog very like the present-day Pekingese (almost as far as one can get from a wolf) exists in China by the 1st century AD. By that time Roman ladies also have lap dogs; their warmth is believed to be a cure for stomach ache. A Roman writer of the period gives similarly practical reasons for selecting the colour of a dog: shepherds' dogs should be white (to distinguish them from wolves in the dark) but a farmyard dog should have a black coat (to frighten thieves).   bon

you also claim that scythians are the ancestors of turkic tribes.... with what evidence? your own opinion?

again, like socrates and i showed earlier, many people from the celts in europe to the pashtuns to some turkic tribes in central asia claim to be the real descendents of the scythians.

again, most historians classify them as indo european/indo iranian.

and by the way, your english is good.

no, when i say indo european/indo iranian i mean that they are of the indo european branch, but specifically indo iranian.

most actually do refer to them as being either indo european or indo iranian.

remember that indo european is just the group as a whole, it has different sects within that group. so one historian can call them indo european, refering to the whole race of indo europeans which includes iranians, germans, afghans, etc... and another historian might be more specific and say indo iranian, which cuts out about half of the indo european sect.

get it? but still, most consider them indo european/indo iranian.

no, one article does not question anything.

for something to be changed or disrupted, it has to be accepted by the whole historical community.

as i have pointed out before, most historians say they are indo european/indo iranian.

one article means nothing.

Ok. however, never use nazi propaganda as any kind of evidence...their claims were\are extremely superficial and contradictory...

As for the Scythians-it's 100 % sure they were IE's- iranics-more precisely.Their life-style was once common for all IE's...