History: Who were the "Scythians"? (video)

David Peterson (video); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Part 2: History of the Scythians [Central Asian nomads who settled down and took up agriculture] written, prepared and narrated by Davide Peterson, published on July 6, 2016.

Scythians 1: History, Geography, Romanticism

The Shakyas (Sakas, Scythians) spoke in praise of the deity: Sakka King of the Devas (indo devanam) Indra, who became a disciple of the Buddha when a teaching brought him to the first stage of enlightenment which is accompanied by unwavering faith or confidence in the Dharma and the Buddha' enlightenment.

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David Peterson

These videos were written, prepared, and narrated by David Peterson for non-commercial educational use.

(WQ) It is interesting to note what so often goes unclarified in Buddhism. Though Prince Siddhartha's surname was Gautama, like his father King Sudhodana, their clan (extended family) name was Saka, Sakya, Shakya, Shakyian, or Scythian. His most famous epithet is "The Enlightened or Awakened One," which is the meaning of buddha. He is also called Shakyamuni, "Sage (muni) of the Shakya Clan," meaning a wandering ascetic from Scythia (Shakya Land), far from the Kingdom of Magadha (later a state in united India, which seems to have taken its name from Inda/Indo/Indra = Saka, Sakka, Sakra, when various kingdom and republics were united by the Buddhist Emperor Asoka into a coherent larger country or janapada, "foothold (territory) of a people or clan."

COMMENTS
(Arys Atilov) How do you bra[zen]ly call them "Iranian-speaking"? The Scythian language is still unknown, except for text on their cup in the Issyk kurgan in Kazakhstan, which is most likely similar to the Ancient Turkic language.

(Darafsh_Kaviani) Scythians=Ancient Eastern Iranian people.

(Onur Gürleyen) Scythians are Turkic. 

(Yeezytaughtme) My family and I originate from the Altai region, where Scythians lived (Saka people) [Shakyians, Sakkas]. I'm Kazakh. When they found the "Ice Princess" [Siberian Ice Maiden] in Altai, she was buried along with her horse and sheep meat and horse meat. Kazakhs/Central Asians still eat horse meat and lamb to this day. Now I do not get this Iran thing. Scythians are our ancestors. When Turks get their DNA tested, it comes up very mixed as well. 

(天王) The Sarmatians spoke the Scythian language. The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea coast indicate that the Sarmatians spoke a North-eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Alanian-Ossetian.

(PerkeleGaming) That's not the origin of the word barbarian. It's because the Ancient Greek word for "blahblah" was barbar. Barbarian means someone who doesn't speak Greek. Greeks were pretty fond of beards, too, anyway.

(Hash N) The only living descendants of the Scythians are the Pashtuns [of Afghanistan and Pakistan and environs] and the Ossetians.
 
(Ersin aktaş) Sumerian+Scythian+Etruscan+Thracian+Pelasgian+Hattis=TURKS.
 
(SylviaErik) Amazing, we are all related!
 
(Huszar 63) Scythian=HUN=MAGYAR. This continuation was missed by Peterson! And Herodotus also wrote about the OLDEST nation before the Egyptians, UR, URU Solyma -- later HIERO (Josephus) = today JERUSALEM...

"Scythian" has long been a suspect term

WhiteWolf (July 5, 2017) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

 

The “discovery” of kurgans [complex "burial mounds" called stupas in Buddhism] coincided with other discoveries in the Russian (USSR) historical studies of the times. Early in the 18th century, the ruler Peter I of the emerging Russian Empire undertook to hire the best European historians to write [fabricate] a Russian history.

At the time, the budding empire was a quilt of hundreds of recently subjugated nations, both Slavic and non-Slavic. The need for a unifying ideology was urgent and so was the need for the ideological justifications of future acquisitions.
 

The superiority of the Slavs was a ruling axiom, but it needed historical validation. After much reading of the Russian Primary Chronicles, it was re-established that the Russian ruling class descended from the Scandinavians, and the Slavic folks came from the Carpathians.
 

V. Tatischev, M. Lomonosov, and N. Karamzin suggested that the Slavs traced back to Scythians or Sarmatians. The Scythians at that time were regarded as Turkic, and the Sarmatians as multi-ethnic Indo-Europeans.
 

Both classifications were mostly of a speculative nature. M.Z. Zakiev wrote in Genesis of Türks and Tartars (Moscow, 2003, pp. 139-140): “The theory of exclusive Iranian linguality of all tribes united by the common name of the Scythians seemed plausible when the Iranists conducted etymological studies of the Scythian written monuments only selecting the word (ethnonyms) with solely Iranian roots.
 

“However, the research circle of these monuments was extending. The problem was also approached by non-Iranists, in particular Turkologists and other linguists. In the scientific circulation were introduced words with non-Iranian roots, especially with the Türkic roots, indicating the presence in the union of the Scythian tribes Türkic-lingual tribes...
 

“The result is a vicious circle: archaeologists are guided by the opinion of linguists, the archaeological culture of the Scythian and Sarmatian period is attributed to the Iranian-speaking tribes, and the linguists-Iranists for confirmation of their theory refer to the findings of the archaeologists.”
 

M.Z. Zakiev (ibid.): “Notably, all the Turkologists that reached the Scythian materials and studied them themselves, unequivocally recognize the Türkic-linguality of the main composition of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and prove that with linguistic, ethnological, mythological, and archaeological evidence.”
 

The Scythians had kurgans (tumuli [stupas]), funeral carts, timber graves, dugouts, felt material in their graves, embalming of corpses, graves lined with wood, bedding of bark, reeds, round shaped bottom ceramic, and bone and copper cheek pieces, which Medieval Turkic peoples had but no ancient or Indo-European people had.
 

T.A. Mollaev in “A new perspective on the history of the Ossetian people” (2010, p. 6) writes: “This table shows irreconcilable difference between the ethnic passport of the Scythians, represented in the archaeological materials, and the Indo-European peoples... And also a complete equivalence in the corresponding characteristics of the medieval Türkic peoples with the Scythian nations in antiquity.”

T.A. Mollaev (ibid., p. 9): “The 'Iranists' explained the Scythian words in this mode: was taken any anthroponym, ethnonym, etc. recorded by the ancient written sources, then for it was randomly sought a lexical unit from Ossetian or other Iranian, and even from other Indo languages, phonetically more or less suitable. And after that had to be held that the result of that comparison for a lexical unit of the Scythian words is translated such and such from the Iranian languages.
 

“With that method, and with the same success, could be compared with the Scythian word the lexical units of any other languages in the world. And then, with some phonetical resemblance, declare the Scythian words as translations from those languages. D. Verkhoturov (cited per T.A. Mollayev, ibid., p. 15):
 

“Believing the Iranian theory, it follows that around the middle of the 1st millennium AD the Türks 'left' from the Altai, quickly captured and Türkified a huge 'Iranian world,' and did it so well that no trace and fragments of the old world have remained.
 

“Meanwhile, it is perfectly clear that the formation of such vast Türkic world took millennia. There is absolutely definite archaeological complex of the steppe peoples, first of all kurgan burials in timber graves, burials with horse, etc., which in the archaeological materials of the Eurasian steppe zone clearly continue their descent in the culture of the undeniably Türkic peoples.
 

“The beginning of the continuity ascend at least to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.”
 

Yu.N. Drozdov (page 10): “...despite a large number of works produced to demonstrate the Türkic-speaking of the Scythian-Sarmatian people, the conclusions of their authors have not yet been accepted by the modern historical science. Perhaps their evidentiary base was not found to be convincing, or more likely these findings do not fit the commonly accepted historical concept.”