Hello, I am to post about Scythians...

[Scyth]

Interested in history of European tribes, I've come to read about Scythians. But the articles about them are of a low quality (see wiki) and often biased. Despite their European looks and traditions (light hair and eyes, attested by 20+ different historical accounts...), they are called Iranian by language and themselves. There is no sufficient proof of them even having Iranian language, but they are called so without any doubt. If I am allowed to post links, I will post some articles with convincing info on why this Iranian theory is as far from being a fact as it can be. Nonetheless they state it as an indisputable fact.

I'm to post about this and call all knowledgable people to improve those articles, adding more factual information (instead of links to encyclopedia Britannica, which says exactly one word in support of their words...), removing pseudo-science (such as word "Ashkenazi" being related to word "Scythian"... yes), and adding at least Scythian self-title, sкоlotoi (provided by Herodotus), to the beginning (or anywhere) of the article, instead of hundreds of low-quality "hints" that Scythians were Iranian.

As you can guess, I was (and still) so outraged by the quality of this article on wikipedia, that I created account here for the sole purpose of finding people able to improve the mess that this article is. Thanks!

 

[Scyth]

The article about Scythians in wiki is bad

Interested in history of European tribes, I've come to read about Scythians. But the articles about them are of a low quality and often biased, one of the worst examples being wikipedia (article "Scythians", I can't post links yet).
Despite Scythian European looks and traditions (light hair and eyes, attested by 20+ different historical accounts...), they are called Iranian by language and themselves. There is no sufficient proof of them even having Iranian language, but they are called so without any doubt. As you can read in some articles (I can't post links yet, but you can google "borissoff was scythian an iranian language") Iranian theory is too far from being substantial. Nonetheless they state it as an indisputable fact. And even tribe itself is called "Iranian", despite the total dominance of haplogroups uncommon or absent in Iranian people, so they are called Iranian for no good reason.

I call all knowledgable people to improve this article, adding more factual information (instead of links to encyclopedia Britannica, which says exactly one word in support of their words...), removing pseudo-science (such as word "Ashkenazi" being related to word "Scythian"... yes), and adding at least Scythian self-title, sкоlotoi (provided by Herodotus), to the beginning (or anywhere) in the article, rather than their absurd list of word "Scythians" translation to different languages (saka, sakae, sai, iskuzai, askuzai, they could as well add translation to every other language possible...), and then long paragraph discussing these translations, or other poor "hints" that Scythians were Iranian, it is also said that they might be related to Tarim Basin mummies who are called there Iranian as well (even though as far as I know they were found to be Celtic)... Also no links or images to a "Siberian Ice Maiden", interesting mummy, categorized to be Scytho-Siberian woman, who has long cut blonde hair and tattoos (though wiki page shows her after removed hair). Absolutely no discussion of their cult, horse place in it. Their religion is called Iranian and pre-Zoroastrian there, despite its obvious relation (same gods) to Greek mythology as you can read in Herodotus (History IV, 5-12, can read in "sacred-texts") along with their very own myth of emergence. But the quote from New Testament, which has to say just one word about them - is of course present...

The genetic studies part needs an update too, with new articles such as "Ancestry and demography and descendants of Iron Age nomads of the Eurasian Steppe" (open on "nature"), with new data on Scythian genetics compared to other populations.
The long list of historical remarks about their physical appearance (light hair and eyes) is followed by the proposition that "It is possible that the later physical descriptions by Adamantius and Gregory of Scythians refer to East Germanic tribes, as the latter were frequently referred to as "Scythians" in Roman sources at that time". No citation provided of course...
I think the quality of this article is unacceptable and invite everyone to contribute to making it more factual and less biased. Thank you

 

[LeBrok]

Hold your horses, we have DNA of Scythians and Sarmatians and they plot very close Andronovo and Yamnaya, and close to modern Russians and Ukrainians. Look for Sarmatian AI on this plot. Iranians, ancient and modern, are at the other side of the spectrum. Though they spoke Iranian language.

Here are the admixtures of mentioned folks.

M608028	RISE505		M348213	i0247		M084152	PR3_I0575
Andronovo		scythian			EarlySarmatian, Pokrovka, Russia	5th–2nd c. BCE
Run time	13.24		Run time	11.07		Run time	5.84
S-Indian	0.54		S-Indian	0.67		S-Indian	-
Baloch	21.23		Baloch	24.99		Baloch	25.4
Caucasian	2.4		Caucasian	7.68		Caucasian	5.72
NE-Euro	56.39		NE-Euro	45.27		NE-Euro	50.53
SE-Asian	-		SE-Asian	0.83		SE-Asian	0.28
Siberian	1.93		Siberian	6.39		Siberian	4.24
NE-Asian	-		NE-Asian	1.31		NE-Asian	-
Papuan	-		Papuan	-		Papuan	-
American	1.05		American	2.85		American	1.94
Beringian	1.22		Beringian	1.4		Beringian	1.06
Mediterranean	14.37		Mediterranean	8.62		Mediterranean	10.81
SW-Asian	-		SW-Asian	-		SW-Asian	-
San	-		San	-		San	-
E-African	-		E-African	-		E-African	-
Pygmy	0.06		Pygmy	-		Pygmy	-
W-African	0.81		W-African	-		W-African	-

 

[Fire Haired14]

You appear to be smart. Welcome to Eupedia.

 

[noman]

On GEDmatch one to one on 100 SNP and 3.0 cM
M608028, I match 19.6 cM
M348213, I match 6.8 cM
And 0 cM with M084152

 

[LeBrok]

On GEDmatch one to one on 100 SNP and 3.0 cM
M608028, I match 19.6 cM
M348213, I match 6.8 cM
And 0 cM with M084152

Keep in mind that the first sample is the best quality, therefore you will find longer segments. The last sample is only fair quality and will lack longer segments. They are not like modern people full DNA, they are ancient partial DNA segments. That's why I included "Run Time" for these samples. The shorter the run time the poorer the quality and less trustworthy the results.

 

[Ygorbr]

Sorry, but the best scientific hypotheses is that Scythians were indeed Iranians (Iranians, not Persians, and let us remember that Iranians are a linguistic group, not one common culture necessarily), and that their religion was proto-Iranic (and as such an Indo-European polytheistic religion, which is why Herodotus compared their gods with the Greek gods, as they always did, i.e "interpretatio graeca"). Also, very recent genetic studies (you may find a topic about them here in Eupedia) demonstrated that Scythians' genetics was varied on a west-east cline, and many of the eastern Scythians were already relatively admixed with East Asian components. Besides, their DNA doesn't indicate an exclusivityof "Aryan blonde warriors", at all. The Wikipedia articles, according to their own policy, are not based on one's perceived truth, but on what most of the credible sources say about a subject, and in the case of Scythians most sources still maintain that they were Iranians with an Iranic culture. That may be proved wrong some day, but it's not up to Wikipedia articles to present original research.

 

[LeBrok]

I've just merged two same threads.