Saxons, or the People of the Knife (Seax)?

The Saxons were not an Aegean people, nor did they have their origins in Aegean people. They developed out of the various pre- and proto-Germanic groups that resided in and expanded out of southern Scandinavia.

I do agree they were not Aegean,and never said so.

I ask,

q1) is the coinsidence of Saxon and Danes with Achaians and Danaoi random? or has to do with deeper language, land geography, some cultural elements?

q2) could the word Saxon be originated in older forms of IE and has meaning of Sah sach = Priest and king, (notice could Czech come from same root)
 
It should be mentioned that the Old Saxon word for "knife" is sahs from Proto-Germanic *sahsą from proto-Indo-European *sek- "to cut" (k>h sound change in proto-Germanic), seax is an Old English word, it is meaningless to say the name of Saxon is from Old English (Anglo-Saxon)! It seems to be much more possible that English seax "Saxon sword" is from the name of Saxon, not vice versa, compare to Firangi from the name of Frank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firangi_(sword)
 
Old English seax, sax and Old Frisian sax are identical with Old Saxon and Old High German saks. Old English is a language which formed from Old Saxon and the language spoken by the Angles and Jutes and the various other diverse Germanic newcomers to Britain.
There is no convincing evidence to tie the Saxons to the Scythians, I encourage showing genetic evidence, archaeological evidence of Scythian artifacts in Nord Albingia and southern Jutland, etc. We cannot tie these people together without clear evidence and linguistic arguments for the origin of the terms Saxon, seax, saks, etc is not going to provide solid enough arguments as this thread has mostly gone in circles with Scythian endonyms, exonyms and their placenames in comparison to the demonym of the Saxons and how they are referred to in non-Germanic areas.
@Yetos, Czech (Čech) is from the root of čel-which is cognate to the word člověk which means human or person. The proto-Slavic form of the word, *čьlověkъ is related to the Old English word for crowd sceolu and the Lithuanian word vaĩkas for child.
 
It should be mentioned that the Old Saxon word for "knife" is sahs from Proto-Germanic *sahsą from proto-Indo-European *sek- "to cut" (k>h sound change in proto-Germanic), seax is an Old English word, it is meaningless to say the name of Saxon is from Old English (Anglo-Saxon)! It seems to be much more possible that English seax "Saxon sword" is from the name of Saxon, not vice versa, compare to Firangi from the name of Frank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firangi_(sword)

Well, this thread starts to become fascinating.
Sorry for deviating from the original subject, but the Firangi Swords, manufactured mostly at Solingen, by Frankish craftsmen, reminds me of the Frankish Samo, which was a merchant and a warrior.
This Samo brought Swords to the Western Slavs (or Slavs?) and these swords helped the Slavs to obtain their freedom from under Avars domination.
Samo according to the legend was rewarded with 12 Slavic wives :) .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samo
So, connecting what is written in the link presented above:
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2014/03/people-of-the-blade.html which presents a Slavic knife looking like this:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I4KhvHMbKio/U47i4zZRPMI/AAAAAAAAAqo/DShkWTFC3r0/s1600/slavic+knife.jpg
slavic+saex.jpg

And a Firangi sword, made by the Frankish craftsmen, that is looking like this:
af4191712e7fec059ea8d35a3e6abed6--swiss-oriental.jpg

We can see a strong similarty.

If we take the ancient seax used by the Saxons, Vikings, it is looking different:
2443430105_267bda9161.jpg


And we can also see the sword that was used by the Saxons, which had a curved blade, according to the flags of Essex and Middlesex:
Flag of Middlesex:
220px-Middx_arms.png

Flag of Essex:
200px-Arms_of_Essex.svg.png


If we look at the swords used by Musketeers, in France, we see a stunning resemblance to the Firangi swords, which are of Frankish origins.
Different_Rapiers.jpg
 
Scythians were only R1B and R1A :
https://indo-european.eu/2018/10/ir...ic-pastoralist-y-dna-bottlenecks-and-r1b-l23/
The Saxons from England are having more K1 maternal DNA than today English, which seems to confirm that Scythians did settled in Lower Saxony and mixed with the local there.
Scythians are European people, as Autosomal DNA, with some overlapping with our days Scandinavians:
https://indo-european.eu/2018/10/ir...ic-pastoralist-y-dna-bottlenecks-and-r1b-l23/
scythian-cimmerian-pca.jpg

the Scythians we have at hand here are all of them setlled in Ukraine, Moldova, so Eastern Europe; seemingly not the cradle of the culture which was, i think, closer to Altay - it confirmes what I thought; and on the PCA they are not close to N-Germanics Scandinvainas, but rather widely spred between S-E Europeans and Caucasus, with someones who show trends towards Slavs (logical!) west Steppic pops or even S-W postBronze pops or Europe -
and their Y-haplos are R1b, OK, but not the P312(+) ones; they are M269, and we can only SUPPOSE they were or at least gave birth to L23, but we know the most of L23 in E-Europe did not "produce" a lot of L51, they gave rather Z2103 and followers there -
NO, anDNA doesn't give us any evident link between Scythians and ancient Saxons, for I think, and the DNA you cites show a great mixture of Scythians with local pops in Europe.
 
It is possible that the name of Saka (Scythia) is in fact from proto-IE *sek "to cut", it means "section, part", synonym of Pars (Persia) and Part (Parthia) from proto-IE *par "to cut" which also means "section, part", they were actually different parts of Aryan lands. Names of Scythian weapons, such as sagaris (sakari), scimitar, eskana, ... could be from the same origin too.
 
Some samples of R1A Scythians, show them close to the current Nordish people of Europe (Germans,Austrians,Brits,Irish, Baltic people etc)"
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-scythian.html
This is the Autosomal DNA closeness to the current Europe Nordish people:
Lithuanian 0.645247
Estonian 0.645233
Latvian 0.645024
Russian_Kostroma 0.644946
Irish 0.644902
Orcadian 0.644792
Norwegian 0.644754
Belorussian 0.644727
Swedish 0.644667
Polish 0.644664
Austrian 0.644639
Danish 0.644587
English_Cornwall 0.644556
Belgian 0.644552
Scottish_Argyll 0.644548

However, no one included Germans, or Lower Saxony people, or SE English people, to calculate a similarity to those, also.
Cornwall people were considering themselves Insular Celtic ethnics.
So, is quite clear that when some Scotts, Poles, English were claiming Scythian descent, this was not untrue.

That's a lot of assumptions. They had a common origin in Steppe_EMBA, and, in the case of Balto-Slavs in particular, Steppe_MLBA peoples, so they shared a common ancestry well before the early Scythians appeared in the Iron Age. It's a case of similarity due to shared ancestry, not due to one descending from the other. Actually, the "classical" Scythians had East Asian ancestry, in the case of its probable origins (Eastern Central Eurasian steppe) quite a lot of East Asian ancestry, which can't be seen in Scots, Poles, English and other Central/Northwestern European peoples. Autosomally, their steppe ancestry was much more of the CWC-related type that mixed with remnants of Yamnaya-related peoples (Catacomb, Poltavka, Potapovka) to form the MLBA peoples of the steppe. So, it's evident that ancestral connections would exist, but only indirectly. Scythians of the later IA had a much more mixed genetic makeup (autosomally, in Mt-DNA particularly, but even in Y-DNA), especially those from east of the Don, and we don't see that in West Germanic people.

Besides, Scythians were not mostly R1b-P312. They had a large variety of haplogroups, but R1a-M417 clearly prevailed in the earlier samples from the origins of their culture. But it's not even that which matters. What specific subclades of R1b-P312 or R1a-M417 are we talking about? These are haplogroups that are traced back to the BA, but we already know that early Indo-Iranians and other IE-speaking groups in Europe had shared ancestry in BA steppe-derived peoples. This kind of hypothesis can only be confirmed if you look at the specific/recent clades of P312 and M417 that the Scythians had and the descendants of Saxons have.
 
Some samples of R1A Scythians, show them close to the current Nordish people of Europe (Germans,Austrians,Brits,Irish, Baltic people etc)"
https://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-scythian.html
This is the Autosomal DNA closeness to the current Europe Nordish people:
Lithuanian 0.645247
Estonian 0.645233
Latvian 0.645024
Russian_Kostroma 0.644946
Irish 0.644902
Orcadian 0.644792
Norwegian 0.644754
Belorussian 0.644727
Swedish 0.644667
Polish 0.644664
Austrian 0.644639
Danish 0.644587
English_Cornwall 0.644556
Belgian 0.644552
Scottish_Argyll 0.644548

However, no one included Germans, or Lower Saxony people, or SE English people, to calculate a similarity to those, also.
Cornwall people were considering themselves Insular Celtic ethnics.
So, is quite clear that when some Scotts, Poles, English were claiming Scythian descent, this was not untrue.

You should read the comments for that post you linked from Eurogenes blog, Many commenters bring up some very good points and they are worth it to read as they highlight various discrepancies within ancient texts and our general knowledge of this period and the people that are recorded to have lived in this period.
 
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Okay, but the Avars, Huns, Alans, Vandals, Goths, Tencteri, Usipetes, etc all used horses to great effect and some of these groups fought almost exclusively on horseback. Having a horse culture does not instantly mean one is descended from Scythians. Like all things cultural and innovative, the many uses of the horse spread to various people through trade and contact.

We can keep discussing the Saxons, but similar sounding demonyms between Saxon and whatever terms Scythians used for themselves is just not convincing enough. The evidence of the Saxons being (North Sea) Germanic people is quite strong. Germanic people were spreading out from Scandinavia when they encountered Scythian nomads (example being Greuthungi, Tervingi Goths living in the same area as Scytho-Sarmatians.)
 
I have not said that the Saxons were not Germanic people, that resided in North Germany.
I just said in the first post of the thread that Seax is a knife that was used only by the Saxons and that it had a very close name to the name of the Saxons.
I also supposed that Saxon/Sachsen name might be linked with some Scythians that settled between the Germanic people from North Germany and that they had some cultural influence at those Germanic people,from North Germany.
The link posted here is very convicing in showing that both Saxons and Vikings had at least prolonged contact with the Scythians.
The idea that a group of West Germanic people,in our case the Saxons, is descending exactly from only Germanic people is not supported by linguistics and is not supported by genetics , either.
The name Saxons was given to the Germanic tribes speaking the Saxon dialect of German language, which was very close if not identical to Old English language.

In the link is shown very clear using linguistic arguments that the views of Saxons and Vikings about the Scythians were positive.
"We have an English word skittish, from late middle English, perhaps from the rare verb skit "move lightly and rapidly". Another related word is the Old Norse verb skjota "to shoot, launch, move quickly". Also there is a Scottish Gaelic word sgiot (scatter, disperse) which could be related.

In Serbian skit means wanderer,
skita means wanders, skitati means to wander, skitnja, skitanje means wandering, roaming. Skiti - nomads. This is not a Slavic wide word. It is only found in Serbo Croatian."

The Scythians were not Persian people, since they were called by the Persians "Saka".
And this is well known from history.
 
In the link is shown very clear using linguistic arguments that the views of Saxons and Vikings about the Scythians were positive.
"We have an English word skittish, from late middle English, perhaps from the rare verb skit "move lightly and rapidly". Another related word is the Old Norse verb skjota "to shoot, launch, move quickly". Also there is a Scottish Gaelic word sgiot (scatter, disperse) which could be related.

In Serbian skit means wanderer,
skita means wanders, skitati means to wander, skitnja, skitanje means wandering, roaming. Skiti - nomads. This is not a Slavic wide word. It is only found in Serbo Croatian."

The Scythians were not Persian people, since they were called by the Persians "Saka".
And this is well known from history.

Scythian is not how the Scythians themselves named themselves, but in any case I'd be wary of the "linguistic arguments" based solely on sound similarity and nothing else. The example given can be plausibly and perfectly from Proto-Germanic and have nothing to do with Scythians. The skit vs. shoot alternation is not unusual for English, which inherited words from the same Proto-Germanic root via Old English (where /sk/ became /sh/ since early) and Old Norse (where /sk/ was still /sk/), so that you have for instance shirt vs. skirt, shatter vs. scatter. The rare to skit might have come from Old Norse skjóta, equivalent to Old English-derived to shoot, and both of them have a clear Proto-Germanic root *skeutanã- and an attested PIE root *(s)kewd-, "to shoot, to throw". From shoot, throw to move quickly and lightly or wandering the semantic shift looks very plausible. Serbo-Croatian might well have inherited from Gothic/East Germanic languages, since we know they were in the Balkans and near the Slavic homeland, and they had the verb *skiutan, pretty similar to skita/skitati/skitanje. When the Serbo-Croatians' ancestral Slavs migrated to the Balkans, the Scythians had basically vanished and been absorbed by new ethnicities, mainly Turkic ones, but also Eastern Germanics, Sarmatians and Alans. It's unlikely, I think, that the verb would come from a reference to them, unless it refered generically and imprecisely to Scythians as "people who come from the east via the steppes" just like Middle Eastern and South Asian people kept referring to Franks to refer to Europeans as a whole even after the Crusades.

Anyway, there is no doubt some Germanic tribes and Scythian had contacts between themselves. I just doubt that the Scythians had any major role in the ethnogenesis of the particular Germanic ethnicities like the Saxons, who were among the northwesternmost Germanic peoples, further away from Scythians than other Germanic groups.
 
The link from one of my posts here shows, from a Greek historian, that Scythians had a blade adoring ritual.
The Saxons , or Sak-sen, can be "the sons of the blade" .
So the Saxons/Saksen might be actually Germanic tribes from North Germany, that took some blade rituals from some Scythian tribes.
They might have carried the Seaks as a religious symbol, related to their supreme god, Odin.
Since Saxons religion might have been a modified Odinism, they were having as a symbol for Odin or Thor, the blade.
It explains with ease why Middlesex and Essex etc had a flag with a blade on it and why later,England, had adopted a flag with a Cross on it, after they become Christians.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Scythia
 
The link from one of my posts here shows, from a Greek historian, that Scythians had a blade adoring ritual.
The Saxons , or Sak-sen, can be "the sons of the blade" .
So the Saxons/Saksen might be actually Germanic tribes from North Germany, that took some blade rituals from some Scythian tribes.
They might have carried the Seaks as a religious symbol, related to their supreme god, Odin.
Since Saxons religion might have been a modified Odinism, they were having as a symbol for Odin or Thor, the blade.
It explains with ease why Middlesex and Essex etc had a flag with a blade on it and why later,England, had adopted a flag with a Cross on it, after they become Christians.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Scythia

I would very much doubt that etymology, when there is this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Saxon

The seax was a tool and in certain instances a weapon. Sure it may have had some aspects of religious symbolism whether that is tied to Wodan we can't be sure, however there was a Saxon deity called "Seaxnēat" which is usually taken to mean "helper of the Saxons". Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon paganism is fairly poor and limited in its scope, with Continental Germanic paganism being even more fragmentary and limited. Scandinavian paganism is the better attested of Germanic mythologies and it likely developed unique aspects and traits that make it quite a bit different from the neighbouring Germanic mythologies such as Anglo-Saxon or Continental Germanic.

St. George's cross (the one seen in the flag of England) has its origins in a crusade which Henry II of England and Philip II of France took part in, it doesn't have much to do with the flags of Middlesex or Essex.
 
OK, but if we to ask the people from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein they never had traditions to wear a Seax with them.
So, those ancient Saxons that came to South of England with their Seaxneat where not having the normal Odin and Freya, that all Germanic people had, as pre-Christian religion.
This Seaxneat was wielding a sword and is resembling very well the supreme deity of the Scythians.
So I still keep the opinion that some Scythians tribes came in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, terrorized or brain washed the people there and took some people from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, with which they migrated to South of England.
Why Essex, Middlesex had Seaxes on their flags?
Ancient Saxons seems to have significant K1 maternal lines, so they were not actually 100% Europeans.

I am also Germanic, because all Romanians are descending from East Germanic tribes and Dacians and I do not believe the lies that Seaxneath was "Germanic god" of the "Germanic Saxons".
Seaxneath is Scythian god and Germanic people religion with Odin and Freya was quite complex and was a religion about wisdom.
Odin is having a staff with him and travels.
As for the people telling that Vikings were going to raid in British Isles to "die in battle to go in Valhalla" that is nonsense.
Maybe Scythians had such a religion.
So I am sorry, but I think traditionalistic English and Americans should renounce to their Scythian non-sense, with Seaxneath and excessive use of weapons and adoration for wars.
 
Another thing, from the ancient European languages, the language spoken by migrating Saxons to England was most close to current Iranic languages.
But Scythians were not fully IndoEuropean people, but South Siberian/Central Asian partially and mostly, Nordish DNA people.
 
Another thing, from the ancient European languages, the language spoken by migrating Saxons to England was most close to current Iranic languages.
But Scythians were not fully IndoEuropean people, but South Siberian/Central Asian partially and mostly, Nordish DNA people.

Where did you find all these bald affirmations concerning the specific ancient anglo-saxon dialect send to England? as opposed to other Germanic dialects or IE dialects of N-E Europe?
According to your method of determining religion membership or closeness, why not examine all the coats of arms of Europe feuda families and try to divine new religions memberships based on symboles?
 
Another thing, from the ancient European languages, the language spoken by migrating Saxons to England was most close to current Iranic languages.
But Scythians were not fully IndoEuropean people, but South Siberian/Central Asian partially and mostly, Nordish DNA people.

You know that almost all English historical sources mention a an early Scythian migration to England (in fact they were called as one of the first people who settled in this land), such as "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" by Bede, the father of English History, "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great, "Historia Brittonum", by Nennius, "History of the Kings of Britain", by Geoffrey of Monmouth, ...
Modern English historian Sharon Turner talk about numerous Old English words which have Iranian origin, of course by comparing to Persian.
The interesting thing is that we see some possible sound changes of Scythian language in Old English loanwords from this language, for example cognate of the English verb fly in Persian is pridan, a possible sound change in Scythian is p>b and we see Old English bridd with the meaning of "bird".
 
OK, but if we to ask the people from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein they never had traditions to wear a Seax with them.
So, those ancient Saxons that came to South of England with their Seaxneat where not having the normal Odin and Freya, that all Germanic people had, as pre-Christian religion.
This Seaxneat was wielding a sword and is resembling very well the supreme deity of the Scythians.
So I still keep the opinion that some Scythians tribes came in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, terrorized or brain washed the people there and took some people from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, with which they migrated to South of England.
Why Essex, Middlesex had Seaxes on their flags?
Ancient Saxons seems to have significant K1 maternal lines, so they were not actually 100% Europeans.

Umm, many Germanic tribes made use of the seax and it is not restricted to the Saxons, we know the Alemanni, Franks, Longobards, etc used this tool. You're going to ask modern people living in Lower Saxony if they used seaxs? I'm betting none of them have because they are living in the modern era.

We have know visual attestations of what Seaxneat was believed to have looked like and we have next to nothing on this deity. Please present your source for him holding a sword and resembling the supreme deity of the Scythians (who according to Herodotus was a goddess, not a god).

The flags you reference were designed in more modern times in England and the cutlasses on the flags were likely in remembrance of the Saxons for whom the counties are named. From what I can see we have no attestations of the Kingdom of Essex's flag, however we do have a representation of the Wessex flag, which was a yellow wyvern on a white background.

Ancient Saxons had a lot of K1? Which specific mitochondrial branch? The varities found in the near east or the varities found in Europe? Don't base assumptions on rather basal haplogroups.

I am also Germanic, because all Romanians are descending from East Germanic tribes and Dacians and I do not believe the lies that Seaxneath was "Germanic god" of the "Germanic Saxons".
Seaxneath is Scythian god and Germanic people religion with Odin and Freya was quite complex and was a religion about wisdom.
Odin is having a staff with him and travels.
As for the people telling that Vikings were going to raid in British Isles to "die in battle to go in Valhalla" that is nonsense.
Maybe Scythians had such a religion.
So I am sorry, but I think traditionalistic English and Americans should renounce to their Scythian non-sense, with Seaxneath and excessive use of weapons and adoration for wars.

Romanians likely owe most of their ancestry to Dacians and related peoples with smaller contributions from the various incoming people such as Scythians, Celts, Germanics, Huns, Slavic groups, etc.

Seaxneat most definitely was a Saxon isolate god specific to their religion, the Germanic religion was not some hardlined and enforced religion with rules and sets like Abrahamic religions, it was fluid and certain tribes within the sphere of Germanic culture had their own independent variances. Where is the evidence tying Seaxneat to the Scythians? Please provide the source for this claim.

The Vikings raided Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, etc they weren't doing this to die in Valhalla, they were doing this because the monasteries they initially started raiding were undefended and full of riches. Part of the ferocity in battle is linked to the belief in the afterlife, specifically in a hall of fallen warriors (hence "Valhalla").

The last part you mention... can you elaborate?


Another thing, from the ancient European languages, the language spoken by migrating Saxons to England was most close to current Iranic languages.
But Scythians were not fully IndoEuropean people, but South Siberian/Central Asian partially and mostly, Nordish DNA people.

Here is a text sample of Old Saxon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Saxon#Text_sample
Here are text samples of reconstructed Scythian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issyk_inscription, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian_languages#Inscriptions


Where did you find all these bald affirmations concerning the specific ancient anglo-saxon dialect send to England? as opposed to other Germanic dialects or IE dialects of N-E Europe?
According to your method of determining religion membership or closeness, why not examine all the coats of arms of Europe feuda families and try to divine new religions memberships based on symboles?

I'm asking the same questions, coincidental similarities and referencing modern flag designs is not evidence of ancient links. The Saxon people were most similar to other North Sea Germanic populations that surrounded them: Angles, Jutes, Franks, Frisians.

You know that almost all English historical sources mention a an early Scythian migration to England (in fact they were called as one of the first people who settled in this land), such as "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" by Bede, the father of English History, "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great, "Historia Brittonum", by Nennius, "History of the Kings of Britain", by Geoffrey of Monmouth, ...
Modern English historian Sharon Turner talk about numerous Old English words which have Iranian origin, of course by comparing to Persian.
The interesting thing is that we see some possible sound changes of Scythian language in Old English loanwords from this language, for example cognate of the English verb fly in Persian is pridan, a possible sound change in Scythian is p>b and we see Old English bridd with the meaning of "bird".

In Nennius' work "Scythia" was not mentioned in the original language the work was written in, Latin. Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were discussing Picts who resided in Scotland as coming from Scythia. Both poetic ways of writing.

Please provide your source on pridan as I cannot find it in Persian dictionaries. I wish to see the root origin of that word. We should at least note that many languages have words of unexplained origins, yet we don't jump the gun and link them to others without sufficient evidence.

I found this link: http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm
 
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