Scythia and Eastern Europe

[Zaarin]

So, on another board I was having a discussion with someone who has a number of problematic theories, but one I found particularly odd was that he was convinced that the Scythians are the ancestors of the Slavs and the city of Punjab. Doing some poking around, as far as I can tell the nearest modern descendants of the Scythians are the Ossetians of Georgia, and the Scythians were a pretty typical Iranian people with nothing Slavic (or Punjabi) about them. So...am I running into some sort of Slavic pan-nationalist crackpot theory here or is this actually a thing?

[Porphyrogenitos]

So, on another board I was having a discussion with someone who has a number of problematic theories, but one I found particularly odd was that he was convinced that the Scythians are the ancestors of the Slavs and the city of Punjab. Doing some poking around, as far as I can tell the nearest modern descendants of the Scythians are the Ossetians of Georgia, and the Scythians were a pretty typical Iranian people with nothing Slavic (or Punjabi) about them. So...am I running into some sort of Slavic pan-nationalist crackpot theory here or is this actually a thing?

I've read before that some historians and archaeologists believe the Slavs may have developed out of a population of agriculturalist peasants living under Scythian domination. The Slavic languages do have a few Iranian/Scythian loanwords (such as bogъ) that seem to have been present from very early on. So maybe not an entirely crackpot theory...just kind of jumbled up.

[Zaarin]

I see. I freely confess that the Slavs are definitely not my area of expertise.

[hwhatting]

And the Punjabi angle is provided by the Indo-Scythians. So, as Porphyrogenitos says, perhaps jumbled, but not entirely baseless.

[Zaarin]

Yeah, the more I talked to him the more I realized that he wasn't communicating himself well. Though his vehement rejection of the Scythians as Iranian is completely contrary to anything I've ever read.

[Salmoneus]

Depends what 'Iranian' means. Were the Scythians speakers of languages reconstructably related to the Indo-Aryan languages, but in which voiced aspirates deaspirated and *s debuccalised? Probably, yes, and in that sense they were linguistically 'Iranian'. Had they or their ancestors ever been to Iran? Probably not. Were they ancestors of modern Iranians? No. Iranians in the normal sense descend from Western Iranians, and Scythians are believed to have been Eastern Iranians, which means the two groups probably separated several millenia before anyone started writing down Scythian words.

[Zaarin]

Depends what 'Iranian' means. Were the Scythians speakers of languages reconstructably related to the Indo-Aryan languages, but in which voiced aspirates deaspirated and *s debuccalised? Probably, yes, and in that sense they were linguistically 'Iranian'. Had they or their ancestors ever been to Iran? Probably not. Were they ancestors of modern Iranians? No. Iranians in the normal sense descend from Western Iranians, and Scythians are believed to have been Eastern Iranians, which means the two groups probably separated several millenia before anyone started writing down Scythian words.

The crux of his "evidence" was that there were no Scythian words attested (and denied any evidence to the contrary), which clearly proves that the Scythians were Slavs and that the word "Scythian" is definitely a corruption of "Sklabenoi." That's when I decided to end the discussion, because what do you say to that kind of circular reasoning? And yeah, I'm familiar with the fact that not all Iranian-speaking peoples are from Iran, and with the claims he was throwing around he ought to as well--at least he didn't contest that the Sarmations, Alans, or Ossetians were Iranian.

[hwhatting]

The crux of his "evidence" was that there were no Scythian words attested (and denied any evidence to the contrary), which clearly proves that the Scythians were Slavs and that the word "Scythian" is definitely a corruption of "Sklabenoi."

Ok, yes, he is a crackpot.