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I am of Scythian descent.
Genetically I am a descendant of the Scythians. The ancient Sarmatians & ScythiansThe Scythians were Iranian equestrian tribes who were mentioned as inhabiting large areas in the central Eurasian steppes starting with the 7th century BC up until the 4th century AD.[1][2][3] Their territories during the Iron Age were known to classical Greek sources as "Scythia". Their historical appearance coincided with the rise of equestrian semi-nomadism from the Carpathian Mountains of Europe to Mongolia in the Far East during the 1st millennium BC.[4][5] The "classical Scythians" known to ancient Greek historians were located in the northern Black Sea and fore-Caucasus region. However, other Scythian groups encountered in Near Eastern and Achaemenid sources existed in Central Asia. Moreover, the term "Scythian" is also used by modern scholars in an archaeological context, i.e. any region perceived to display attributes of the "Scytho-Siberian" culture.
Descended from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-Europeans, the Scythians would have belonged mostly to haplogroup R1a (probably more than 50% of the paternal lineages), which is the only Y-DNA haplogroup that has been found in various Iron Age Scythian remains in eastern Europe and Central Asia to date. It is very likely that the Scythians also possessed a substantial minority of R1b, and smaller percentages of G1, G2a3b1, J2a, J2b2, Q1b and T1a1a. The Sarmatians would have been essentially the same, perhaps without the G1 and Q1b and with some eastern European I2a1b and E-V13.
The Scythians were known by the Israelites as Ashkenaz. Some migrated to Israel in ancient times whilst others stayed in Central Asia and ruled the Khazars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScythiansIn the Hebrew Bible, Ashkenaz (אַשְׁכְּנַז) was the first son of Gomer and brother of Riphath and Togarmah (Genesis 10:3, 1 Chronicles 1:6). Gomer was the grandson of Noah through Japheth. Accordingly, Ashkenaz was a Japhetic descendant of Noah.
According to Jeremiah 51:27, a kingdom of Ashkenaz was called together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon. The location of this kingdom, however, is not clear and is not mentioned again, nor is there any clear non-biblical reference to the kingdom. Ashkenaz is often identified with the Scythians and Sarmatians, due in part to the use of the name "Ashkuz" (Saka) for the Scythians in Assyrian Akkadian inscriptions. It may also refer to the Phrygians, who according to Homer's Iliad settled around Lake Ascania. The Assyrian Gimirri and Hebrew Gomer have likewise been associated with the Cimmerians.
Isaac Asimov has proposed that biblical Ashkenaz (אשכנז) arose from Ashkūz (אשכוז), i.e. the Scythians, by an old misreading of נ (nun) for ו (vav).
According to the Encyclopaedia Biblica, "Ashkenaz must have been one of the migratory peoples which in the time of Esar-haddon, burst upon the northern provinces of Asia Minor, and upon Armenia. One branch of this great migration appears to have reached Lake Urumiyeh; for in the revolt which Esar-haddon chastised, the Mannai, who lived to the SW of that lake, sought the help of Ispakai 'of the land of Asguza,' a name (originally perhaps Asgunza) which the scepticism of Dillmann need not hinder us from identifying with Ashkenaz, and from considering as that of a horde from the north, of Indo-Germanic origin, which settled on the south of Lake Urumiyeh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenaz
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...-civilizations
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