Pazyryk Scythian aDNA results (mtDNA)

[Böri]

There also wasn't any grand "Scythian" empire like some people believe, just loose coalitions of tribes that moved in fluid borders with few areas ever having an actual, stable population.

Yup there was not a Scythian state. There was also not a Scythian ethnicity.
And that's also true they weren't (at least not all) Iranians as the Stalinist falsified, fabricated, Pro-Ossetic hypothesis claimed.

[Userius]

Yup there was not a Scythian state. There was also not a Scythian ethnicity.
And that's also true they weren't (at least not all) Iranians as the Stalinist falsified, fabricated, Pro-Ossetic hypothesis claimed.

The Ossetic thing is one of the biggest failures. Genetically, they're basically just Georgians/Kartveli or whatever you want to call them. The language also isn't as pure Iranic as it looks on first inspection.

In reality, regardless of ethnic composition, one could easily say that the Turkic kingdoms were far beyond anything "Scythians" accomplished other than the Kushan and Indo-Saka empires. Yet for some reason, people want to talk about some big loss that central Asia went through and act like their should be some kind of uprising.

[ButlerKing]

Tocharians were probably among the more clearly Caucasoid groups. They had DNA more resembling mainland Europeans and spoke a language similar to the Celtic branch. "Scythians" as a whole were not a singular people and as such each had varying degrees of being Caucasoid or Mongoloid. That is the nature of the steppes. Ethnicity was ALWAYS very fluid among the nomadic steppe tribes, and race didn't hold the same meaning.

There also wasn't any grand "Scythian" empire like some people believe, just loose coalitions of tribes that moved in fluid borders with few areas ever having an actual, stable population.

Although it's proven they had Mongoloid admixture they were roughly on average 80% Europoid and 20% Mongoloid. They wold have still look Europoid with little to no Mongoloid features. We can see North Africans are 22-24% Sub-Saharan African but when you look at them the vast majority look like a straight hair Caucasoid males, some look Caucasoid with curly hair but very few look like a Ethiopian /Somalian type ( don't confuse the Black North African who are descendants of African slave trade or the Black/African north African 7-9th generation descendants, they make up a substantial of North Africa's population today but but are not proper north Africans) so the same would apply to Scythians and Tocharians.

[Proto-Shaman]

Tocharians were probably among the more clearly Caucasoid groups.

What you call "Tocharian" has nothing to do with the IE language found in the Tarim basin. Tochar is a well-known misnomer and is included within Turkic tribal groups by Mahmud al-Kashgari.

[Proto-Shaman]

Although it's proven they had Mongoloid admixture they were roughly on average 80% Europoid and 20% Mongoloid. They wold have still look Europoid with little to no Mongoloid features. We can see North Africans are 22-24% Sub-Saharan African but when you look at them the vast majority look like a straight hair Caucasoid males, some look Caucasoid with curly hair but very few look like a Ethiopian /Somalian type ( don't confuse the Black North African who are descendants of African slave trade or the Black/African north African 7-9th generation descendants, they make up a substantial of North Africa's population today but but are not proper north Africans) so the same would apply to Scythians and Tocharians.

The more west, the more mixed, buddy.

[Userius]

What you call "Tocharian" has nothing to do with the IE language found in the Tarim basin. Tochar is a well-known misnomer and is included within Turkic tribal groups by Mahmud al-Kashgari.

I've heard this before, but I'm not sure what people mean by it. Maybe the name means something else, but it does still refer to the same people that it always referred to. The only thing questionable is whether they were the same as the Yuezhi, who pushed out the Saka and became known as the Kushan, due to the former speaking a branch more akin to Anatolian and Celtic, and the latter speaking Bactrian.

[Userius]

Let's just put this to rest though. Regardless of what the old Scythians were "more like", there's no real claim to them by anyone. Tomyris wasn't some Uzbek woman. Massagetae were bearded and hairy. Most Turkic national origin tales (AFAIK) speak of ancestral movement from further north in Siberia. There is ethnic and religious confusion through and through. The runes they used most clearly resemble the Turkic ones. Some religious aspects are more Zoroastrian especially in the case of fire rituals performed by Sarmatian tribes and references to an "Urmaysde" among the Saka, other things are more "nomadic" in origin, although not quite close to Turkic either. I'm not sure if any people from the area still divines events by throwing reeds or worships deities like Api or Tabiti.

Here's something I have to ask while hopefully not being offensive by doing so: Was there ever any real "Tengri" religion. The name is attested on some inscriptions, but was it ever really some supreme deity/ancestor that all Turkic people acknowledged to the same degree and that had specific rituals attached to it? It seems like the Tengriism mentioned today is the result of a lot of romanticism like many other such nostalgic revivals.

[Mingle]

Yup there was not a Scythian state. There was also not a Scythian ethnicity.
And that's also true they weren't (at least not all) Iranians as the Stalinist falsified, fabricated, Pro-Ossetic hypothesis claimed.

Scythian was the generic term for East Iranics. They were called 'Saka' in Indo-Iranic languages.

Just because some non-Iranics were called Scythians centuries later doesn't mean that Scythians didn't exist. That was just an example of an inconsistency/mistake.

Ossetian people were descended from Sarmates, who are an Iranic people that were called Scythians in the past.

[Mingle]

What you call "Tocharian" has nothing to do with the IE language found in the Tarim basin. Tochar is a well-known misnomer and is included within Turkic tribal groups by Mahmud al-Kashgari.

I'm glad someone else knows this. It's a huge misnomer that causes a lot of confusion. Tocharian languages should be renamed 'Tarimian languages'.

Tokharistan was used to refer to Bactria when it was Iranic speaking in the first millennium AD and the name far predates any Turkic expansion into Middle Asia, so I disagree with the latter part of your comment.

[Leto]

Scythian was the generic term for East Iranics. They were called 'Saka' in Indo-Iranic languages.

Just because some non-Iranics were called Scythians centuries later doesn't mean that Scythians didn't exist. That was just an example of an inconsistency/mistake.

Ossetian people were descended from Sarmates, who are an Iranic people that were called Scythians in the past.

Excuse me, have you taken a test? You must have some real Aryan DNA from the Andronovo. However, if you are not from Afghanistan, you must also be more South Asian-shifted than Afghans.