Don't worry I realize Vallency's work is outdated
It's not that it is "outdated"; it was lunatic when it was published.
But what about Makkay and her assertions about an Iranian presence in Greece during the Myceneaen era?
I don't know any of the content of those assertions.
I guess you're more updated on the people who I've seen lumped together under the designation "Scythian" and who were East Iranians.
WEST Iranians! The Scyths were the furthest west of any Iranians ever.
From what I understood the Avestan's have been called Scythians
"Called" BY WHOM? Scythia was a realm in the Ukraine. I know of nobody whatsoever who has ever thought that is where the Avesta was composed.
Sarmations known as the Roxalani were the initial settlers of Russia
Ptolemy does not call the Roxolani (
Rossolyani) "Sarmatians", although they were probably akin. The term "Sarmatian" is usually restricted to those Slavic-speaker who were once ruled by the "Royal Scyths", whose reach did not extend up to Russia.
Herodotus says the designations Serb and Croat had Sarmation origins.
Quite possibly, although when we first get a fix on their location (downriver Volga in the 1st century AD; not moving into the Balkans until the 8th century AD) they seem to have been outside the area that the Scyths ever ruled.
The Alans who were Sarmations
NO NO NO! The Israelis and the Palestinians are not the same people: Israelis rule over Palestinians, and that is why Palestinians and Israelis hate each other-- right? The Alans were the remnants of the "Royal Scyths" after the Sarmatians OVERTHREW them. Alans and Sarmatians were ARCH-ENEMIES, HATED each other, KILLED each other on sight.
their present day linguistic descendants are the Iron an East Iranian speaking people of Georgia.
WEST Iranian! The Ossetes (or Iron) are the WESTERNMOST Iranian-speakers at the present time.
There are those among the Polish who look back to a Sarmation past, you agreed that the designation Czech probably is has its origins in the Iranian Shah (note that checkmate does).
Sarmatian chiefs often had recognizably Iranian names, which is why the mistaken assertion that Sarmatians were Iranian-speakers is often found in the literature; the
tribal names, however, are all Slavic. The persistence of Iranian names among the upper class may seem odd, when they had rebelled against Iranian rule; but by way of comparison, 1st Maccabees is about the violent rebellion of the Jews against Greek rule, and cites as its source a Jew with the totally Greek name of "Jason", and one of the kings from the line founded by the Maccabees was "Alexander". Lots of English names are Hebrew ("David"), Greek ("George"), or Latin ("Victor") although the English language is Germanic, not any of those things.
I think J.P. Mallory is the one who says the Cimmerians lived along the Danube (Don, Dnieper, and Danube all Iranian forms) where the Germans live today
Some ancients said the speech of the Thracians and Dacians was like that of the Cimmerians; some said it was like the Phrygians; one or the other or both (or neither!) might be true, and linguists speculatively speak of a "Thraco-Cimmerian" or "Thraco-Phrygian" branch of the Balkan Peripheral subtype of Indo-European. The Balkan Peripheral languages were most definitely NOT Indo-Iranian, nor Balto-Slavic, as they did not have the S'atam shift. The only thing we know for certain about "Cimmerian" is that the self-name started with a
hard "k" that eventually shifted to a
hard "g" (
Gomer/Gamir) like
Celt giving
Gael; if the language were Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic it would have been a sibilant. The root is a generic Indo-European one, as in Latin
camera which became generalized to "box" but originally meant like its French derivative
chambre "chamber; large room for living in" hence
camerata "comrade; room-mate"; an analogous development to the sense of "community; the people who live together" is seen in the Welsh self-name
Cymry (with hard "c"!).
Other errors here: the Thracians and Dacians, whether "Cimmerian" in affinity or not, lived on the
lower Danube (Bulgaria and Rumania) which is not German territory, and in fact Germans didn't even live on the upper Danube (Austria) as late as Charlemagne's time. None of the names "Danube, Don, Dnieper, Dniester" are Iranian: I told you before, the root
*Dan for a river or river-goddess is generic Indo-European, not specific to any sub-branch. The suffixes
-ieper and
-iester are not even Indo-European, but part of the "Paleo-European" substrate, remnants of some pre-Indo-European language family of which the only surviving traces are some recurrent elements in place-names: cognates of
ieper are the
Ibar river in Serbia,
Iberus now
Ebro in Spain, and
Ypres, Belgium; of
iester are
Hister, an old alternate name of the Danube, the
Isar river in Austria,
Weser in Germany, and
Ise`re and
Veze`re in France.
, and they neighbored the Slavs and Celto-Iberians.
Both Thraco-Cimmerians and Iranians did neighbor Slavs, but Celtiberians are from the exact opposite end of the continent, as "neighboring" to them as Maine is to California.
And there are even those among the English and the Scottish who believe that they are descendants of the Scythians.
Theories invented by 19th-century romantics that go back to no earlier source are not worthy of being considered evidence.
What I would like to know is how all these forms , Sogdiana, Sc[o]t, Seistan, Saxon, Scythian. Do you think the proto-form was just like a name that these Indo-Europeans liked to use or were was it actually one tribe to begin with that went in different directions.
"Sogdian" might easily be some transposed form of
*Skuth which is how I think "Scyth" was probably pronounced by Scyths. And "Seistan" is an eroded form from
Saka, a somewhat mysterious name but possibly related.
Saxon is very different in origin, however.
Scot has an intriguing similarity to
Skuth and I would not discount a possible relation; I would be more inclined to think it a word from Indo-European that independently got used as a tribal name in different places (I don't think the Cimmerians and the Welsh were particularly related, for example; just that the root for "people living together" came to be a national name in both places) rather than a group of Scyths wandering all the way from Ukraine to Ireland-- not that that would be impossible, just that it would need some substantiating evidence.
