Re: Who are the probable descendants of the Alani and...

From: sirknight67 (sirknight67_at_prodigy.net)
Date: 01/29/05 

Date: 29 Jan 2005 00:59:30 -0800

Downshifter Desi wrote:
<Who are the probable descendants of the:
1. Alani
2. Sarmatians
3. Scythians
4. Huns
5. White Hunds
6. Indo-Scythians
7. Kushanas
8. Indo-Greeks from Alexander's incursions to India
9. Mughals

Here are my best guesses:
1. I read that the Alani invaded/migrated to western Europe­ and
served
as mercenaries thousands of years ago. They were the
proto-­Ossetians,
who speak a North Eastern Iranian language. Therefore, the
­descendants
of the Alani are the Ossetians.
2. No clue. My guess is that the Sarmatian's descendants a­re
probably
living in Turkmenistan these days, but they don't speak an I­ranian
language. Instead, they speak a Turkic language of Turkmenis­tan.
3. I believe that the term "Scythian" is a generic term for­ nomadic
horseman with a similar way of life (warring, horses, etc.).­ This is

where I need your help. My guess would be the present day n­omads of
Central Asia and Mongolia.
4. I'm beginning to think that the term "Scythian" and "Hun­" are
used
interchangeably. Help me here as well.
5. My guess is that the White Huns were the Caucasoid ethni­city of
the
Scythians. They would resemble Armenians/Kurds/Iranians. N­o clue
who
their descendants are.
6. No clue who their descendants are. I don't know anything­ about
the
original Indo-Scyths. I have no clue what their language, r­eligion,
or
time frames of these people. I heard that Jatts and Rajputs­ were
Indo-Scythians. However, I've also heard that they are also­ White
Huns, and also Aryans. Basically, I don't know how to appro­ach this,

since the Jatts/Rajputs have not retained anything from thei­r alleged

sources.
7. No clue who their descendants are.
8. No clue who their descendants are.
9. Maybe some of the slightly Oriental featured people of N­orthern
India and Pakistan. These people are Muslims. Abida Parvee­n,
Qawalli
singer from Pakistan, is an example of a Orientaled featured­ person
from the Subcontinent. I've met quite a few Indo-Pakistanis­ who have

slightly Mongoloid features. These are the probably descend­atns of
the
Mughals, in my opinion. >

Interesting questions.
Read this article
http:www.ardyco.com/sample2.htm

If you are interested, Azadan issue 2 has a 22-page article on the
Scythians and Sarmatians, from sources written over more than a hundred
years of information collected, as well as ancient contemporary sources
ranging from Herodotus to Chinese annals. Now to your questions:

As far as the Sarmatians are concerned, your guess is correct, some of
them do live among the Turkmen/ I have a few Turkmen childhood friends
and they combine the Mongoloid features of the Mongols with the Aryan
features of the Sarmatians (light hair, blue or green eyes etc...). The
Russian archeologists Tolstov, famous for his reearch on Iranian nomads
of the great Eurasian Steppes found some Alan descendants living among
the Turkmen, incidently, a clan called the "Alan-Turkmen".

Other Alans survived in the Caucasus mountains where they still live
today. In spite of mixtures with local Caucasic people, they are still
30% blond or light eyed like their ancestors. They speak a language
that ressembles the idioms of ancient Iranian Khwarazm as well as
Scythian and Sarmatian, since the Alans were a mix of these.

The other Alans that settled in western Europe and Africa are now long
absorbed into the local population of Galicia (Portugal), Britanny
(France, where they served Charlemagne as heavy cavalrymen) and even
Tunisia in North Africa, where they along with Germanic Vandals settled
in the 6th century.

2) "Scythian" is not a generic term for all Iranian nomads of the great
Steppes. In fact, Scythians were settled from what is now Moldova to
the cities of the Tarim Basin in western China. So when ancient writers
and geographers refered to this entire complex as "Scythian" they were
right because the latter had settled all these regions and plintered
into many tribes, sub-tribes and federation of tribes before being
displaced or subdued by Sarmatians. Some sought assylum in the Roman
Empire, notably in the Dobruja region which became known as "little
Scythia".

3) the other people you mentioned like the White Huns or Epthalites
suposedly spoke a language related to the ancient native language of
the Tarim Basin before Indo-Europeans arrived into the region between
5,000 and 4,000 years ago. It is believed that it may have been related
to Burushaski but the absorption of large numbers of Iranians,
especially Scythians led to teh belief that they were Scythian. they
were not although they were mixed. Their physical features were not
like Kurds or many Iranians today but rather like northern Iranians,
and even western Europeans in that many were fair haired.
Linguistically, the White Huns were not Indo-Europeans and their
leadership probably spoke a proto-Burushaski tongue and were physically
akin to the Caucasoid native population of Central Asia before the
Aryans, and physically similar to the people of the Caucasus.

4) The terms "Hun" and "Turk" on the other hand were quite generic and
even political until the MOngol conquest, which had the effect of
eradicating or submerging Caucasoid genes in much of Central Asia which
leads people to believe that these people were Mongoloid like their
modern speakers. Turks in fact where a white skinned people and where
the descendants of Scythians in Central Asia who had been subdued by
the Asiatic Turks from Mongolia. Many Turkish tribes such as the
Kirghyz were described by the CHinese Han-Shu and Tang-Shu as fair or
red haired with blue or grey eyes and tall and fair skin with thin
noses (thsu definitely not MOngoloid, though they spoke
MOngoloid/Altaic languages). These were simply the descendants of
Irnaian Scythian and Sarmatian tribes, mixed with Tokharian Kushans
subjugated by a Mongoloid Turkic warrior aristocracy and politically
and linguistically influenced by them.

When the Oghuz Turks entered Iran in the 11th century, they were noted
for their very white Caucasoid features, unlike the Turkic tribes
further east like the Kara Khita, Kara Khanids, Uighur etc...In fact,
the region where they settled (Azarbaijan) in north-western Iran has
the highest incidence of blond or light brown hair with blue or grey
eyes in all of Iran.

Lastly, as for northern India and northern Pakistan: I was amazed years
ago when I saw for the first time, Indians and Pakistanese from Kashmir
etc...that had light hair and blue or green eyes and very pale skin. I
even met some and they didn't look anything like Indians. After some
research and reading some books notably by Lazlo Torday and Tolstov,
Bosworth etc..., I realized that these were the descendants of two
Scythian tribes that had migrated south through the Pamir moutains and
the Tashkurgan pass through Tajikistan and into the northern Indian
subcontinent. THese were the Saka Raucae and Asiani who created some
small states in the high Pamir mountains and through what is now
Kafiristan and northwestern Pakistan and Kashmir.
I looked at the maps that retraced their forced migrations after they
were ousted by the TOkhars in the Tarim Basin, themselves pushed west
by the Huns under Mo-tun.
It was around 2,200 years ago that the entire eastern Iranian world
went into turmoil because of the Huns and TOkhars and many of the
tribes that had lived for thousands of years in the Tarim Basin or in
the Semirechye (Kirghystan) were forced south into Afghanistan and
Iran, and others into the Indian Subcontinent and their descendants
were absorbed into the Brahman caste.
If you look at some Indian and Pakistanese actors form that region, you
will see that their western features betray a non-Indian origin.

The Indo-Pakistanese that have MOngoloid features are not realted to
the Scythians who were NOT Mongoloid, according to pretty much every
single ancient source that identified Scythians and Sarmatians as a
European looing, mostly fair haired people. Those are descended form
Tibeto-Burman people as Tibetans had a period of expansion up to the
8th century, which led them to rule as far west as north eastern
Tokharestan (NE Afghanistan and northern Pakistan).

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