[HN Gopher] Ancient genomes trace the origin and decline of the ...
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       Ancient genomes trace the origin and decline of the Scythians
        
       Author : dnetesn
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2021-03-28 10:19 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | brightball wrote:
       | The Scythians are fascinating.
       | 
       | I read some history that makes a good case that they are the lost
       | Tribe of Dan from early Israel, as well as the basis for most
       | Norse mythology.
       | 
       | EDIT: Source is this reprint from 1880 by Colonel J.C. Gawler. He
       | even goes so far as phonetic analysis of the languages used,
       | references and makes an extremely compelling case in my opinion.
       | 
       | I started researching the Tribe of Dan a couple of years back
       | after realizing some parts of Greek mythology sounded a lot like
       | references that Jewish history predated by 1,000 years.
       | Specifically the Rod/Staff of Asclepius (a serpent on a staff for
       | healing) sounded a lot like the poison healing bronze snake on a
       | pole that Moses created in Numbers 21:9, which was then destroyed
       | 800 years later in 2 Kings 18:4 because it had become an idol.
       | 
       | Dan was the seafaring, superstitious merchant tribe and that
       | traded across the Mediterranean. There are a lot of notes that
       | trace the origin of the Hercules legend to Samson, who I believe
       | was from the Tribe of Dan as well.
       | 
       | It's really interesting stuff.
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.com/Dan-Colonel-J-C-Gawler/dp/B002YBHRIQ/
        
         | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
         | Everyone else, please note that everything the OP talks about
         | is not taken seriously among scholars. The cited 19th-century
         | book is prescientific (to word it charitably) and its use of
         | linguistic data is completely unsound - the author simply
         | points to words that coincidentally look similar, but you can
         | do that with any languages even if they are completely
         | unrelated.
         | 
         | Generally mainstream history does not engage in tying a "lost
         | tribe of Israel" to other peoples across Eurasia; this is very
         | much the province of cranks and esotericists.
        
           | brightball wrote:
           | The phonetic analysis amounts to 2-3 pages of the entire
           | pamphlet.
           | 
           | There's plenty of other interesting information in there.
        
         | mstade wrote:
         | Interesting! Do you perhaps have any sources to share?
        
           | brightball wrote:
           | Added to the parent.
        
       | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
       | This part here is potentially misleading:
       | 
       | > Without a written language or direct sources, the language or
       | languages they spoke ... remain unclear.
       | 
       | This is not quite the case. It is the mainstream consensus - and
       | has been for many, many decades - that the Scythians spoke
       | Iranian languages ancestral to Sarmatian and Alanic. See the
       | article on the Scythian language [0] in the Encyclopedia Iranica,
       | the standard reference work for this field. This finding is based
       | on onomastics (Scythian names in Greek sources), as well as
       | loanwords into the Uralic languages spoken just north of the
       | steppes. What is unclear are dialectal divisions within Scythian,
       | not the general affiliation of the language.
       | 
       | Random Turkish nationalists on the internet sometimes say that
       | the Scythians spoke a Turkic language, as there have been some
       | crackpot publications claiming this. However, with regard to the
       | millennia BCE this is not taken seriously among historical
       | linguists.
       | 
       | [0] https://iranicaonline.org/articles/scythian-language
        
       | kvetching wrote:
       | For those interested. This is a fascinating documentary on the
       | Scythians. https://odysee.com/@ashalogos:92/conspiracy-our-
       | subverted-hi...
        
         | FentanylFloyd wrote:
         | interesting!
        
       | 8bitsrule wrote:
       | The rise of the Scythians et.al. at about/just after the time of
       | the 'Late Bronze-Age collapse' and the 'Sea People' makes for a
       | tantalizing Gordian knot in history.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-28 23:01 UTC)