07-03-2009, 05:29 AM
Quote:Through archaeology and steppe art, we know that the Massagetae were Northeast Iranian in culture and language. In the bronze age they moved east across southern Russia; and by the iron age they were well established in the Altai, where they left numerous traces.
So we can be sure of three things:
1- The Massagetae originally came from Iran.
and
2- A number of Iranian tribes moved up into the steppes sometime around of the 1st millenium BC. Some went northeast like the Massagetae, some went northwest like the Sarmatians.
3- There was a tribe Herodotus called the Thyssagetae living somewhere near the southern tip of the Ural mountains.
Maybe there were a few different "-Getae" tribes that went separate ways when leaving the Iranian heartland, and one of them ended up near the Danube?
And the Dacii may have been a different tribe? Maybe the Getae became assimilated into the (more established?) Dacii, and their ancestral name fell out of use during the five-or-so centuries that passed between the time Herodotus wrote and Trajan's conquest?
Or maybe there's nothing to this, and they are actually just two names for precisely the same people?
Or maybe this is unknowable?
I'm leaning toward the latter.
Quote:They then moved southwest across the Jungar Pendi and along the north of the Tian Shan. Russian archaeologists have determined that many individuals had significant Asiatic features. They became known to the Persians as the Saka or Sacae, and then called the Massagetae by Herodotus. When we reach Dio and then Ammianus, we hear statements like "The Alans were formerly known as the Massagetae," and "The Alans are the Massagetae."
The Saka/Massagetae/Alan culture always was Iranian and always spoke Northeastern Iranian.
And just to add further confusion, in The Vandalic War Procopius wrote "the Massagetae whom they now call Huns."
